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Author Topic: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges  (Read 35987 times)

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bobbyb13

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #40 on: April 23, 2022, 01:16:16 am »
From soup to nuts it appears-!
You printing those labels yourself?

If there was a market for a few specific titles that commanded some good $$ you could easily have a self-funding fiasco here.
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #41 on: April 23, 2022, 05:02:54 am »
Is the lighter fluid alcohol (probably methanol or ethanol) based? If so, you might find it just as effective, though cheaper, to try some plain old metho or isopropyl, (though they may smell a bit more). Just an idea.
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pbj

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #42 on: April 23, 2022, 09:15:18 pm »
Lighter fluid is $1.50 here for a 32oz bottle.  I have 4oz in that plastic food tub and so far I’ve removed six labels.  Put the lid back on and it doesn’t evaporate.  I’m good.

Labels are printed on a color laser on full sheet mailing labels.  I can get six per sheet and have enough room to make EPROM labels.  The sheets are 10 cents each.

Here’s a 42 pin 2MB eprom running a half megabyte game on a 40 pin pcb.  Legs 1 and 42 are bent up and tied to ground.  Works perfectly.

 :cheers:

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #43 on: April 23, 2022, 10:49:53 pm »
Made a few carts tonight.


Killin me smalls. I spent like 2 hours making a pretty convincing Ys III repro label for you and you used the red label boot? boooooooo
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #44 on: April 24, 2022, 12:57:59 am »
No ragrats.

Pics are more bootlegs I’ve spit out tonight.  Both have been patched for better colors.  Two games I could never find in the 90s for any price.

 :cheers:




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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #45 on: April 26, 2022, 12:50:33 am »
So, Wonder Boy in Monster World is an interesting one.  I was doing some reading on the various saving methods and there’s a PDF out there that talks about the serial eeproms and all that.  Basically I’m trying to figure out which worthless sports games with saving circuits can be converted.

https://krikzz.com/pub/support/everdrive-md/v2/gen_eeprom.pdf


Turns out Wonder Boy uses the same set up as Sports Talk Baseball.  So, I burn the ROM on a 2MB chip.   On my 2MB SRAM tester pcb, the game boots up to the title screen.  You hit start and it attempts to check for a save file and it locks.  No error message, nothing.  Totally locked.  I mean, this is a very early game so I can kind of understand it but I guess you’re boned if any of the save game chips fail.

Anyway, when soldered to the Sports Talk Baseball pcb, it won’t even boot.  After the panic subsides, I decide it has to be related to pin 42 on the eprom.  By default on this board it’s already connected to 5V, which ordinarily disables that line and makes it act like a 1MB chip.  I cut that connection and jumped it to ground and we’re in business. Playing and saving perfectly.



Monster World 4 also working perfectly on that Troy Aikman pcb with a new battery.  Some of the soldering jobs on the old batteries are beyond terrible.  Lot of kids out there with games that never worked right I imagine.

Okay, so onwards to another experiment.  I’ve got all these damn EA boards, they’ve all got complicated saving circuitry, and I don’t want to do 20 jumper wires and trace cuts like I did on my first copy of Blades of Vengeance.  My theory is that so long as the rom is the same size or smaller as what was on the donor board, a new game shouldn’t ever try to address the saving circuits and it’ll just run cheerfully ignoring half the pcb.

Grabbed a copy of Madden 93 and burned a 1MB Blades of Vengeance without any padding.

The EA pcbs are such a pain in the ass.  SEGA boards you kiss with the desoldering rig and I swear you can just shake the old rom chip off.  EA omfg.  Even with hog flux, I wasn’t having much luck.  The eventual solution was to snap off the rom, then add fresh solder to the legs, and then desolder.  That worked well.

So, my theory was right.  Boots and plays fine and I didn’t do a thing to the pcb. 







« Last Edit: April 26, 2022, 01:01:24 am by pbj »

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #46 on: April 26, 2022, 11:44:56 pm »
EA boards are such a pain in the ass I may start throwing them away…. Or upgrade equipment.

Two hours later and a jumper wire from pin 42 to ground and here’s Madden 93 running Micro Machines.


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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #47 on: April 27, 2022, 02:25:50 pm »
Turns out my desoldering iron was clogged in the metal tubing.  Since I no longer rent and don't want to stick this thing in a fire place, to the grill it went.

20 minutes with all burners going and the thermometer pegged on danger cleared it right out.



Here's my high tech drying system for shells that have been soaked in lighter fluid and then rinsed with water.

