Here are some notes from dumping these non-standard famicom carts. I should have been writing this stuff down all along, but I didn't, so I'm very likely forgeting some things. I will update this post If I remember anything else.
For those that don't know about the project: http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777
As a convention, I've been using the company that produced the cart as the the prefix in the UNIF name. I think it makes more sense this way. Even with redundant things like NROM carts, rather than calling them all NES or HVC-NROM, I've been using BANDAI-NROM, IREM-NROM, SUNSOFT-NROM, etc. I may go back and change the unlicensed games in the DB to use the same convention.
Also, I'm not really meaning to cover corrections to existing dumps or new dumps in this post. It's more so for emulator authors and whatnot.
Nintendo:
---------
Family Basic (pcb: FB-N-128-02) Probably shouldn't be assigned as m0 (NROM), it has 2K battery-backed WRAM, suggest UNIF name HVC-FAMILYBASIC. On a side note, I wasn't able to dump this cart with CopyNES, I had to pull the ROMs (all 3 of them ) and read them manually. I'm thinking the cart won't boot unless the famicom keyboard is hooked up (I don't have one)
Bandai:
-------
Bandai carts assigned as m16 (they all seem to be able to co-exist as the same mapper number)
BANDAI-FCG-1, uses $7FFx for registers
BANDAI-FCG-2, uses $600x for registers
BANDAI-LZ93D50 (w/ 24C02 EEPROM), uses $800x for registers
Bandai carts assigned as m70 (Nestopia now wants to use 152?)
BANDAI-LS161/161/32
Sunsoft:
--------
Sunsoft carts assigned as m69
SUNSOFT-FME-7
Sunsoft carts assigned as m184
SUNSOFT-1
Jaleco:
-------
Jaleco carts assigned as m87
JALECO-LS139/74
Nestopia currently emulates m87 incorrectly. This hardware handles up to 32K VROM, not just 16K. Both bit 0 & 1 of $6000 are used. They wired the mapper up goofy so that bit 0 controls CHR A14 and bit 1 controls CHR A13. Nestopia currently is using m101 for the 32K ROMs, they should be reassigned back to 87 and 101 should be scrapped. Urusei Yatsura - Lum no Wedding Bell is the only 32K CHR I'm aware of, and the existing dump is bad (inner 2 CHR banks are swapped)
Jaleco carts assigned as m140 (some emu's want to use 66, wrongly)
JALECO-LS139/174
Mississippi Satsujin Jiken - Murder on the Mississippi is the only game I have that uses this board. It functions almost identically to GNROM (m66) but it uses $6000 for it's register (NOT $8000). Both existing dumps of this game are bad. One of them has been mapper hacked to work with m66 (all writes to $6000 are replaced with $8000) The other has a completely different upper 64K PRG.
Jaleco carts assigned as m86
JALECO-LS139/174/174
Moero!! Pro Yakyuu uses this board, has an onboard uPD7756C ADPCM speech synth chip with a 256kb ROM embedded with the digital sample data stored, but no apparent way to dump this data (damn!!)
Jaleco carts assigned as m2
JALECO-UOROM
Maniac Mansion uses this, seems to be functionally identical to NES/HVC-UOROM
Jaleco carts assigned as m75
JALECO-D65005C075 (this may change)
Seems to work identical to the Konami VRC1
Taito:
------
Taito carts assigned as m33
TAITO-TC0190FMC
Taito carts assigned as m87
TAITO-LS139/74
The existing Kage no Densetsu dump is incorrectly set as m3 (CNROM). This board works exactly like the Jaleco ones, right down to the goofy mapper connections.
Taito carts assigned as m80
TAITO-X1-005
Taito carts assigned as m3
TAITO-CNROM
Functions identical to NES/HVC-CNROM. Note that this particular cart required that I set the proper "key" before dumping. Refer to this http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=2797 for more info on that (and why mapper 185 should go away)
Konami:
-------
Konami carts assigned as m87
KONAMI-LS139/74
Setup just like the Jaleco and Taito boards. I don't really understand why the hell all these companies wired this mapper like they did.
