Genesis repros don't work (Red Screen)

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lemonpotato
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2016 2:35 am

Genesis repros don't work (Red Screen)

Post by lemonpotato »

I tried to do a Mega Man Wily Wars repro by using a College Football's National Championship donor cartridge.

I downloaded a Mega Man Wily Wars .md ROM, used GQ USB Programmer for the Byte Swap, saved the .bin file separately and wrote it onto a 27C160 EPROM.
I also used the tool FixCheckSum before writing the EPROM, as (for some reason) the checksum is always incorrect after byteswapping.

However, when I try to launch the game in my Mega Drive, I only see a red screen. I have no clue what could be wrong, as there isn't any wiring needed.

Does anyone have an idea?
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Fisher
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Re: Genesis repros don't work (Red Screen)

Post by Fisher »

Well, red screens means checksum errors that are usually caused by bad contact on dirty connectors.

I had the same problem recently on a Megadrive repro I've made and it was one of the data lines that had a bad soldering on it. Specifically it was D12, but can be any other in your case.

Does the byteswapped file run on an emulator? You may try to write it without byteswap, if possible in the same IC.
You can take a look on the file you intend to write on a hex editor, starting at offset 0x100 it should say something like "SEGA MEGA DRIVE" followed by some licensing information.

I'm not sure, but the checksum errors after byteswapping could mean that you don't need byteswapping at all.
icemanxp300
Posts: 159
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 6:17 pm

Re: Genesis repros don't work (Red Screen)

Post by icemanxp300 »

Don't fix the checksum on byte swap. Take a clean rom and open in the programmer, hit byte swap in the programmer and then write. That is all you need to do. You are over thinking it and causing yourself problems.
Markfrizb
Posts: 607
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2012 8:17 am
Location: East Texas

Re: Genesis repros don't work (Red Screen)

Post by Markfrizb »

You could use this pcb https://www.mortoffgames.com/sega-genes ... game-board for repos where you don't have to byte swap the rom files.

Edit: I meant you could use this pcb as a non-byte swap alternative. Since this pcb doesn't have sram, it would not be the ideal choice for MMWW.
A fully assembled SRAM version (less the rom of course) pcb will be available in the near future though.
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