« Last Edit: April 27, 2022, 02:54:20 pm by pbj »

bobbyb13

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #48 on: April 27, 2022, 09:29:56 pm »
Gotta love simple-

How's the paint on the grill lid holding up?!
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #49 on: April 29, 2022, 10:09:53 pm »
I like that you included the spatula/flipper, for context, in that grill shot
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #50 on: May 09, 2022, 11:39:53 am »
So, I figured there had to be a quicker way to clear clogs, and found out this works really well.  Keep the flame on the tube until you burn your thumb, and then turn on the vacuum.  You'll watch a molten turd go flying down the tubing.  Quite satisfying.



I have officially thrown in the towel on depopulating EA pcbs.  I don't know what the hell kind of solder they used, but it's taking me over an hour per cartridge to get the holes clean.  Oddly, it's the same pins that are problematic.  Maybe the carts ran hot and quietly smoldered?  My best strategy has been to do as many pins as I can, then break off the ROM chip (oh no, RIP Madden 93) and individually do the remaining pins.  THEN I put my tubing on the exhaust port of the vacuum and blow the remaining solder out of the back of the PCB.  THEN I take a thumb tack and manually force it through the holes.  One by one by one by one by one.

So, enter this reproduction board:

https://www.tindie.com/products/ryanbatesrbg/repro-pcb-for-sega-genesis-mega-drive-eproms/

I emailed the creator and he had a few in stock.  I ordered them all. I will be placing an embarrassingly larger order soon.

He did a very, very nice job on these PCBs.  You can use surface mount or through hole parts.  The chips drop right in.  He put the 2MB / 4MB jumper on the back of the board so you can still change it when you make a mistake and have already soldered the EPROM on.  (there's another prominent seller that puts the jumper under the EPROM which is the dumbest design I've seen in ages.  It's a breathtakingly stupid setup)  The connector edge is beveled, the corners are rounded.  Every complaint people have about other repros has been addressed with these.


Here's Metal Dragon, a 4MB eprom, using actually correct parts values for the capacitors (47uF 16V for the electrolytic and 0.1uf for the other one).



And here's Mutant League Hockey, a 2MB chip, and "eh, kind of close enough" parts.  2x10uF caps or something like that and I can't even remember what the ceramic capacitor is.



And the PCBs drop in beautifully in both EA and Sega cases:



And here's where I confess I've made a rather expensive and large purchase of games.  So... whenever any of you is ready for some Genesis games, please get in touch.

 :cheers:

BadMouth

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #51 on: May 09, 2022, 09:48:38 pm »
So, I figured there had to be a quicker way to clear clogs, and found out this works really well.  Keep the flame on the tube until you burn your thumb, and then turn on the vacuum.  You'll watch a molten turd go flying down the tubing.  Quite satisfying.



This looks like some hardcore drug thing that I'm too naive to know about.

I've been enjoying your cartridge making venture.   :cheers:

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #52 on: May 16, 2022, 11:46:17 pm »
I’ve been buying boxes of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- just to see if I still feel lately.

Got real excited… a Tengen cartridge with no label and the serial number on the chip couldn’t be found on Google.  Maybe it was some variant of Grind Stormer and I was gonna be famous.

Tengen pcbs are absolute crap, btw.  Reflowing the pins got nothing out of it, so I popped the chip…about half the solder pads were destroyed in the process, too.



Put this turd in my tester boards and nothing,  so pulsed some voltage through each pin doing a diode check.

And here we are…



So, who knows.. maybe this is some earlier variant.  It wasn’t released until 1994 by Time Warner, and my PCB was labelled 1993 Tengen.


 :timebomb:

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #53 on: May 17, 2022, 01:56:34 am »
I love this thread.
At the rate you are going you are bound to start finding some really weird ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.
I'm looking forward to it myself.
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #54 on: May 31, 2022, 10:02:43 pm »
This one had been vexing me for awhile.  There’s a few 3MB games that are split across two 2MB chips.  The ones of note are Sonic Complete, Beyond Oasis, and Phantasy Star 4.  The worthless ones are World Series Baseball 95 and 96.

You actually split the rom into two chunks - the first 2MB and then the last 1MB.  Put the 2MB chip in the bottom slot, 1MB in the top.  Every pin should buzz out continuous to each other except for Chip Enable.

Here’s my beast of a test cartridge.  Didn’t work at first, it was a bad connection on the top chip pin Q15A-1.  I was getting all kinds of weird behavior until I went pin by pin and compared it to an unmolested board.  Anyway, scrape scrape on the solder mask and dragging a drop of solder down the trace and we’re good to go.