Konami carts assigned as m2 and m3
KONAMI-UNROM and KONAMI-CNROM respectively. They work just like the NES/HVC counterparts.
Konami VRC carts:
KONAMI-VRC-1 = m75
KONAMI-VRC-2A - m22
KONAMI-VRC-2B = m23
KONAMI-VRC-3 = m73
KONAMI-VRC-4A = m21
KONAMI-VRC-4B = m25
KONAMI-VRC-4C = m21
KONAMI-VRC-4D = m25
KONAMI-VRC-4E = m23
KONAMI-VRC-6A = m24
KONAMI-VRC-6B = m26
KONAMI-VRC-7 = m85
Bleh. What a god damn mess! The only difference in the between the letter variations is a couple of the address lines are connected differently (WHY!?) If the INES 2.0 spec ever gets off the ground, it sure would be nice to see each VRC version have just one mapper number, and then have the sub-mapper field explain the address line connections! BTW, I got the variation lettering from Martin Korth's EveryNES tech docs.
Namco:
------
Namco carts assigned as m4 (but probably shouldn't be)
NAMCO-108
NAMCO-109
NAMCO-118
These chips all seem to function the same and are interchangable. I really don't like how these are all dumped into m4 (like so many others too). I think they function differently enough to warrant their own mapper number.
Namco carts assigned as m88
NAMCO-118+LS32
I currently only have one cart that uses this mapper (Quinty), but it's probably safe to assume a 108 or 109 could also be used in this combo. The LS32 allows the cart to use 128K instead of a max of 64. Although it works kind of oddly, the lower 64K can only be mapped to PPU $0000 and the upper 64K can only be mapped to PPU $1000.
Namco carts assigned as m19
NAMCO-106
Every cart I have that uses this mapper is epoxy glob boards, so I don't actually know that the mapper is a "106". A number of these games have batteries but no WRAM! I suspect they may be saving game data to the internal VRAM on the 106. Go here http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=3377 for more info (or more questions actually) about the 106
Nestopia wants to use m210 for some of these, what is the deal with that?
Well that is it for the first batch of Famicom games, but many many more are on the way!
For those that don't know about the project: http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777
As a convention, I've been using the company that produced the cart as the the prefix in the UNIF name. I think it makes more sense this way. Even with redundant things like NROM carts, rather than calling them all NES or HVC-NROM, I've been using BANDAI-NROM, IREM-NROM, SUNSOFT-NROM, etc. I may go back and change the unlicensed games in the DB to use the same convention.
Also, I'm not really meaning to cover corrections to existing dumps or new dumps in this post. It's more so for emulator authors and whatnot.
Nintendo:
---------
Family Basic (pcb: FB-N-128-02) Probably shouldn't be assigned as m0 (NROM), it has 2K battery-backed WRAM, suggest UNIF name HVC-FAMILYBASIC. On a side note, I wasn't able to dump this cart with CopyNES, I had to pull the ROMs (all 3 of them ) and read them manually. I'm thinking the cart won't boot unless the famicom keyboard is hooked up (I don't have one)
Bandai:
-------
Bandai carts assigned as m16 (they all seem to be able to co-exist as the same mapper number)
BANDAI-FCG-1, uses $7FFx for registers
BANDAI-FCG-2, uses $600x for registers
BANDAI-LZ93D50 (w/ 24C02 EEPROM), uses $800x for registers
Bandai carts assigned as m70 (Nestopia now wants to use 152?)
