Guide to making your own cart?

Does anyone know of a guide for how to burn an eprom to use on something like a repropak(http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.ph ... ucts_id=42)

Would someone also explain to me what is MMC1/3 etc and why their board is different and requires more chips?

I've been working with electronics for year but have recently become interested in NES development and reproduction so this is all a bit confusing.

Also would something like http://cgi.ebay.ca/G540-USB-Universal-E ... 4aa00162ee work for programming the NES eproms?
If not could someone recommend another cheap alternative?

I don't think there is a guide, specially considering how simple the process is. You just have to split ROM files in 3 parts: header, program (PRG-ROM), tiles (CHR-ROM). Not all games have that last chunk (CHR-ROM), because they use CHR -RAM.

There are some tools that can help you split the files (I'll let others name them, because I don't use them), but you can do it even with an hex editor. The header is always the first 16 bytes of the file, and certain bytes of it will tell how big the next two parts (PRG and CHR) are.

Then you just use the EPROM programmer's software to burn the PRG and CHR to 2 chips.


These are mappers that expand the basic capabilities of the NES. The simpler ones simply allow the games to be larger than 32KB (the limit imposed by the system), but the most complex ones are able to expand even graphics and sound capabilities. Technically, like someone said recently, you could even put a PlayStation 3 inside a (big!) NES cart and use it as a mapper, as long as the graphics were sent to the NES in the form of 4-color tiles.

Anyway, several different mappers were used in commercial games, and if you plan on making carts for those games you have to take that into consideration, because very few mappers are interchangeable, so you gotta know what game uses which mapper/board. Bootgod's site is also a very good place to look mappers/boards up.


It probably will. The page says it works with 4000+ devices, and the chips used on the NES are very common standard ones, and it would be crazy if those weren't part of the 4000.