And here’s World Series Baseball turned into something I might play some day.  Couldn’t afford this in the 90s….



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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #55 on: June 02, 2022, 07:36:15 am »
oh boi, now I can have a working "Beyond Oasis"
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #56 on: June 02, 2022, 10:27:59 am »


I really love this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

This thread is awesome.

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #57 on: June 05, 2022, 01:01:15 pm »
Yep!  Cave Story for sure and a few others.

incase anyone else is makin carts, here's a cavestory label made in the old genny label style
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #58 on: June 06, 2022, 11:07:41 am »
Cave Story is proving to be a tough nut to crack.  A few people have made saving copies of it, but they're also selling them for $30 and not giving too many details on how they got it working.  I'll keep chipping at that one.

Anyway, lots of progress this weekend.  Got my reproduction circuit boards in, actual flux, new components, couple of jugs of lighter fluid, new desoldering tips, and away we go.



By the 10th board, I had gotten reasonably decent at these SMD capacitors.  Tiny drop of flux, hold it in place with my left fingernail, touch it with the soldering iron that had a small drop of solder on it. Once one side was done, the other was easy. 



The other capacitors are SMD 47uf 16V, but you can pop off the bottom and you have tiny little legs.  Those legs line up perfectly with the holes on these repro boards.  My only gripe on these repros is the guy didn't give the legs enough exposed copper on the back to have solder bite them into place easily, but he's going to make a revision one of these days.  It's still doable but you need to double check the joint.

Anyway, here's a bunch of trash game shells that gave up treasure like Madden 94 and Coach K College Basketball so that better games may collect dust on my shelf.



Wait a second... wasn't Super Off Road an Accolade game?  And why is that EA Marble Madness running the Japanese Tengen ROM.  In 2022, all things are possible.



I've been scooping up cartridge lots for copies of World Series Baseball 95 and 96.  Most of them have looked brand new once cracked open... and then there was this gem....



What the hell... this is all a waste of time and effort anyway.  I scrubbed it down with a steel wire brush and lighter fluid (god bless lighter fluid) and reflowed all the solder joints.



And check this out....



I'm still contemplating if I'm going to trust this board with a different game on it.... 82 pins...
 
And here's what one of these PCBs that isn't totally roached out with battery acid looks like when the ROMs, battery, and old capacitor are removed.  These have all been replaced by new parts and it runs Phantasy Star IV now.   ;D


« Last Edit: June 06, 2022, 11:12:18 am by pbj »

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #59 on: June 07, 2022, 12:11:25 am »
Here’s tonight’s batch.  Spent 11 hours at a keyboard today, figured I needed to do something fun.

Pulse Man was patched with a Game Genie code that defeats the region check.  Valis, Shinobi, Strider, Ghostbusters, Ghouls N Ghosts were all games I owned as a kid.  The others were ones I wanted.  Try selling this box for $20 the week after I move out, mom.

 :cheers:




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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #60 on: June 07, 2022, 11:43:49 pm »
Here’s some I made for someone else….



And here’s a couple for me….




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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #61 on: June 08, 2022, 03:11:27 am »
What's the first one with the Boris flavor artwork you made for yourself?

And whenever you are ready to stop teasing with pinball machines in the background and just sell me one already... I'm ready.
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #62 on: June 08, 2022, 12:10:16 pm »
That's Golden Axe 2, the Genesis only sequel.  I played through it dozens of times as a kid.  Jammed a couple levels last night and I still like it.

Getting a pinball machine to an island is going to be a nightmare of container shipping.  You're better off finding a west coast distributor hustling Sterns that will put one on a boat for you.  Bring money.

 :cheers:


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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #63 on: June 08, 2022, 08:58:18 pm »
Yeah, the logistics of pin transport are going to suck.
And I was stunned at how much even older machines command presently.
Yeesh.

Made me wanna go fire up the mame box and play some Golden Axe.

