ROM swapping in MVS carts

[not sonic]

there are a lot of different boards. there are a lot of different games. you cant just take motw chips and put em in a world heroes and expect it to play. hell i dont think wh even has enough spots for all the motw chips.

only so many games are interchangeable with so many others. many still requiring custom wire jumpers and things.

its not 1:1, its not easy.

if it was, everyone would have a set of socketed cart boards and stacks of roms.

 

[Mithos]

what gave you the idea that I don't welcome public opinion concerning this? I love a good debate.

worship you hardware all you want. just don't impose your religion over the freedom of speech of others.

Ok, what the hell man? Freedom of speech doesn't apply here at these forums. This isn't a government owned site, and you're really starting to sound like a douche. Why ask a question on how to make a boot on a site where we think, wait KNOW that Neo-Geo is king? If you didn't expect this kind of reaction from people in this forum, then I'm sorry, you're a dumb fuck. That being said good luck with your endeavor to become the world's biggest douche.

 

[Electric Grave]

what gave you the idea that I don't welcome public opinion concerning this?

This right below doesn't speak much of your tolerance for differece of opinion.

Or maybe you believe every cart is sacred? Realize that when your body is cold, and you grandchildren clean out your attic, they are going to throw all your neo geo stuff in the trash.

worship you hardware all you want. just don't impose your religion over the freedom of speech of others.

This is coming from a person who just ridiculed someone elses opinion/view about dedication to the Neo.

Like I said before is all about public opinion and I'm glad you agree, but your attitude shows a much different view. Do what you will, we ain't calling the Rom Whore Patrol on you or anything.

 

[Neo Alec]

many here dont like the topic of making boots but protos carts like ghostlop diggerman and a few others are done the same way and are not discouraged as much .

I still want to find an original Diggerman cart instead of making one.

 

[werejag]

yea and i want to win lottery

 

[Xian Xi]

I still want a copy of Last Hope for MVS.

 

[Mithos]

And I want a copy of Metal Slug for the AES.

 

[OMFG]

I still want a copy of Last Hope for MVS.

One can hope.

 

[Neo Alec]

yea and i want to win lottery

I don't remember them being that unheard of, not long ago. V-Liner on the other hand... probably won't happen for me.

 

[Xian Xi]

I don't remember them being that unheard of, not long ago. V-Liner on the other hand... probably won't happen for me.

For the price of V-Liner it's probably better to play real slots so you can win real money.

 

[Electric Grave]

Boyscout time!

I want world peace, but that's way out of the question...

I guess we all want things we can't seem to have.

 

[dannywhac]

I'd quite like a bigger schlong - sadly knowledge of jumper settings and board sizes ain't ever going to help me on that score......

 

[antron]

@everyone posting non-technical replies
feel free to continue posting opinions/accusations/insults/nonsensical correlations/general nonsense. freedom of speech is alive and well here for now.

@everyone else
from what I can gather so far a MVS board with sockets would be capable of playing a few to a dozen or so games. you would only need a few of these to play a lot of different games. some do use bankswitching to extend the data space. right now I am curious about the jumpers and what they actually do.

 

[channelmaniac]

Then you should find a pinout for the cartridge slot connector and start figuring out what lines go to which set of pins on the chips in the cartridges and which lines on the pins & chips the jumpers connect to.

That's what I have to do to learn how to repair systems without schematics.

And no, I haven't done this on carts yet as I don't have a programmer that will do the 8/16/32 meg 16-bit EPROMs.

RJ

 

[antron]

OK, so I guess there isn't a universal use for these on all boards, thanks

actually, I find this dubious

 

[ki_atsushi]

antron, I can tell you right now... finding the correct jumpers will be more trouble than it's worth. Plus, most of the newer games have encryption and will only work on the board they were designed for. Trust me, I used to dabble in the black arts of making conversions not unlike what you're doing... except I did it with AES carts because Blazing Star AES = $900 while Blazing Star MVS = $50 and I didn't have a MVS system at the time. Once I got my MVS I could buy any game I wanted for less than $100 and I stopped doing that shit.

Like others have said, it's going to be cheaper and less time consuming to just buy the real cart. MVS carts are cheap.

 

[antron]

yeah, probably right. i just like playing around with this kind of stuff.
but a Pulstar did go for 35 this week on ebay. why did a boot go for 60 the week before? may be I'll get lucky too soon.

 

[Kyuusaku]

Get some digital electronics background and you can do whatever you want; I've designed my own MVS boards from some cheap 74 series chips which can play almost every game provided it uses standard bankswitching (or can be hacked for it) and you have enough EPROM.

 

[antron]

I have a degree in EE, I just can't fing any resorces about the hardware. You say standard bankswithing? Is there a list of games that use it?
Thanks

 

[Kyuusaku]

Every game that has a 1MiB (static bank) and a 2-4MiB (switched) program ROM uses "standard" bankswitching, which is a decoded memory area that clocks a 3-bit register on the cartridge. Many games after 1998 and most bootlegs however have protection.

 

[FairlanePhantom]

The whole project just seems like a waste of time. Playing converted carts on official hardware defeats the purpose of even playing on the original operating system in the first place.

 

[andy251203]

I'm surprised that there isn't a MVS flash cart out that can download the roms from your PC. With all of the Chinese bootleg XX in 1 games out, you'd think that making a flash cart would be a cinch. Even protected games would work with the predecrypted rom sets.

 

[Kyuusaku]

Yeah, learning things is such a waste of time. Besides, it's totally not cool to be able to run tests on original hardware, and for converted carts I completely forgot that the original operating system defeats the purpose.

I'm surprised that there isn't a MVS flash cart out that can download the roms from your PC. With all of the Chinese bootleg XX in 1 games out, you'd think that making a flash cart would be a cinch. Even protected games would work with the predecrypted rom sets.

You have to understand that unlike any other consoles, Neo has multiple huge and wide ROM buses--6 of them and only one can be accessed by the CPU. So building an arbitration system that can program all these buses in system across two PCBs is definitely not a cinch. The Chinese bootlegs work like any other multicart, they have a memory mapped register which switches each ROM's high address lines, and the initial power-on game has the menu hacked into some free space. It's not close to the same thing as a flashcart.

 

[channelmaniac]

Yum yum yum!

Character graphics, background graphics, overlay graphics, program, and sound...

That's all I can think of offhand.

 

[FairlanePhantom]

Yeah, learning things is such a waste of time. Besides, it's totally not cool to be able to run tests on original hardware, and for converted carts I completely forgot that the original operating system defeats the purpose.

I can understand conversions for the sake of protos that were never released, but besides that, then you're better off just going for MAME. So you have your 'look what I can do moment,' that's it, and you butchered a cart for it.