BANDAI-LS161/161/32
Sunsoft:
--------
Sunsoft carts assigned as m69
SUNSOFT-FME-7
Sunsoft carts assigned as m184
SUNSOFT-1
Jaleco:
-------
Jaleco carts assigned as m87
JALECO-LS139/74
Nestopia currently emulates m87 incorrectly. This hardware handles up to 32K VROM, not just 16K. Both bit 0 & 1 of $6000 are used. They wired the mapper up goofy so that bit 0 controls CHR A14 and bit 1 controls CHR A13. Nestopia currently is using m101 for the 32K ROMs, they should be reassigned back to 87 and 101 should be scrapped. Urusei Yatsura - Lum no Wedding Bell is the only 32K CHR I'm aware of, and the existing dump is bad (inner 2 CHR banks are swapped)
Jaleco carts assigned as m140 (some emu's want to use 66, wrongly)
JALECO-LS139/174
Mississippi Satsujin Jiken - Murder on the Mississippi is the only game I have that uses this board. It functions almost identically to GNROM (m66) but it uses $6000 for it's register (NOT $8000). Both existing dumps of this game are bad. One of them has been mapper hacked to work with m66 (all writes to $6000 are replaced with $8000) The other has a completely different upper 64K PRG.
Jaleco carts assigned as m86
JALECO-LS139/174/174
Moero!! Pro Yakyuu uses this board, has an onboard uPD7756C ADPCM speech synth chip with a 256kb ROM embedded with the digital sample data stored, but no apparent way to dump this data (damn!!)
Jaleco carts assigned as m2
JALECO-UOROM
Maniac Mansion uses this, seems to be functionally identical to NES/HVC-UOROM
Jaleco carts assigned as m75
JALECO-D65005C075 (this may change)
Seems to work identical to the Konami VRC1
Taito:
------
Taito carts assigned as m33
TAITO-TC0190FMC
Taito carts assigned as m87
TAITO-LS139/74
The existing Kage no Densetsu dump is incorrectly set as m3 (CNROM). This board works exactly like the Jaleco ones, right down to the goofy mapper connections.
Taito carts assigned as m80
TAITO-X1-005
Taito carts assigned as m3
TAITO-CNROM
Functions identical to NES/HVC-CNROM. Note that this particular cart required that I set the proper "key" before dumping. Refer to this http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=2797 for more info on that (and why mapper 185 should go away)
Konami:
-------
Konami carts assigned as m87
KONAMI-LS139/74
Setup just like the Jaleco and Taito boards. I don't really understand why the hell all these companies wired this mapper like they did.
Konami carts assigned as m2 and m3
KONAMI-UNROM and KONAMI-CNROM respectively. They work just like the NES/HVC counterparts.
Konami VRC carts:
KONAMI-VRC-1 = m75
KONAMI-VRC-2A - m22
KONAMI-VRC-2B = m23
KONAMI-VRC-3 = m73
KONAMI-VRC-4A = m21
KONAMI-VRC-4B = m25
KONAMI-VRC-4C = m21
KONAMI-VRC-4D = m25
KONAMI-VRC-4E = m23
KONAMI-VRC-6A = m24
KONAMI-VRC-6B = m26
KONAMI-VRC-7 = m85
Bleh. What a god damn mess! The only difference in the between the letter variations is a couple of the address lines are connected differently (WHY!?) If the INES 2.0 spec ever gets off the ground, it sure would be nice to see each VRC version have just one mapper number, and then have the sub-mapper field explain the address line connections! BTW, I got the variation lettering from Martin Korth's EveryNES tech docs.
Namco:
------
Namco carts assigned as m4 (but probably shouldn't be)
NAMCO-108
NAMCO-109
NAMCO-118
These chips all seem to function the same and are interchangable. I really don't like how these are all dumped into m4 (like so many others too). I think they function differently enough to warrant their own mapper number.
Namco carts assigned as m88
NAMCO-118+LS32
I currently only have one cart that uses this mapper (Quinty), but it's probably safe to assume a 108 or 109 could also be used in this combo. The LS32 allows the cart to use 128K instead of a max of 64. Although it works kind of oddly, the lower 64K can only be mapped to PPU $0000 and the upper 64K can only be mapped to PPU $1000.
Namco carts assigned as m19
NAMCO-106
Every cart I have that uses this mapper is epoxy glob boards, so I don't actually know that the mapper is a "106". A number of these games have batteries but no WRAM! I suspect they may be saving game data to the internal VRAM on the 106. Go here http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=3377 for more info (or more questions actually) about the 106
Nestopia wants to use m210 for some of these, what is the deal with that?
Well that is it for the first batch of Famicom games, but many many more are on the way!