N64 cart dumper/writer

Post by **marshallh** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 9:34 pm

Since this doesn't have a whole lot to do with GTP (although it will allow me to play gtp on a portable n64) I'm posting my progress with the project here.

The project is a device that dumps (reads) N64 cartridges and writes to a custom flash cart I have yet to produce.

It's based around a PIC16LF877a, a small microcontroller which has enough I/O pins to interface directly to the cart slot without any glue logic.

So far it communicates with a PC via serial, using a MAX3233 level converter chip. I can tell the PIC to do things over a HyperTerminal window, and control the I/O directly.

The whole thing runs off 3.3v via an adjustable linear regulator I snagged off an old video card. I had to use a low-voltage pic because of this. The n64 bus is 3.3v

You may notice it has two serial ports: one for programming the PIC via a 3-resistor programmer

, and the other is for communication with the PC.

Again, it's not yet done, but I'm close

Jongamer · Post by **Jongamer** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 8:27 am

Wow that is nice, cant wait till its finished.

Post by **marshallh** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 9:53 am

Hardware finished, I'm having trouble with the code thougj.

Unidentified Assilant · Post by **Unidentified Assilant** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:18 am

Pretty cool, everybody who has built a n64p can die happy now.

ShockSlayer · Post by **ShockSlayer** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:06 am

So, when you finish this, you'll be able to download gtp to n64 carts?

SS

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:08 am

I'll be the first one to get a rom of GTP, rawr

gamemasterAS · Post by **gamemasterAS** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 1:30 pm

Unidentified Assilant wrote:Pretty cool, everybody who has built a n64p can die happy now.

Now we just need the game !

Post by **gannon** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 1:43 pm

ShockSlayer wrote:So, when you finish this, you'll be able to download gtp to n64 carts?

To use gtp on the n64, he'd have to desolder/cut out the rom from a n64 game and solder in the gtp one (after programming the chip). Or at least, I'm fairly sure that's how he'd have to do it without flash carts/etc

Post by **marshallh** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 2:03 pm

That would work if there was a suitably large flash EEPROM with multiplexed address and data lines...

I'll have to use my own flash cart, not much point in destroying a N64 cart, unless it was a sports game (*cough*EA*cough)

Jongamer · Post by **Jongamer** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 2:24 pm

Or a Early Childhood game, like Elmo's Abs or whatever the F* its called (Saw it today when I found another N64 at Goodwill for 6 bucks.

Post by **marshallh** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 9:02 pm

It works! I'm dumping Banjo-Kazooie right now over serial at 38400 baud. I have about 4MB dumped so far out of 16mb.

Now to build that flash cart...

Steve-o · Post by **Steve-o** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:19 pm

That is awesome.

andoba · Post by **andoba** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:50 pm

Schematics please?

Ari · Post by **Ari** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:21 am

Is that a psone screen's AC adapter?

But still, that's pretty sweet. Especially the near-56k speeds!

Post by **marshallh** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:38 pm

Yes, that's a 3rd party PSone power supply. It goes into a 3v regulator.

The dumps were mostly identical, except that were numerous chnuks of the ROM read as blocks of 0xff's. These were persistent, and made the roms unplayable.

In any case, I'm ditching the PIC entirely (too slow, limited I/O, programming issues etc)

I have sampled a few Cypress UZ-USB FX2 chips which are basically 8051 microcontrollers with built-in USB support, and go up to 48MHz at 3.3v. These will be much faster and easier to code for (open-source C compiler).