Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

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

Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by lemonpotato »

Hey guys,
I'm having trouble with a Snow Brothers repro I'm working on (PAL-B).
I'm fairly new to repros, so far I've only done two for the SNES (Sunset Riders and Battletoads & Double Dragon), this is my first NES one.

I used the following wiring guide:

PRG socket:
Bend up pins 1, 2, 24, 30 and 31 (or cut tracks)
Solder pin 2 to hole 24 (A16)
Solder pin 24 to GND (OE) (I used Pin16 on the back)
Solder pin 30 to hole 1 (A17)

CHR socket:
Bend up pins 1, 2, 22, 24, 30 and 31 (or cut tracks)
Solder pin 2 to hole 24 (A16)
Solder pin 22 to hole 31 (CE or CHR /A13)
Solder pin 24 to hole 2 (OE or CHR /RD)


As a donor I used Racket Attack (PAL-B): http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=4714


I cannot start the game however. I checked the wiring multiple times and cannot find any mistake. Is Racket Attack maybe the wrong donor? I'm not sure about the mirroring, I guess that Snow Brothers is vertical while Racket Attack is horizontal, even though I though it doesn't matter with Mapper Ctrl.


Can someone help me out? Are there maybe noobie mistakes I'#m missing, like not enough solder etc.?
tepples
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by tepples »

Have you tried making a Holy Diver Batman on the same cartridge board? That usually finds problems with repro procedure issues, provided that you know Morse code.

The only other thing I can think of is that if the game was never released in Europe or Australia, it might not be compatible with the PAL NES.
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dude3585
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by dude3585 »

Did you make sure to fill the EPROMs? You use famiROM?
lidnariq
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by lidnariq »

NEScartDB: Snow Bros (ESP)
NEScartDB: Racket Attack (ESP)

Shouldn't be a problem with the donor at all. Make sure you're using the PAL build of Snow Bros. instead of the NTSC one.
lemonpotato
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Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2016 2:35 am

Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by lemonpotato »

Hey there,
thanks for the replies.

I haven't tried Holy Diver Batman yet. Does it check if the board in general is ok?
I definitely used both a PAL-B version of Racket Attack and the PAL Rom-Version of Snow Brothers. Even though there is PAL-A and PAL-B, I only have found ROMs that are PAL in general. However, the game doesn't even work on my Retron (which should play pretty much everything, right?)

@dude3595
I used NES Mapper Reader to split the Rom into PRG and CHR bins (auto split) while removing the 16bit header. Since both bins were 128kb, I simply programmed them onto two M27C2001 EPROMs via MiniPRO. Did I go wrong here? I didn't use famiROM at all.

Attached are some screenshots of my cardridge.
20161024_212243.jpg
20161024_212219.jpg
lidnariq
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by lidnariq »

lemonpotato wrote:Even though there is PAL-A and PAL-B, I only have found ROMs that are PAL in general.
PAL-A and PAL-B only specify the CIC; the game data almost never varies (unless there were multiple rounds of translation)
However, the game doesn't even work on my Retron (which should play pretty much everything, right?)
Depends on which Retron, I think.
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getafixx
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by getafixx »

lemonpotato wrote: Since both bins were 128kb, I simply programmed them onto two M27C2001 EPROMs
That may be your issue. If you didn't pad the EPROM and there is no data on the last 128KB of the chip then if the system tries to read that part of the EPROM it won't find any data. This would happen if the console is driving A17 on those EPROMs high.

If you lift and wire pin A17 from each chip to GND, that keeps that address low so only 128KB is seen by the console. That may help you out.
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koitsu
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by koitsu »

Mainly for tepples and lidnariq: could this be another case of MMC1 revisions causing complications with the starting bank, re: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14958

Racket Attack = MMC1B3: http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=4714
Snow Brothers (Spain, PAL-B) = MMC1B2: http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1915
Snow Brothers (Germany, PAL-B) = MMC1B3: http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=2112

Sniped: getafixx's explanation might make more sense.
lemonpotato
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by lemonpotato »

A17 on 27C2001 would be Pin 1 for both CHR and PRG, is that right?
lemonpotato
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by lemonpotato »

So I now soldered Pin30 on both CHR and PRG to GND and it works. Great, thanks!

Just to make sure that I know where I did wrong: For the 27C2001 I should have created 256kb files in famiRom, correct? Since I only had 128kb files, the EPROMs weren't read properly. Right?
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getafixx
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Re: Problem with Snow Brothers Repro

Post by getafixx »

That's correct.
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