I decided a little while ago to put my soldering skills to good use and make a Starfox 2 reproduction cart. If you don't know, Starfox 2 was very near completion for the SNES but was cancelled at the last minute, probably due to Nintendo wanting to separate their '2D' platform with the new '3D' N64. A fan-made patch exists which translates it into English and removes some of the debug options:
I've made a few Gameboy classic carts but I fancied another challenge. At the moment it's very early days but I'd thought I'd share the progress I've been making.
At the moment I have a SNES and a couple of crappy games on it's way to me in the next week so I can start making my prototype carts. First step is to cut out the mask rom on a FIFA cart, put in an EPROM with FIFA on it so I can double check that everything is going to work.
Then I'm going to stick a ZIF socket on my Winter Gold cart and start testing it with Starfox 2. Whilst I'm waiting for the rest of the gear to turn up I'm just going to test fit everything before I start cutting and soldering.
Here's a pic of the donor cart, just to remind people it *does not* have to be a SuperFX 2 cart, SuperFX 1 games such as "Stunt Race FX" will work fine as donors:
If you notice the screws that hold the case together are those weirdo torx style screws, which I don't have a bit for. No worries though, as an old biro and a lighter will work. Dismantle the biro and heat up the end of it a little with a lighter, then push it onto the torx screw and wait for it to cool and voila:
Notice the EPROM in the middle of the above picture, I've flattened and shortened the legs on one of them so it'll fit into the case nicely.
Here's a pic of my biro torx 'screwdriver' in action:
Now here's a pic of the Winter Gold PCB. Things of interest are the square SuperFX2 chip in the middle of the picture, the mask rom which I need to remove is on the left below the battery. The chip in the top right is the onboard SRAM for hiscores etc and down in the bottom left you can see the SNES CIC 'lockout' chip:
Here's a picture of the flattened EPROM test fitted:
All looking good so far! It's going to be a bit of a pig to wire it up as there's 64 solder connections I need to make, so once it's all tested and working I've going to Araldite/Glue gun the crap out of it so the wires stay attached. Another issue is how I'm going to replace the battery, as from memory you can't solder the tabs onto the CR2302's, I'll need to build a 'mini welder' of sorts
A suitable donor cart would be 'Stunt Race FX' as it contains both a SuperFX chip and SRAM for saving. Saving isn't so much of a critical issue with SF2, so an old Doom cart will do the job. You *do not* need to use a SuperFX2 cart such as 'Yoshi's Island' and afaics there is no benefit in doing so.
I'll post back in this thread once I've made some progress.
Wish me luck!
PLEASE NOTE: This thread isn't for discussing the ins and outs of the SuperFX chips, if you want to do that then please start your own threads please!
I've made a few Gameboy classic carts but I fancied another challenge. At the moment it's very early days but I'd thought I'd share the progress I've been making.
At the moment I have a SNES and a couple of crappy games on it's way to me in the next week so I can start making my prototype carts. First step is to cut out the mask rom on a FIFA cart, put in an EPROM with FIFA on it so I can double check that everything is going to work.
Then I'm going to stick a ZIF socket on my Winter Gold cart and start testing it with Starfox 2. Whilst I'm waiting for the rest of the gear to turn up I'm just going to test fit everything before I start cutting and soldering.
Here's a pic of the donor cart, just to remind people it *does not* have to be a SuperFX 2 cart, SuperFX 1 games such as "Stunt Race FX" will work fine as donors:
If you notice the screws that hold the case together are those weirdo torx style screws, which I don't have a bit for. No worries though, as an old biro and a lighter will work. Dismantle the biro and heat up the end of it a little with a lighter, then push it onto the torx screw and wait for it to cool and voila:
Notice the EPROM in the middle of the above picture, I've flattened and shortened the legs on one of them so it'll fit into the case nicely.
Here's a pic of my biro torx 'screwdriver' in action:
Now here's a pic of the Winter Gold PCB. Things of interest are the square SuperFX2 chip in the middle of the picture, the mask rom which I need to remove is on the left below the battery. The chip in the top right is the onboard SRAM for hiscores etc and down in the bottom left you can see the SNES CIC 'lockout' chip:
Here's a picture of the flattened EPROM test fitted:
All looking good so far! It's going to be a bit of a pig to wire it up as there's 64 solder connections I need to make, so once it's all tested and working I've going to Araldite/Glue gun the crap out of it so the wires stay attached. Another issue is how I'm going to replace the battery, as from memory you can't solder the tabs onto the CR2302's, I'll need to build a 'mini welder' of sorts
A suitable donor cart would be 'Stunt Race FX' as it contains both a SuperFX chip and SRAM for saving. Saving isn't so much of a critical issue with SF2, so an old Doom cart will do the job. You *do not* need to use a SuperFX2 cart such as 'Yoshi's Island' and afaics there is no benefit in doing so.
I'll post back in this thread once I've made some progress.
Wish me luck!
PLEASE NOTE: This thread isn't for discussing the ins and outs of the SuperFX chips, if you want to do that then please start your own threads please!
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