I picked up one of these today, but I can't seem to get it to work and I haven't found much info on it. I dumped it's EPROM with CopyNES and got
this which differs a bit from the GAR.BIN that comes in the CopyNES archive. It looks like it probably is bad, so I uploaded the "good" version and it flashed fine. But I am still unable to get it working. The battery seems to still be working, not sure if that would keep it from booting or not though.
Anyone have any ideas?
BootGod wrote:
I picked up one of these today, but I can't seem to get it to work and I haven't found much info on it. I dumped it's EPROM with CopyNES and got
this which differs a bit from the GAR.BIN that comes in the CopyNES archive. It looks like it probably is bad, so I uploaded the "good" version and it flashed fine. But I am still unable to get it working. The battery seems to still be working, not sure if that would keep it from booting or not though.
Anyone have any ideas?
Yeah, if your RAM contents are hosed (and it almost always is in a GAR you find in the wild) you have to upload a new set from gar.bin. Then it SHOULD work. If it doesn't, then something else could be wrong. Make sure there's no other problems with it, like a broken germanium diode, or bad solder or something. Also, try uploading a few times and try an "easy" game first, like SMB. Never use multicarts in the GAR! That is how I hosed mine.
It apparently can't figure out the address matters vs. the data, and it makes the game crash... the run away code is what then hoses it sometimes if you're unlucky.
Isn't the GAR.BIN data stored in the EPROM (the 27128)? I figured the RAM (62256) was for save data and the battery was just for that.
Nope, the RAM also contains some of the GAR's code, and removing the battery will instantly brick it.
OK, well the battery must be good then because the RAM will retain whatever data you upload to it just fine. I looked over the soldering somewhat, you can tell it was done by hand. The only potential problem I see is that pins 13 & 14 on the 74S00N are bridged with solder. It's possible there is a trace hiding underneath it though. Could someone with a GAR take a look and see if these 2 pins are supposed to be connected?
Also, I have only tried playing it on my CopyNES, as I don't have a plain NES at the moment. I wouldn't think that would be a problem though.
Before I had a CopyNES, Kevtris was kind enough to dump my proto of the GAR, the Game Master Kid. If anyone wants these dumps, I'll gladly send them.
Someone once told me that they thought the code looked extremely similar to the Game Master Boy's code, pretty much confirming that Bung had everthing to do with the GAR and made them under a shell company. I believe it was Kyuusaku, iirc. Then, again, my memory blows.
-Rob
Do you (or anyone else) have a dump of the 16K EPROM (non-proto) on the board? Maybe mine is corrupt. Could this be read / written with CopyNES as well? Because of the programming voltage required for EPROM's I'm guessing probably not. If I have to desolder it, not a big deal anyways.
Well I found the problem, I went ahead to desolder the EPROM and all the sudden the bottom half of the chip just fell off! I have one to replace it, but I'll need the data for it. Many thanks to anyone who can supply this!
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Do you (or anyone else) have a dump of the 16K EPROM (non-proto) on the board? Maybe mine is corrupt. Could this be read / written with CopyNES as well? Because of the programming voltage required for EPROM's I'm guessing probably not. If I have to desolder it, not a big deal anyways.
Yeah, I've got it. Email me at rbudrick at hotmail dot com.
So the legs of the eprom were just all snapped? WTF?!
-Rob
No actually the 2 "wafers" of the chip separated, must have been stored somewhere really hot, or something! I've never seen that happen before!
I got the BIOS dump from kevtris last night, thanks though!
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No actually the 2 "wafers" of the chip separated, must have been stored somewhere really hot, or something! I've never seen that happen before!
Holy crap! What a cheap ghetto factory piece of shit! That's a first for me too. Never heard of that happening before.
-Rob
I have 2 good GAR's and have noticed something strange every time I dump the SRAM via the CopyNES. The content of the SRAM is never exactly the same! (even when I dump the content back to back w/o using the GAR)
Anyone else noticed this? Also, can the copyNES dump the EPROM, or is desoldering the only way to go?
bootgod: congratulations, your chip decapsulated itself!
I only wish some of these chips I have here would do that... :P
Can you take some pictures of the chip in pieces? i'd like to see the bond wires and whatnot.
Lord Nightmare
It's not much to look at really, as I was desoldering, the bottom half of the chip slid out. The pins stayed attached to the top half, thus all the bonding wires were trashed. When I tried to pull the rest out, it pretty much shattered to pieces. Click on the pics for a large version.
Ah, thats exactly what happened to Guru with two of the eproms on a rare version of the arcade game TX-3/Buggy Boy. Its actually possible to extract the data regardless though, but it requires a microprobing array, a really good microscope, and a lot of skill.
Lord Nightmare
