I apoligize if this topic has already been discussed but i am hoping to get some help here. I found a site online where somone is burning famicom games on EPRoms after they have been translated into english but it seems awfuly expensive. I was wondering if someone could explain to me what i would need to do this myself?
Well it is sorta 30% of what gets talked about in here, heheh. No big deal tho, search is broke currently and there's no FAQ.
If you mean the ones that cost $25-$30, I don't think that's too bad. If it costs a lot more, it's probably a ripoff artist buying and reselling them (doubt they'd have a website though, but it happens on ebay). Doing it from scratch on your own would certainly cost more, mostly from buying an EPROM programmer. If you can buy a ROM and pay postage though, I can burn one for you (and other people here probably would too). The tricky part is
desoldering the old ROMs. The pro tools for it run a couple hundred bucks, but there's much cheaper ones that'll do the job. A lot of people say the Radio Shack desolder pump is ok, I haven't used one myself (maybe $10 or so, I dunno exactly).
Then you have to modify the board (rewire and/or cut traces), depending on the config. What game/mapper are you talking about? Some of them just can't be done on an NES board.
Once you know what you're dealing with, you can follow the instructions here:
http://nesdev.com/NES%20EPROM%20Conversions.txt
Memblers pretty much hit the nail on the head...you only really end up saving money when you've burned enough games to outweigh the cost of the equipment you'll need to do it. If you consider around $30 if you bought it off someone else to be the magic number, you'll definitely be burning a good amount of games before you may consider having "broken even" compared to if you just bought them off someone else.
Of course if you already have the soldering iron, solder pump, eprom burner, correct NES boards, etc., then you're off to a much better start.
Of course, making your own gives a certain amount of satisfaction over just buying them, so it may be worth it no matter what to you if you consider that.
-Rob
When you're adding up the cost don't forget to add up the cost of bad eproms, ruined boards, and other learning experiences that you gain along the way...
Well heres the problem i have. I am a pretty serious collector and I want to get all of the games available. Any Famicom - english conversion that is possible i would like to have. Looking at the list of over 700 famicom only titles i figure if half of them are able to be converted to english language and NES format then i am looking at about $9,000. I consider that too expensive. In addition to that i have some interest in programing my own games. I'm not really sure where to start with this either but if it is relatively achievable I would enjoy programing my own homebrew - to sort of give back to the comunity kinda. But initialy all of it just seems so overwhelming. I just cant seem to find that starting point.
Homebrew isn't too bad, in terms of building the carts. If you have basic electronics knowledge and have been taught a bit about how static ram and EPROMs work, then its just a matter of finding the pinouts, wiring the socket, then burn the chips and away you go.
Of those 700 famicom games that are not released, about 125 have been translated to English. About half are decent translations (the other are work in progress). Even less can be put onto north american carts; there's a lot more boards in the japan that were never make/sold here. So these games can't be made!
Lastly, lets face it. As a collector, the great thing about these things in the cart labels!
By the end of the day, of the 700 famicom games out there, only a handful have nice pintable labels, perfect english translations and can be put back on a cart.
If you do plan on doing it on your own. There's lots of resources here to show you how to do it. The most important thing, as with everything in life, is to invest $$$ in good tools.
Good luck!
Quote:
Even less can be put onto north american carts; there's a lot more boards in the japan that were never make/sold here. So these games can't be made!
Sure they can. Just put an adapter into an American casing ala early NES carts. Replace the rom chips on an orignal FC board of that game with the translated ones.
-Rob
So, if I wanted a translated famicom cart of Mother, for example, all I would need to do is have someone burn the PRG/CHR files for Earthbound Zero for me and I could replace the chips on the game board?
If that's all it takes, I'm up for it! I just got done replacing ALL the chips on my famicom's board because I accidentally blew them up (including those blasted SMD ram chips, which I replaced with non-smd). 12v versus 5v, oops.
Memblers, you said you would burn some chips if I paid postage?
p.s. Picture of said famicom board:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/guidoanch ... m-ugly.jpg
You'll need to rewire it like the EPROM Conversions doc shows. That's all.
Yep, I'll burn some ROMs for you. Send me a PM when you're ready. You'll need to supply the blank ROMs, since right now I only have some 64kB ones ready and I don't have an eraser. Just postage is fine, but a donation like a spare EPROM would be appreciated (only if convenient).
Guido, that famicom pic is terrible!!
WHy not just buy a new FC?
I think my EB0 cart repro had some pins on the roms lifted and rerouted, btw....
-Rob
rbudrick wrote:
Guido, that famicom pic is terrible!!
WHy not just buy a new FC?
I think my EB0 cart repro had some pins on the roms lifted and rerouted, btw....
-Rob
Because... I guess I like to suffer.
On the bright side, it now displays composite video instead of RF.
Yeah, according to the EPROM conversions chart, there are a few things that have to be rerouted depending on the EPROM type. See Mapper 4 on the chart.
Quick question... When I was using ucon64 to convert Final Fantasy III's rom to PRG and CHR, I get no CHR file and one big PRG file. Is this correct? I'd love to make a translated cart for this.
Yep, it has CHR RAM (no CHR ROM). It will be a little more difficult than usual to make FF3 though because there isn't an equivalent NES cart.
kyuusaku wrote:
Yep, it has CHR RAM (no CHR ROM). It will be a little more difficult than usual to make FF3 though because there isn't an equivalent NES cart.
So is the CHR chip just a ram chip?
Assuming it is just a ram chip, couldn't you just leave the CHR chip alone and modify the PRG chip according to the EPROM conversions chart for mapper 4? I'm probably totally wrong, though.
Nope, because there's no NES MMC3 cart with both CHR-RAM and WRAM. Which is what kyuusaku meant by an equivalent cart. You have to modify a CHR-ROM board to support CHR-RAM (requires adding a pin to the edge connector + rewiring).
Memblers wrote:
Nope, because there's no NES MMC3 cart with both CHR-RAM and WRAM. Which is what kyuusaku meant by an equivalent cart. You have to modify a CHR-ROM board to support CHR-RAM (requires adding a pin to the edge connector + rewiring).
Well, could you modify the original famicom cart?
Sorry for all the stupid questions, just curious.
Guido Anchovy wrote:
Well, could you modify the original famicom cart?
Sure, that'd be a good way to go if you have it, or can get it.
Memblers wrote:
Guido Anchovy wrote:
Well, could you modify the original famicom cart?
Sure, that'd be a good way to go if you have it, or can get it.
Cool, I should be able to acquire a copy and test my theory on it. I'll PM you when I have all the components. Thanks again!
I could burn some EPROM's also if anybody needs help. If it doesn't happen too often I could even sell an old EPROM or two for cost.
i just bought a willam eprom programmer, the 4.5c i believe from mcumall.com it's coming in the mail in the next few days, but it's only $45. i shall let you know how it goes (hopefully it'll come by the weekend). i'm going to be making an ff3 cart, so i can let yu know how it goes(as well as smb2j and ff2