An other Noob question (been covered 100x + im sure)

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hayabusafmw
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An other Noob question (been covered 100x + im sure)

Post by hayabusafmw »

hi guys
very deeply sorry to bother you guys im sure im like the fifth this week to ask this question


Exept i am not a cheap $ guy haha:P

alright im from canada

i would like to know a site that sales a cheap EEPROM programer + the sockets + the eeproms.

& how to put homebrew , roms , to the chips.
thats mainly that i need a little explain . notion .


I god a excite bike PCB with cart that i opened today .

big thanks! for your response & time in advance!
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

I bought a Willem burner from Sivava.com because it seemed to be the cheapest. If all you want is to burn memory chips, it's about as cheap as it gets AFAIK. It's pretty easy to use, select your chip and move some switches and the software is pretty self-explanatory from there. If you want more capabilities you can spend a little bit more (myself, I wish I could burn GALs now).

Futurlec.com I think had the AT29C256, a 32kB Flash chip which would be a nice for replacing ROMs on an NROM cart like Excitebike (the only Flash chip with no rewiring needed). Those are $5 each I think. They have cheap sockets too.

If you only need some ROMs burned once, if they're smaller than 64kB I can burn and mail a couple to you for only slightly above what it costs me. Like $6 or so in total.
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

Hi,

I got my programmer from http://www.sivava.com/ (the US$45 one), and all my chips from http://www.futurlec.com/.

I prefer to use Flash ROMs than regular EPROMs, because EPROMs need UV light and some time to be erased, while Flash ROMs can be erased by the programmer in seconds. EEPROMs can be erased also, but Flash is more common.

The Excite Bike cart uses an NROM board, which means that can use for games with up to 32KB of program ROM and 8KB of CHR ROM. The good thing is that many EPROMs, Flash ROMs and EEPROMs are directly compatible with the Nintendo chips of the sizes above, so you don't even need to rewire anything on the board to use the new ROMs. You can just desolder the old ROMs, solder a socket in and place the ROMs you programmed yourself.

Now, iNES ROM files have a 16-byte header at the beginning, followed by the contents of the program ROM, and then the character data (tiles). Since you'll be dealing with NROM for now, you'll be dealing with 24KB (16KB PRG + 8KB CHR) and 40KB (32KB PRG + 8KB CHR) files. You just need to open the ROM file in an hex editor, ignore the first 16 bytes (iNES header), select 16384 or 32768 (depending on the size of the PRG) and save that in a separate file to burn into the PRG chip. Then select the next 8192 bytes and save to another file as the data to burn into the CHR chip.

Then you just use the software that comes with the programmer to copy the contents of those 2 files into your chips.If you happen to use chips larger than the data you put into them, be sure to replicate that data as many times as needed to fill the chip. Just to be safe.

Keep in mind that with an NROM cart, you'll only be able to run other games that use that same board. You need to have a different devcart for each type of game (mapper) you want to run. And as the games bocome bigger (and you need to use bigger chips), the chips stop being compatible with the ones made by Nintendo, and you have to rewire a few pins when installing the sockets so that the chips can be used with the Nintendo boards.
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Bregalad
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Post by Bregalad »

Wow, Futurlec seems to ROCK !!! I've never seen a site where searching for electronics composants is so confortable and with a so wide range of things available at very low price (not including shiping of course).

Plus, they have SRAMs available with dual separate port. Imagine mapping such a SRAM on a cart on both $6000-$7fff on PRG bus, and $2000-$3ffff on CHR bus. You'd be able to effectivly write to CHRRAM during rendering !! Mapping it at $0000-$1fff would effectivly get 4 screen mirroring with the ability to write to all 4 nametables during rendering !! Awesome !

EDIT : Okay, there is only up to 2k available, but that would do for two re-writable name tables (mirrored as usual), or just half a pattern table rewritable during rendering. Still sounds great.
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

Bregalad wrote: Plus, they have SRAMs available with dual separate port. Imagine mapping such a SRAM on a cart on both $6000-$7fff on PRG bus, and $2000-$3ffff on CHR bus. You'd be able to effectivly write to CHRRAM during rendering !!
I think there'd be more to it, there's /BUSY signals for both sides. Same problem as usual, can't access the same memory locations from both sides (it's just not as bad with this chip). Plus a 48-pin DIP is huge, and that's only 2kB for $10. Like what's been mentioned in the other dual-port RAM threads, it'd probably be a lot more effective to use a normal SRAM with a custom memory controller.
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Post by No Carrier »

I have to agree with Memblers and Tokumaru on the Sivava programmer. I have it too, and I love it. Also, flash roms are easy to use and quick to program/erase.

Now, when putting another rom on the board, I use CajoNES ( http://www.zophar.net/utilities/nesutil.html ). It is a DOS program, but it makes it very easy to split the rom into PRG/CHR without the use of a hex editor. I believe F7 is the key to split roms into Pasofami format (PRG, CHR, and PRM). Don't worry about the PRM, but the PRG and CHR files will be ready to go.

