Main > Consoles
NES/Famicom Multicarts
pbj:
Pull the potato out of your pocket and snap a few pics.
Howard_Casto:
I'm really bad at taking pics of pcbs, but I'll try here in a minute.
So I tried the cart..... the first thing that becomes apparent is that I need a better upscaler.... my eyes are toast.
The games all work fine though and the list is rather impressive. Sure there are some oddball ones missing like the zeldas, punch out, kid Icarus and Metroid, but for the most part this is a list of all the best games on the system. One oddity is that all of the river city ransom games are on there, by that I mean all those games that use the character sprites based on that manga. Mind you most of them are good, but they aren't particularly popular here in the west and it takes up like 10-15 slots. The little thumbnail system works pretty well... it looks like they allocated 4 sprites and 4 background tiles per game to make up a preview image, which is small, but it's enough in most cases. I obviously haven't tried them all, but I tried some of the ones that would be likely to give issue. Bayou Billy's wavy title screen still works. The only two that I noticed having issues were oddly enough SMB 2 and SMB 3. 2 Plays it's music too fast. I think it's the pal rom and with these carts pressing reset a few times often puts the game in pal mode. SMB 3 doesn't have a title at the title screen. I'm pretty sure every US household was issued a copy of smb 1-3 though, so no big deal.
The boards look very similar to a small website that makes repro carts, so I'll throw some pics up and maybe we can figure out what is going on.
Howard_Casto:
Well I tried for about a half an hour on a couple of cameras and I couldn't get a good pic. I'd just scan it with my scanner, but there are sharp parts and I don't want scratches on the glass. Anyway I'll try my best.
The first pic is just so we are all on the same page in regards to what multicart I'm talking about. I was actually surprised at the quality of the shell. Aside from the red color it's identical to the official nes ones. It even has the benzene warning on the back.
The next two pics are the front and back respectively. As you can see there are many contact points on both sides.... some are obviously for extra chips, some are dip switches and others... well I don't know.
Since the pics aren't real great I'll take an afternoon and write the chip names on all the pics as well as any other text I can find.
Howard_Casto:
Ok on the battery side the chip says:
HSRM20255LM10
F31M 271
Japan
The text in the upper left corner says "Pocket games" which seems to be the brand name of these boards.
As you can see there is what looks like a place to connect a chip as well as a few dip points. The one on the right hand side of the battery is closed. The one next to the chip looks like a solid blob in my cruddy pic, but it's actually 3, and the top two are closed together. It's labeled "j8".
---------------------------------------
The back of the pcb:
It says UNION at the top... it appears to be the pcb manufacturer. The serial on the upper right reads: SMD157D-72 (72 most likely stands for 72 pin as there is a famicom version of this cart). The large white text in the lower right says SMD151212.
On the top left hand side there are solder points for what looks like a diode, a dip and another diode respectively labeled D1 R1 and D2. Since it's labeled R1 maybe the dip is actually a spot for a resistor?
There is a blank spot for a chip on the left labeled U6 and a chip labeled U9 below it.
The large chip to the left is labeled U3 and reads:
MXIC 81325
29GL256EHMC-90Q
3P060800
TAIWAN
The square chip in the center is labeled U1 and reads:
SMD132
2015.11.18
The solder pads (for a dip) to the left of that chip are labeled 5/6K. The one below and to the right is labeled H/V (the rom order dip). The rest of the dip pads on this side of the pcb are unlabeled.
As for the rest of the chips on this side, they are frikkin small and I'm an old man so cut me some slack. Once I find my magnifying glass I'll add them.
Howard_Casto:
Well I knew it was a good idea to look at the inside of the cart before I started playing. I've spent all day playing Little Samson. That game is surprisingly good considering it's rarity (a rare nes game usually equates to a crappy nes game).
So anyway, after looking over the cart, the traces are just too darn small to even think of replacing the chips, ect. I'm thinking that the best route might be to contact the manufacturer directly and see about getting a blank cart made that we can program with an Arduino or something. I know the language barrier is going to make that hard though.
Anybody want to help me out phrasing a message?
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