Making PC Engine HuCards

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pbj:
Well, Klax is known to have region protection that doesn’t work. Using my chip remapper software to reverse D0 - D7, I got the US rom booting on my PCE Duo.

So, halfway there.

Supposedly changing AD 00 10 29 40 F0 to AD 00 10 29 40 80 in the ROM defeats the region check. The USB flashable HuCard software makes this change to the rom file, supposedly the Everdrive does it on the fly.

More information here:

https://pcengine.proboards.com/thread/662/american-hucard-region-check-code?page=1 Using my chip remapper software to reverse D0 - D7, I got the US rom booting on my PCE Duo.

Thus far, making this change and then doing the rom reordering hasn’t worked for me. PC Engines typically require a hardware mod to run TG16 games. I had hoped to avoid this but I’m in too deep to stop now.

https://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=imports:pc_engine

pbj:
Turns out that on a PC Engine Duo, pin 29 isn't connected to anything, so you can just bridge it to pin 30.

So, I did so. No change in behavior. At this point, 2 hours into it this morning, I'm halfway convinced there's another layer of physical protection on USA HuCards and until someone burns off the epoxy on a legitimate game we're never going to know for sure. Swapping the D0-D7 and grounding out pin 29 defeat protection that prevents an actual cartridge from booting but I've yet to encounter anyone else running a US ROM on a PCE PCB.

When you do the mirroring on the 384KB ROMs, they balloon to 640KB. Makes buying those $1.50 EPROMs a little easier to swallow.

pbj:
Alright, turns out you don't actually have to do any byte swapping on the ROMs. I guess it's just a physical lockout thing. Unsure on the pin 29 thing but that's done.

Derp.

:cheers:

pbj:
Okay, so now that I realized I didn’t need to be messing with the roms, it’s time to make some HuCards! This is more or less their final form. Doing some napkin math my cost is about $4 each, so I’ll probably make like… the entire library.

Still a couple of kinks to work out. As the super glue that is holding the two boards together cured, I wasn’t getting great contact. A little tape underneath the edge connector instantly fixed that but I think it’s best to let them sit overnight at this point. I may sandwich something between the boards before I glue them and see how that goes. Legitimate HuCards are just ever so slightly thicker than these.

I’ve also got some credit card sized blanks coming, those may be the trick.

Anyway, chugging along.

:cheers:

pdco_arcade:
You might consider adhesive transfer tape to stick the pile together. DigiKey has assorted varieties.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/tape/908?s=N4IgjCBcpg7LVQGMoDMCGAbAzgUwDQgD2UA2iAMxgAMATNQJwgC6hADgC5QgDKHATgEsAdgHMQAX0IBaWohApIAgK4FiZEAFYWEqSABs8wQBNu0mhHZdIIEIQ4BPNrm7psKXUA
Picking from what is in stock maybe the 9626 ( 2 mil thickness ) or 950 ( 5 mil ) products would be good. Best I can tell PCB material ( solder mask ) has a "low surface energy" characteristic. Both models of tape are specified to work with that surface characteristic.
YMMV - This is all new stuff for me. I have used adhesive transfer tape before but never give much thought to the surface energy stuff.

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