MultiCart - 2+ Games in 1 cart. [Indev/Needs idea verified]

Sharp Sapphire · Post by **Sharp Sapphire** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:32 pm

Today was my day off, and I wanted to do something new... and I realized I had TONS of NES carts lying around and I wanted to try to see if I could compact them... so the idea, taking the games apart, desoldering the chips, and piggybacking them onto 1 board! My NES consoles Lockout chip has been disabled (and it shouldn't even flag the lockout chip, would the lockout chip detect a changed chip?)... so I did a tiny bit of research.

I came down to a few things that looked like they would determine if I could merge them, Mapper and the size of the prg/chr... after taking Bases Loaded and The Adventures of Bayou Billy apart, I realized I didn't know everything yet! There are different board types, such as NES-SFROM, NES-SLROM, NES-<INSERT>ROM... so I wasn't entirely sure if they were compatible...

So after deciding to use the Adventures of Bayou Billy board and messing up some traces (

) and looking up on the pinouts of the chips I figured out how I can do this... and how it should work

If I get a switch that has 2+ positions that have 2 contacts/position that would allow me to attach pin 1 (GND) (or 36 (+5v), just the opposite way around) to the universal contacts and the pin to each prg/chr's to the other contact on the switch, it would only power that one chr/prg combination and run that game, right? <Please reply to if this would work, i'm pretty sure it would since no power = unable to run.

)

I ordered 3 games off ebay today, all exact same boards/ and the PRG/CHR sizes match up exact
http://www.nintendoage.com/index.cfm?Fu ... 4&lgID=684
http://www.nintendoage.com/index.cfm?Fu ... 4&lgID=465
http://www.nintendoage.com/index.cfm?Fu ... 5&lgID=130

I'll be putting these into a cart... hopefully, and if I get it working I plan on getting a series of games (Such as the megamans, if I could figure out a way to even match up the mappers right, or Zelda, Adventures of Lolo, Dragon Warrior, Mario, etc etc etc)... all in 1 cart with the flip of a switch!

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:26 pm

I've thought of doing this myself, but I was looking at a totally different approach than yours. I was going to just have two boards per cart, the second on the far end from the first. Obviously, I'd still have to take it out and flip it around to change games, but it'd give me some empty carts for projects free of cost.

Sharp Sapphire · Post by **Sharp Sapphire** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:44 pm

I'm almost done.. I just have about 32+32+28 wires.. 64+28=92 more wires? Ouch.. thought I was further than I was.

I have 1 full PCB and 1 cut up PCB and I have 28 of the wires (one side of the PRG) done... Yehp.. i figured out how to create a switcher.. the gnd line on both chips is cut and I soldered them to a switch! Works well (well, so far)...

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:50 pm

I'd be very interested in a pic when you've got it done.

arfink · Post by **arfink** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:46 pm

Sounds a lot like a hack I did. Only instead of switching the power or ground for the piggy-backed chips I chose to burn a new chip with several data sets on it and then I would drive the most significant bit of the chip with a switch to make two "banks" which I could switch between. Thus 2 games on one cart. I tried doing it with the two most significant bits, making 4 banks accessible, but the mapper can only support chips so big, and I ran out of space for 4 games even though there were 4 banks. Each bank wound up being something like 16 kilo-bits (not bytes) each, too small to do anything with.

Sharp Sapphire · Post by **Sharp Sapphire** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 8:14 am

arfink wrote:Sounds a lot like a hack I did. Only instead of switching the power or ground for the piggy-backed chips I chose to burn a new chip with several data sets on it and then I would drive the most significant bit of the chip with a switch to make two "banks" which I could switch between. Thus 2 games on one cart. I tried doing it with the two most significant bits, making 4 banks accessible, but the mapper can only support chips so big, and I ran out of space for 4 games even though there were 4 banks. Each bank wound up being something like 16 kilo-bits (not bytes) each, too small to do anything with.

why would you do that, when you could solder 100+ wires?

Edit: Just finished and tried.. didn't work.

Dark-Aries · Post by **Dark-Aries** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 3:18 pm

The only way I can understand of getting this to work, is a big perfboard, 2 exact same games (mappers and size, not the game itsewf) and a lot of switches...1 for each pin to be exact...you flip the swiitches for each pin then turn on the console...and the cart will be ugly...but it would probably work...

Sharp Sapphire · Post by **Sharp Sapphire** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:19 am

You don't need one for each pin. Just one to switch the gnd or +5v... then the chip is disabled

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:13 am

Dark-Aries wrote:The only way I can understand of getting this to work, is a big perfboard, 2 exact same games (mappers and size, not the game itsewf) and a lot of switches...1 for each pin to be exact...you flip the swiitches for each pin then turn on the console...and the cart will be ugly...but it would probably work...

Why on earth would you need all of that? If the 5V goes to only one board, then only one board at a time will be functional.

Dark-Aries · Post by **Dark-Aries** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:45 am

because it would give 100% results..because you are completly disabling a whole board through the pins...Not just power....I dunno....it makes sense to me...yes it's overkill but it would probably work...

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:58 am

Look, with no power, the board is as active as it is sitting on the shelf, outside the console. There's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to need more than one switch.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 12:05 pm

Or one big switch with like over 9000 pins or something.

But what would be the point?

My first problem I would see is that only switch the power does not change how it saves? Maybe you would be saving data to like, 5 carts instead of the wanted one?

SS

mothatrucka · Post by **mothatrucka** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 2:25 pm

ShockSlayer wrote:Or one big switch with like over 9000 pins or something. But what would be the point?

My first problem I would see is that only switch the power does not change how it saves? Maybe you would be saving data to like, 5 carts instead of the wanted one?

SS

That never occurred to me. What NES games actually save data to the carts, though?

Rekarp · Post by **Rekarp** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 3:24 pm

mothatrucka wrote:
ShockSlayer wrote:Or one big switch with like over 9000 pins or something. But what would be the point?

My first problem I would see is that only switch the power does not change how it saves? Maybe you would be saving data to like, 5 carts instead of the wanted one?

SS

That never occurred to me. What NES games actually save data to the carts, though?

Zelda, Tecmo bowl to name two.

Sharp Sapphire · Post by **Sharp Sapphire** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:29 pm

whats got me is that neither games work now.. so i probably just bridged a wire somewhere but I have no clue where. :S