Good luck.

NC
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Lloyd Gordon
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Futurlec

Post by Lloyd Gordon »

I've used Futurlec a few times, you can't beat their prices. Their shipping is cheaper than me taking the bus downtown and picking the parts up myself. I've some spare EPROM's that I would program and sell for cost & S&H if anyone wants.
hayabusafmw
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Post by hayabusafmw »

GREAT thanks for the response!


Bought the EPROM programmer from sivava (very cheap! = loving it! 54$ shipped!!)

+ im gonna buy the chips & socket right now!:)

^_^

I hope it's simple to put sockets & burn games to chip
thats my main worry :)
especially the burning part. :)



PS: futurelec only have AT29C256 256k... is that ok?
hayabusafmw
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Post by hayabusafmw »

gosh i would like to order IC28 sockets & 4 x AT29C256 eproms ... but they don'T take paypal payment all my $ is there....
grr damn futurlec
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

hayabusafmw wrote:I hope it's simple to put sockets & burn games to chip
thats my main worry :)
especially the burning part. :)
Desoldering the original ROMs may be hard sometimes. You get better at it as you keep doing it. Just be patient and you won't ruin the board. Never use much force. I just got a desoldering iron, that is supposed to make this task much easier.

I've been using a regular soldering iron and a solder sucker so far. I hold the board vertically, and heat each pin from the side where the ROM is, and place the solder sucker on the other side of the board, and release it when the solder melts. This works fine, but some holes are harder than others, and you have to be patient.

Soldering the socket in is much easier, especially if you don't need to rewire anything, which is the case with NROM.

Burning is easy. What might be hard is setting up the software and everything for the first time. For some reason, the latest version of the software that came on the CD didn't work, it just couldn't detect the programmer. Just using an older version fixed the problem.

You just need to set a few jumpers on the programmer's board depending on the kind of chip you are "burning" (according to a sheet they send you), and if you always burn the same kind of chip you don't need to worry about that ever again.

On the software, just pick the kind of chip you're burning, select the file from your hard disk (PRG and CHR, that you previously split from the NES file) and tell it to transfer the data to the chip. Really easy and quick.
PS: futurelec only have AT29C256 256k... is that ok?
That chip (32 KBytes) can be used without problems on you NROM board. They also have larger Flash ROMs, up to 512KBytes (the AT29C040) which will work fine with boards that support larger ROMs, once you have installed and wired the socket correctly.
hayabusafmw
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Post by hayabusafmw »

I found a way to take of the rest of the pin legs of each eprom

I took a needle (i heat one side of the leg hole & then stick a needle in the hole so it removes the exess of solder & pin leg part remaining)


took me 3 hrs to get the first Chip done

i have holes in the 28 holes.

I have the 2nd one half way done i won't do it all in 1 shot



i need a place to buy , Eproms + sockets beside Futurlec they don'T take paypal do you have a clue where?

thanks!!!!!
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Post by tokumaru »

hayabusafmw wrote:I have the 2nd one half way done i won't do it all in 1 shot
Take your time. You're doing fine.
i need a place to buy , Eproms + sockets beside Futurlec they don'T take paypal do you have a clue where?
Sivava has the nice W27C512 EEPROM for $2.50 each. Although it is a 64KB chip, it's still pin-compatible with the NROM boards, so no rewiring is necessary (you just might need to replicate the data to fill the whole chip). I have some of these which I bought along with my programmer, and all games I tried with it worked fine.

I know, I should have told you this before you ordered the programmer, but I couldn't imagine you'd have problems with Futurlec. So, if you don't mind paying for shipping again with Sivava, I'm just telling you that this chip will work fine. I haven't tried any of their other chips.
hayabusafmw
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Post by hayabusafmw »

i don't mind paying shipping....

you wil just need to explain to me once i fit eveything & get everything how it works:)


I saw on site that W27C512 EEPROM was a replacement for the other chip that i wanted.

So it's 28 pins aswell.. i will buy sockets too :)

thanks!!:)
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tokumaru
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Post by tokumaru »

hayabusafmw wrote:I saw on site that W27C512 EEPROM was a replacement for the other chip that i wanted.

So it's 28 pins aswell.. i will buy sockets too :)
Yeah, they say it replaces the 27's EPROM chips, that are pin compatible with the NROM board, so you're fine with them! =)

That's why I bought them in the first place too. I wanted some chips along with the programmer (before I decided to get the Flash's from Futurlec), and these were the most promising ones Sivava had. They work just fine, and can be erased and rewritten many times without problems.

It's been a while since I last used those, so I don't remember the exact configuration of the switches and jumpers on the programmer, but I remember it wasn't hard to set up with the documentation and software they sent.
hayabusafmw
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Post by hayabusafmw »

cool
but i found someone to order from futurelec...

so i will used te flash one:P
will buy 4


So here is the PCB i managed to take the chip appart....

Image

Also what did you take to make a hole on the nes cart
I totally destroyed mine....


look at that .

So i will know the the next time.......

it's my first time hehe...Image
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