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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 434 |
Some cartridge questions, help wanted.
The recent discussion about the upcoming Super Snapshot-cart reinstated my interest in my own meddling around with C-64 carts. There's pretty good documentation concerning the software parts of these games, but less on how the actual hardware logic works, and the kinds of roms used.
Last spring I did some research myself, and with the help from some friendly folks at #C-64 i've been able to deduct even more. I know this is fringe material, though I realll would appreciate some help with info and/or scans on this matter. What i've deducted so far is:
OCEAN
From what i've seen so far, all of these use a combination of a 74LS273 (Octal D-Type Flip-Flop) and a 74LS02 (2-Input NOR-Function Logic Gate) for the logic. What might be interesting to know is that the 28-pin roms which Ocean uses are identical to the NES-PRG roms, used in NES-carts. Scans of boards and pinouts for the roms are available if anyone is interested.
DOMARK
I haven't disassembled this one myself, Sack/Cosine did. I've been told that it uses a 74LS174 (Hex/Quad D-Type Flip-Flops with Clear) for the logic and that the rom should be a straight forward standard-pin rom.
PROPHET-64
This one uses a 74LS174 (Hex/Quad D-Type Flip-Flops with Clear). It is possible that it even is based on the Domark solution. Can't tell since I haven't seen a scan or photo of a Domark cart. The rom itself is a straight forward AT27C020, 2 mbit eprom.
I would need information about the IC's and/or scan of the internals of the following game cartridges, if available:
* SYSTEM 3 (Any - Myth, Last Ninja Remix, C64GS cart)
* DINAMIC (Any - After the War, Satan, Aspar GP, etc.)
* SILVERROCK (Any - Hugo, Guldkornexpressen, etc.)
* FUNPLAY (Any - Funplay, Powerplay)
* SUPERGAMES (Supergames).
Thanks in advance. |
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003 Posts: 1790 |
I have the Merlin-64 EPROM programmer. Userport board + Cartridge. The cartridge contains prommer software, ml-monitor and basic extensions.
The cartridge is a nice hermetic epoxy blob with a label inside over the circuits. From the top of my head I think there were two 24/28 pin ones, possibly EPROM + RAM or 2*EPROM. I think there are two or three LS-TTL chips too.
I haven't seen any info on it.
Does any one know if this is the same as any of the other popular cartridges?
EDIT: found the manual |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 434 |
I know Jerry has one of those programmers, I figure there wasn't that many strange heavy epoxied cartridges with masked hardware. :-) Would be fun to see a dump of it - I doubt it's a big rom and that the bankswitching (if there are any bankswitching) differs much from other early carts. |
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003 Posts: 1790 |
I found a 32Kb dump: here
I'm not sure it's correct. $4000-$5fff and $8000-$9fff are identical for instance.
It seems to use $deff and $de00 for bank switching (maybe just aliases)
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 434 |
Ok, after grilling Mason a little about what he can remember concerning the Silverrock carts, things look both positive and negative.
The positive things are that Hugo, Guldkorn Expressen / Kalaspuffsexpressen and Harald Haardtand all are confirmed to have been released on cart. As expected, they used 128/256k roms aswell as 8K banks at $8000-$9FFF. The banks are probably reached by writing to $DE00, but this is yet to be confirmed.
The negative thing is that there are no visible screws on the Silverrock carts, making scanning them a problem (unless they just were snapped together, like them newer C64C's?). Surprisingly though, I found out that the coder of the cartridge-system was Microtop who hangs out here now and then. He ought to have enough information about the bankswitching to be able to help us with the dumping. Let's hope he remembers what logic circuits he used aswell. :-) |
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hollowman
Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 |
Ok, so perhaps the dumping programs for ocean and system 3 carts from Markus Brenners homepage will do, but just using mdump and getting a dump of the first bank should give some hints about how the bankswitching is done |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 434 |
True. Why didn't I think of that?
Sledge:
Plug Kalaspuffsexpressen it into your expander, run MDump and mail us the resulting 8k file. The entire filesystem must be managed from that bank. |
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Sledge
Registered: Sep 2003 Posts: 102 |
Quote: True. Why didn't I think of that?
Sledge:
Plug Kalaspuffsexpressen it into your expander, run MDump and mail us the resulting 8k file. The entire filesystem must be managed from that bank.
Oki... will do that. It will take the usual weeks before I can get my hands on that copy, since I have it in the Öviks apartment. But I'm planning to go there next weekend...
DUMPA UMPA!!! |
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j0x
Registered: Mar 2004 Posts: 215 |
I once wrote a little program to dump Hugo and Guldkornsexpressen. Both dumper and "dumpees" should be somewhere on my harddisks.
Edit: Managed to find the files. Sent them by email. |
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The Shadow
Registered: Oct 2007 Posts: 304 |
I have an old Promenade C1. Never used it. What are it's capabilities>? |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 434 |
Shadow:
You can find the manual of the Promenade C1 here.
Seems to be able to handle atleast 27512's (64K) and will probably burn them in two steps. |
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