Have you rec-reated your grail Genesis game yet?
That system does look like the pinnacle of cartridge machines I would say.
I've never owned one.
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #64 on: June 08, 2022, 09:54:10 pm »
That's Golden Axe 2, the Genesis only sequel.  I played through it dozens of times as a kid.  Jammed a couple levels last night and I still like it.
Its the best golden axe on the system. Shame Revenge of Death Adder never got ported to anything.  I mixed up 3 with 2 in my head, so you gotta print me a 2 label and I'll reflash my 3 cart with 2


Have you rec-reated your grail Genesis game yet?
That system does look like the pinnacle of cartridge machines I would say.
I've never owned one.
Genesis and SNES , each with their perks and caveats. if you can get your hands on a genny, get it. Lots of great games at great prices still, plus I know a guy who can make you the rare carts pretty cheap.
I am still kinda shocked that the Super Baseball 2020 port is so good, and I didnt know it even existed till a couple months ago when I got it in an eBay lot.
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #65 on: June 09, 2022, 12:48:26 am »
So, “grail cartridge” is probably an even mix of Crackdown, Wrestle War, and Phantasy Star 4.  I’m 2/3 there.

Yeah, you can still get a lot of CIB genesis games for $10-15 shipped.  That’s how you start.  Then you realize you hate dealing with the cases and now you’re paying $5-10 each for loose carts.  Then you realize the carts are just a simple PCB and a rom chip and you end up like me.  Buying huge lots of crap because you’re trying to lower your average buy price.  Then you think, hm, I need something to store all these carts in.  I kept good records of expenses and stopped tracking around $600.  I’m probably currently in for double that.  Oh well, make it spend it.

Personal cartridges on the left, commissioned cartridges on the right.

 :cheers:



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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #66 on: June 09, 2022, 01:52:11 am »

I was wondering if you were going to take some cart pics on top of your Alien Poker.   ;D

How are those 3d printed drop target guides from four years ago holding up?

 


Scott

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #67 on: June 09, 2022, 11:53:03 am »
They've held up beautifully.  Some day, collectors are going to appreciate your work on those as the only alternative is stripping them off another 20-40 year old game.  Trying to source those was probably my last interaction with only sort of online pinball community.  I was met with the same idiotic snark and useless replies that drove me out of those circles in the first place.

 :cheers:






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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #68 on: June 09, 2022, 12:09:03 pm »
Personal cartridges on the left, commissioned cartridges on the right.

I like my version of the genny label better (based on the SNES label) over the retail one. You can put whatever you want of mine in EA cases, no ---smurfs---, I just wanna play the games.


Wonderful derail by a moderator though, really top notch "lead by example" behavior.
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #69 on: June 10, 2022, 02:57:11 am »
So, “grail cartridge” is probably an even mix of Crackdown, Wrestle War, and Phantasy Star 4.  I’m 2/3 there.

Yeah, you can still get a lot of CIB genesis games for $10-15 shipped.  That’s how you start.  Then you realize you hate dealing with the cases and now you’re paying $5-10 each for loose carts.  Then you realize the carts are just a simple PCB and a rom chip and you end up like me.  Buying huge lots of crap because you’re trying to lower your average buy price.  Then you think, hm, I need something to store all these carts in.  I kept good records of expenses and stopped tracking around $600.  I’m probably currently in for double that.  Oh well, make it spend it.

Personal cartridges on the left, commissioned cartridges on the right.

 :cheers:



It's all such a slippery slope.
The $$ becomes meaningless past the $1k mark, doesn't it?
This is easily my favorite thread on any forum anywhere presently.
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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #70 on: June 13, 2022, 11:56:58 am »
So, a small history lesson here.  Statue of limitations should have long passed, so ---fudgesicle--- it.  Texas A&M had a very weird, old building creatively called the "Special Services building."  When I was a student there 20+ years ago, my interactions with it were an underground laundromat (underground anything is unusual in Texas) and then jiggling an outside door and wandering around the inside at night.  Genuinely felt like a scene from Resident Evil or Silent Hill on the inside.

We step forward in time a couple of years, and I was providing IT support back in the "have you turned it off and back on?" days.  I was officed in yet another weird, old building, but the central IT guys were in this one.      They spent their days eating cheeseburgers, smoking cigarettes, and playing Diablo 2 on a state server.  In fact, my first trip out there for "training," I got handed a stack of burned Diablo 2 discs, given login details to their dialup internet service, and sworn to secrecy.  Predictably, I needed an awful lot of "training," usually the day after a new South Park episode had been ripped and put on the internet.  So I'd hop in the state owned station wagon and pay them a visit.

Eventually, one of them figures out that he can unlock the door and get out on the veranda.  An aluminum picnic table from outside one of the dorms miraculously appeared up there.  Then a grill.  Then eventually a pop up gazebo for shade.  Then one of us gets a Mexican girlfriend who makes tortillas, and the business school (where C students like me went) was next to the campus meat store and I would grab packages of sausage.  There is little in life better than grilled subsidized sausage, fresh flour tortillas, mustard, and a cheap cigarette on the clock.  It was actually ---fracking--- ridiculous we got away with all this.  The perspective from this old photo was taken is where eventually a girls dorm was built, so lots of time was spent hoping someone forgot to close their blinds.


