ITS ALIVEEEEE!!!!

A weeks worth of late night soldering and puzzling and puzzling until my puzzler was sore has finally come to fruition!

Can you hear it? It is the sound of the Pro Wrestling NES title screen music, playing through my PC10! My kooky scheme worked! Well, at least the PRG rom bus is working, as its running the code correctly. The graphics are all wonky, but I'm sure I have something backwards on the CHR bus, that wont be too tough to track down. Probably A10/A11, since Nintendo backwardseded them up from the famicom pinout, you know, for region protection.

I'll post details, pictures, and schematics later.. Until then, here's a teaser of how a PC10 cart is "activated" when /CS is enabled by pulling it low. Basically, it enables a ls367, dual hex bus driver, which routes chip enable signals to the "cartridge", as well as enabling the instruction rom.

This is a true hack, as in, I hacked up a game genie with a box cutter to make this happen.

Here's what I discovered after much desoldering and tracing PCB lines..

I still think I'm going to need to pull PRG /CE, CHR /A13 (CHR /CE for all intents) and VRAM /CE high with some 5k resistors, to make sure they are disabled when the game pak is not selected.

I'm jazzed and am ready for my next 'tendo hack project. PC10 game paks are just begging to be modified into reprogrammable carts, since they have solder pads for various rom types, etc. What I'm getting at, is my SMB3 PC10 board is much more generic than an SMB3 cart. If I hacked a Game Pak of each type (MMC1, MMC2, MMC3, UNROM, etc) in this matter, my PC10 could be the ultimate programmable uber-nintendo from hell. Though I think I'm going to work on the VS a bit first, and see if I cant make a bankswitching VS Super Mario Bros / VS Duck Hunt.

Wiring of 74ls367 on PC10 pro wrestling cart


/chsel |1 /G1 Vcc 16|
(Conn) Chr A13 |2 1A1 /G2 15| /chsel
+5 pullup |3 1y1 2A1 14| CHR /A13 (PC10 Connector)
(Conn) PRG /CE |4 1A2 2Y1 13| CIRAM /CE (PC10 Connector)
+5 pullup |5 1Y2 2A2 12| /CSel INST ROM (PC10 Conn)
(Brd) CIRAM A10 |6 1A3 2Y2 11| Pin 20 U4
(Conn)CIRAM A10 |7 1Y3 2A3 10| N/C
GND |8 GND 2Y3 9| N/C

^^Crap this wont display right

rewiring:

lift pin 2, connect pcb hole to Chr A13 on nes connector
lift pin 3
lift pin 5, connect pin to PRG /CE on nes connector
lift pin 6, connect pin 7to CIRAM A10 on nes connector

lift pin 13, wire pcb hole 13 to pin 10,
connect pin 13 to CHR /A13 on nes connector (with 5k pullup (!?))

lift pin 9, connect to CIRAM /CE on NES connector (with 5k pullup (!?))


unwired pins on connector = chr a10, m2, /irq, prg r/w