60Hz Snes Mod Overkill

Soo.. feeling much <3 for my recently purchased Snes & Everdrive cart - fitted the DSP1 - all good.

But... the 50Hz borders sucked ass & game the region compatibility seemed hit 'n' miss with the revision of Everdrive cart I have (1.3/6?) So decided to venture into mod-ing the sucker.

Ordered a couple of switches to be collected in-store @ Maplin (and picked up a couple of spares, just in case).. rushed home all excited, and..



Argh!!! :'(

The switches had their third pin missing!! What the hell man!?! There's a hole where the pin should be, but no pin! Why? Just don't solder a wire on it FFS!!!

Hah! Lucky I picked up those red ones off the shelf huh ¦) - But WTF? They're spring loaded!!
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Bugger - It would have cost me more in tube fare to go back than the switches cost & felling impatient, I had to find a way - so went rummaging through the parts box.. And found this little lot:



This is how a computer programmer make a toggle switch :-{)} using a 20 MIP computer (The Atmel AtTiny85).

I began by performing the physical end of the 60Hz / Region mods, by lifting some surface mount pins & attaching kynar wire to the relevant points:



I then used a larger (Mega0256) Arduino to write a small program that read two push buttons and if held down for about a 10th of a second would toggle one of two output pins that I attached to an RGB Led to test its behavior.



I made the toggle so that it would toggle as soon as the button was held, but wouldn't toggle again until you released the button (and added de-bouncing code to remove glitches).

Once the code worked I plugged the AtTiny85 into a breadboard - wired the SPI pins to the bigger Arduino & uploaded the ArduinoISP sketch to it.

Re-jiggled the pin numbers to match the smaller chips layout & then sent the code via the Arduino - through & into the AtTiny85.



I made the RGB Led light up blue when the power is on.. and the Red & Green lights would toggle with the Red & Green switches.. So Blue by default (PAL @ 60Hz) - Magenta for PAL @ 50Hz (B+R), Cyan (B+G) for 60Hz NTSC & White (R+G+B) for 50Hz NTSC.

Ran the wires attached to the Red & Green Led pins directly to the mod-pins (The red 60Hz wire ran through a 2.2K resistor iirc) - And mounted the Led in place of the power light with some hot-glue:



Soldered the Led resistors directly to the bottom of an 8pin chip socket, and the blue resistor is the 2.2K one feeding the 60Hz mod - all sealed with hot-glue.

(I left the top of the socket un-glued so I could re-program the chip if I need to in future.)



More glue & insulation tape & job done :D



Super pimped ¦) No borders by default - 95% of games run by default!!

Technological overkill? - Naaaaah...

And....... Atmel AtTiny85's are cheaper than a single Maplin's switch! :o)

Snes Everdrive DSP1 Installation

Giving the Snes some love today. :)

I managed to get hold of one of those Everdrive cart's :D ..but sadly the one without the DSP1 chip :'(
(which is needed to play MarioKart or Pilotwings)

So to source the needed components I picked up a crappy lesser known US cart called Ballz 3D - a console-mod forum tutorial pointed me at this title - as it has all three of the required components
(And is quite frankly, a load of Ballz!).

So step-one was to get the Everdrive & Ballz-cart open :/

Meh... security screws! :(

Luckly there's a tutorial on youTube on how to melt the end of a biro and push it into a screw (while molten), to make a poor-mans security-screwdriver.. \o/



My first attempt didn't go too well & biro plastic got stuck around one the screw heads, but since I was practicing on the donor cart - there was nothing a hack saw couldn't handle.



Had to desolder three components: a 74HCU04, Ceramic Oscilator & the DSP1 chip:


Care had to be taken when mounting the chips to te Everdrive pcb.. there are several surface mount resistors right next to the IC pin holes!

And - The DSP1 chip has to mounted on the back side of the board & the Logic & Clock on the front!



And the other (front) side:



Reassembled the cart WITHOUT security screws! ;)



Happy days! <3

We have: Pilotwings..



And more importantly..



Retro-tastic :D I haven't had a Snes for over 21 years! I'm old.. :/

Oh.. also worth a mention.. I received an RGB SCART lead with the Snes I bought, but upon plugging into my later-day LCD TV, the screen would fade to black as soon as the picture became busy / too bright.

The solution was to desolder three capacitors that were in-line with the R,G&B wires in the SCART plug.
(I left the Cap on the Sync wire & that seemed cool.)

