Repo's from scratch

Hi Guys...

Noob here...

I'm interested in making repro's for my own use for the famicom and was wondering if there is a way to do it without hacking up old carts?

I can create a pcb for them as i know there's different "needs" for different games.

I'd also be looking to put homebrew stuff on carts too...

is there any resources for this online anywhere as I only seem to see people hacking old carts up and it feels like it's a shame even if they are rubbish that people are hacking.

any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!!

My first aim is to create translated Final fantasy carts... I own 1,2,and 3 and havent learned to read japanese yet!!

Thanks in advance!!

Some mappers are easier to reproduce than others.

Look at the hardware on the cartridge.

All games must have at least two memories. All games that are expected to work in an unmodified US/Europe frontloader must additionally have a CIC.

Most games have some additional hardware. Some of these parts are still made (e.g. mapper 2, UNROM, uses a 74HCT161 and a 74HCT32); some are not. Some of the ones that are no longer made have trivial replacements; others require more effort.

There are a few people making all-new-parts reproduction kits: look at infiniteneslives, retrostage, and search on ebay for "COOLBOY"

Thanks for that!! I need to look into it a bit more but you've definitely given me a great starting point!!!

Most of the repros I have made are from old damaged games that a closing game rental store throwed away.
But I think it may be possible to cut an old ISA card and make a cartridge of it.
All the memories and ICs I got are from old motherboards, printers and other old thrashed machines, but if you can work with new parts I think the things will be a little easier, since the risk of getting damaged parts is almost zero.

Just throwing an idea out there. But there is alternatives such as InfiniteNESlives.com boards and DIY boards like found here http://www.retrostage.net/

Might not be exactly what you wanted but just in case I figured I would post

Riiiiight.... Looked into it a bit more.... Am I right in thinking that the Famicom carts have no CIC chip?

If that's the case then I should be able to find modern alternatives of the chips and just make a PCB???

That seems a bit simpler than I thought... Am I right??

Making NROM (mapper 0) reproductions is really simple, yes.

What about other mapper chips?

Many, but not even most, are really easy.
You'll notice that the retrostage board supports UNROM, CNROM, and ANROM (mappers 2, 3, and 7)

There's a few articles on the wiki about this: my list, and the 'official' ones. Also look at the NEScartDB PCB browser.


Other mappers (e.g. 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, many others) require specific ASICs or (CPLD or FPGA)-based clones; some of these have available options (e.g. MMC3=mapper 4 → COOLBOY ASIC, and also infiniteneslives CPLD; MMC1=mapper 1 → retrostage CPLD)