Do you just need hex and PPU or do you need other things?
Your question isn't making much sense. What exactly do you mean by "copy a ROM"? Strictly speaking, in the context of video games, a ROM is a read-only memory chip inside a game cartridge. Do you want to copy the contents of that to another chip? Or to a file in your computer?
I'm also not sure what you mean by "hex" and "PPU"... hex is a numeric system commonly used to represent binary data, it's a way to display data, which isn't really relevant when copying data. The PPU is a chip inside the NES, which generates the pictures that are sent to the TV, and shouldn't have anything to do with copying ROMs.
Please provide a more detailed description of what it is you're trying to accomplish so that we can give more objective answers.
if you wanted to take a ROM, could edit all the data in a new ROM and had the patience to do so, what do you need to copy from one ROM to a new ROM to make an exact clone?
tl;dr(somehow) What do you need to clone to put one game on another game?
I must admit I still don't quite understand. If you want an exact clone... just copy the entire file! But if you want the "new" game to be different somehow (e.g. you want the same engine but different level layouts) that's not cloning, that's called hacking. Hacking isn't trivial unless someone has made tools to modify the specific game you're working on, because each game is coded differently (sometimes games from the same developer might share an engine, a music driver or other things, though).
In case this isn't clear: a game program is not like an audio file, a text document or a picture, you can't copy parts of them into new files, mixing different sources to create something new. At least not by simply copying/pasting. Programs are dependent of code spread all throughout the ROM, and all the interaction between the different pieces has to be carefully planned out. If you just get different parts from different sources and hastily put them together, there's no way it's going to work.
Please tell me exactly what you want to do, because I still don't understand what your goal is. For example: "I want to take the Super Mario Brothers ROM and create a new .nes file from it with my own levels, dialogs and graphics that I can distribute to my friends to play on emulators and real NES through a flash cart". If there's anything about this that you want to keep a secret for any reason (say, it's for a marriage proposal), try describe it as closely as possible while replacing the sensitive parts of your plan with equivalent information.
Easy.
I think it means... "extracting the ROM data from a cartridge".
What kind of hardware is required?
Zepper wrote:
Easy.
I think it means... "extracting the ROM data from a cartridge".
What kind of hardware is required?
At first I thought it could be something like this, but now I really don't think this is what he means.
For NES, use a Kazzo from Infinite NES Lives.
For Super NES, Genesis, and many other systems, use a Retrode.
OK. Let me try again. If you wanted to take Super Mario Bros and put it on a blank ROM MANUALLY, what do you need to copy to the blank ROM (including hardware)
You appear to be asking two questions:
1. How do I build a dumper to dump a cartridge to a ROM file?
2. How do I turn a ROM file into a cartridge?
Is my understanding of your questions correct?
Your use of "MANUALLY", emphasized in all capital letters, also confuses me (and probably others reading your comment). It implies that you have a specific definition of "MANUALLY" in your mind that you appear to assume everyone else will already know. Do you want to read the cartridge through the Game Pak edge connector, or do you want to desolder the individual ROM chips and read them through a commercially available EPROM dumper/programmer, or do you want to build your own EPROM dumper/programmer, desolder the individual ROM chips, and read them through that?
Or were you referring to making your own program from scratch with the same behavior, not actually copying the program from the authentic Game Pak onto your reproduction cartridge?
Thanks for explaining with one hand, Tepples, then confusing with the other hand and both feet.
I think our OP wants to make a repro cart. That forum is here:
viewforum.php?f=28I'm sure there are answers to basic questions like "what board / EPROM / Flash ROM to use?"
Strictly speaking, you could set up an NROM cart with blank chips, give it the programming voltage needed, pull /WE low, and connect all data and address pins to that of another cartridge