Major Title to R-Type 1 Conversion - Day 3

The conversion of Major Title to R-Type 1

 

Day 3: De-Solder & Replace the N0, N1, N2 & N3 Sprite Roms..

 

Time to fit the remaining TTL Logic & SRAM chip..

There are several modifications to the motherboard to be carried out in this final section..
Firstly, cut several tracks on the underside of the top-board - here:



And here:



(Looks rough, but that pictures are extremely zoomed in.)

Next-up you have to add the new 74LS32 Quad OR Gate to one of the spare chip 'slots' on the board..



Quite why iRem had added 'unused' spare chip sites to their board is anyones guess.. perhaps they expected to have to bodge the boards post-production?


Either way, they are a welcome coincedence for what we want to do.. the original guide recommends using the chip-site towards the outer corner of the PCB, however my board had an iRem sticker over that one..

So I located the OR-Gate in the next site along:



Next, you piggyback the SRAM & 74LS244 Bus-Tranceiver, like so... taking care to follow the instructions on bending out the correct pins & ensuring the correct chip orientation.



Then all that remains is to just connect it all up with some patch wire.. (just he says)



..and power her up! *drum-roll*




Ta-da! One humanly-affordable R-Type 1 Arcade board \o/

Job done!

Massive thanks and the upmost respect to Paul Swan and Chris Hardy for the original conversion technique.. and for doing all the really hard-work!

And a massive thank you to the various members of the Jamma+ forum who helped make this project possible, particularly; ben76, Jenginner, PaulCan69, Lee-Lee & Vib.

It must be noted that the modification of Major Title to R-Type 2 is a little simpler than the mod above..
(Fewer board modifications are required & you don't need the extra SRAM chip & logic iirc.)

Overall, it took about 22 hours and cost about £20-£30 in spare parts (in addition to the Major-Title board).

That also assumes you already have the tools to hand!.. (I didn't and it ended up being about £150 all-in - still half the price of the original board though!) and most of the time was taken up by de-soldering & chip-extraction (pays not to rush!).. but it should be possible to reduce that given more experience.

Right, I'm off to destroy the Bydo empire..

Major Title to R-Type 1 Conversion - Day 2.5

The conversion of Major Title to R-Type 1

 

Day 2.5: De-Solder & Replace the N0, N1, N2 & N3 Sprite Roms..

 

Okey dokey, just spent 6 hours replacing the remaining 4 Roms.. (N0, N1, N2 & N3)



Pretty much a repeat performance of before.. (shaved 2 hours off the time-tho)
(256 finger-burns & counting..)

Used masking tape as there wasn't much clearance between the chips being removed and the surrounding components.

Also had one dead EPROM in the batch.. but for $7 for 10 second-hand on eBay, it's all good.
(Getting a UV Eraser box soon.)



Once the ROMs were installed, all the game sprites have all appeared on screen & it's looking positive. :)

The backgrounds are still a little broken, but I'm assuming the tracks that are to be cut 'n' patched and the extra logic is Rom addressing related.. and should sort that out.



Hmm, in addition, the back-ground tile layer seems to be missing.. We'll have to see if that comes online once the extra SRAM chip is fitted.

Here's a video of the sprites in action:







Okay.. on to the SRAM & TTL logic chips... Er.. well, maybe not tonight. The frikin' cat's stole my chair.

Major Title to R-Type 1 Conversion - Day 2

The conversion of Major Title to R-Type 1

 

Day 2: De-Solder & Replace the C0, C1, C2 & C3 Roms..

 

After sorting the Program & Audio ROMs, I thought I might attempt to remove & socket the four background graphic ROMs on the top CPU board.

Following the advice given by a fellow member of Jamma+, I went straight for the wire cutters... as there was no real need to salvage to original ROMs. (Especially as they were of the PROM type and could not be erased to be re-written.)

The pins were snipped along the edge of the four PROMs as far away from the PCB as possible.

Before de-soldering I've found it's always a good idea to flow some new solder into the joints, just to make sure theres some flux running through to the other side of the board.

Since we are talking about a circuit board more than 20 years old.. I would advise using lead-solder with multi-core flux.

I then used a heated de-soldering pump to remove 90% of the solder.. It's a cheap pump (~£15 in Maplin) and to be fair is a good tool - but the tip is prone to cracking around the tips-edge! :(

Looks like a combination of heat-stress & cheap alloy..