 
So what does this have to do with this thread, you ask?  Well, all good things come to an end.  They knew the building was rickety and would periodically inspect cracks in the walls.  One guy's girlfriend, who also worked in the building, said, "hey if you think those are bad, come look at THIS one!"  It had spread over an inch in less than a month.  The building was condemned and we were given 48 hours to clear the contents.

Since it was a "famous" building, former student hospital, blah blah, it got some media coverage.  The university sent out one of their slick PR guys, who took one look at us smoking on our party porch and said, get that ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- off there now and if any of you go out there again, you're fired.

The upside of all this is that it's really, really easy to write off state property as "destroyed with building" and all of us were loading our trunks with surplus loot.  I had a Weller soldering station I used for many years out of that smash and grab.  I finally gave up on repairing it and replaced it with some Yihua station a few years ago.

So, the last remnant of computers, monitors, video cards, components, etc that, er, a friend of a friend who's name I can't remember brought home was a roll of Kester 44 solder.

21 years later.... the roll has been used up....



 :cheers:







« Last Edit: June 13, 2022, 11:59:01 am by pbj »

bobbyb13

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #71 on: June 13, 2022, 12:38:58 pm »
Good one.
Always love the "can't make this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- up" stories.
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #72 on: June 13, 2022, 12:42:22 pm »
Pics or none of it happened.

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #73 on: June 13, 2022, 01:23:42 pm »
Pics or none of it happened.

My first access to the internet, before it was ever accessible to the general public, was through a dial-up given to me by a friend who was an IT guy at a major university, with a similar informal NDA attached.  He always had lots of cool toys which were "rescued from the dumpster" and I got to wander the labs occasionally and see stuff I could never afford.  The story checks out.

Mike A

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #74 on: June 13, 2022, 01:45:19 pm »
Pics or none of it happened.

BadMouth

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #75 on: June 13, 2022, 09:49:28 pm »
This is what's left of what I took from the factory I worked at when it closed 20 years ago.  I was told to throw cases of it in the dumpster.  Sold most of it on ebay.  The power supply is also from there.

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #76 on: June 15, 2022, 09:32:02 am »
This popped into my head this morning and I had to make it real.

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #77 on: June 15, 2022, 11:28:05 pm »
Very nice!  I had a good haul a few years ago when a vestibular lab got shut down and they threw away all the supplies and tools.  I still have a sealed box of NIB tools from that haul I haven’t touched.  Mike is free to search my comment history and find the pics.

Anyway, we’re on the final countdown of my wishlist and the carts my slave driver wants.  It’s completely absurd but now I’m using 4MB EPROMs for games that don’t use SRAM.  I bought 100 2MB EPROMs and about 13 of them are bad.  Of the 40 4MB chips, they’ve all flashed.  Even the ones with bent to hell legs thrown loose in an envelope.

I’m also getting low on donor SEGA cases so I’m continuing to slap the random games into EA cases with modified labels.  My life goal is to confuse some nerdy kid at an estate sale in a few years.  Maybe my wife will get $20.

Just one completed cart tonight, but a bunch of chips burned….. this game is ubiquitous on EBay and actually very fun.



That’s the old roll of solder on the left and the new one on the right.  Let’s see if it lasts 21 years.

 :cheers:

« Last Edit: June 17, 2022, 11:55:42 pm by pbj »

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #78 on: June 17, 2022, 11:51:30 pm »
I am officially at the “why…..?  Why me?” stage of this nonsense.  I just purchased “more than 50” EA carts for about 75 cents each.  So I guess I’m commissioning another run of repro pcbs.  Again.

I’ve gone through 100 2MB EPROMs.  13 were bad.  Mike_A suggested trying a slower speed.  That got 2 of the bad ones to flash.  One failed verification, but I dumped it and byte 64 was a dash instead of a zero and the genesis happily ignores that section.

Anyway, here’s another batch of games.  One was originally EA, the rest weren’t.

« Last Edit: June 17, 2022, 11:53:06 pm by pbj »

Zebidee

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Re: Making SEGA Genesis cartridges
« Reply #79 on: June 18, 2022, 12:36:06 am »
You are doing God's work  :applaud:
Check out my completed projects!