Word of advice - keep the receipt, as you're probably not going to get more that a couple of jobs done before it's knackerd (I'm on my second) - Maplin seem cool with replacing it as they dont sell spare tips.



Finger burning time.. Grabbed each pin (by-hand) from underneath and applied my soldering iron (quickly) in such a way as to touch/heat both the pin & the surrounding pad.

The pins should pop right out (with 128 little finger burns) without tearing any of the pcb contacts off the board.  Not using too much heat, or for too long is important!

Might also be a good time to recommend you use a temperature controlled iron.. ;)



Goodbye Mr Golf game..



I then ran a flux pen over the pads and used de-soldering braid (wick) to suck-up the remaining blobs of solder.

Application of flux really helps you get a good solder flow & you get a satisfying little sizzle when you apply the heat. :)

But.. dont forget to clean the flux off with an isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol soaked cotton bud, as flux is quite corrosive and could potencially eat thru stuff over time.



Not bad for a first attempt..



Just have to fit four 32-Pin DIL sockets & were good to go..!

NOTE: I thought i'd be clever and use turned-pin sockets... Talk about square peg in a round hole! (literally) I spent over an hour just trying to fit the chips into the sockets! while listening to Rom pins going "tink-ta-tink-tink" and have two pins bend under a chip! :(

I know these sockets provide the best connection - but mate this is b*ll*cks! For the other four chips I'm seriously thinking about using the cheaper sockets! Much less stress on the chips and me.



Below is a video of the progress so far: The first part is how the board behaved with just fitting the chips.. (graphics are still a mess), and the second part is how it looked after moving the 3 jumpers on the CPU board (to reflect the change from 1 to 2MBit Roms):

As can be seen, the backgrounds are starting to take shape & it's actually quite playable!

(This was actually the first time I'd performed a major de-soldering job on a double-sided board, it took best part of a day.. and was quite nerve racking.)

Major Title to R-Type 1 Conversion - Day 1

The conversion of Major Title to R-Type 1

 

A top bloke ben76 over on the Jamma+ site brought my attention to a modification devised by Paul Swan and Chris Hardy to convert an iRem Major-Title arcade PCB to run either R-Type 1 or 2.

With the original PCB of R-Type 1 costing upwards of £2-300 a conversion of the much cheaper golf board is very attractive.. and just had to be attempted.

Major Title runs on an iRem M84 pcb, while R-Type 1 runs on an M72 board and R-Type 2 on an M82.

They all appear to have quite similar hardware, give or take a tile-layer.. and there appears to be some memory and addressing differences.  The work of Paul & Chris bridge these gaps by way of a new set of program ROM's and a set of physical board modifications & additions to be carried out.

The original modification guides can be found below:

Major Title to R-Type (M72) Conversions
Major Title to R-Type 2 (M84) Conversions

Major respect to these guys, this couldn't have been easy to fathom at all! A serious understanding of the hardware and game code must have been needed to pull this off! Hat's off to you indeed!

..so with guide in hand, several ingredients are needed:

Ingredients..

• 1 x iRem Major Title arcade board:

• 1 x 27512 EPROM
• 9 x 27C010 EPROMs
• 4 x 27C020 EPROMs:

• An EPROM Programmer capable of writting the above:

• 9 x 32-Pin DIL socket
• 1 x 28-Pin DIL socket

• 1 x HM62256-12 (or equiv.) SRAM chip:

 And a pair of 74 series TTL logic chips:

• 1 x 74LS244 Tri-State Octal Buffer / Line driver chip

and an:

• 1 x 74LS32 Quadruple 2-Input Positive-OR Gate chip 

Day 1: Replace the L0, L1, H0, H1 & SP Roms.

The first step was to burn a new set of program ROMs, as these were socketed it seemed like the first port of call..

Four 27C010's were programmed with the data for the L0, L1, H0 & H1 chips (which contain the code for the V30 CPU).

At that point I decided to power up the board, just to see how far it would work..

Happy days indeed! :D

While the sound & graphic data was garbage (the rest of the ROM's still held the Major Title data), R-Type can clearly be seen to be running!

The next easy step was to replace the 27C512 (SP) EPROM holding the sound code:

Once this was done, the sweet sound of R-Type filled the air! :)

Next stop, de-solder the remaining chips and fit the sockets..