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Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

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Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#71

Post by mcronce »

b112 wrote: post #42
MenhirMike wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a pretty good question. The NTR-031 IR cartridges were used for a few games, and there was also one for Motion Sensors and a TV Antenna. From what I can see, it looks like even though they can't extend the functionality directly, they do still interface with the system in some way. Perhaps they are more like a device connected to a serial port would be? So far less capable than the full extension cart…

Hmm. Crazy thought, but there must be some sort of save data function. I wonder if one could exude a ram chip(as opposed to short life flash or eeprom back then) as a storage device, with some fake filesystem, then have the software write updates to that. As ram, you could read the data on the cartridge, modify it, and thus fake bidirectional comms?

Even if the bus/protocol is limited to "only" disk I/O, you could still have the controller interpret reads/writes to certain addresses as requests for other actions, including interaction with other hardware on the card

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#72

Post by PawgerZ »

unleaded wrote: post #60
goosedragons wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. A few DS carts at least had IR receivers (e.g. Pokemon HeartGold). I think Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure adds Bluetooth through the card as well. So there was some limited capability to add features, not quite as exciting as extra CPUs but it's not like any GBA did anything super exciting there either.

There are some that use the GBA slot for expansion too. The DS browser uses it for a memory expansion, and there's a Guitar Hero game that uses it for some extra buttons. When you boot the console with one inserted in Manual Mode it calls it a "DS Option Pak", and there's a lot more than i thought https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/DS_Option_Pak

If I recall correctly, there was a GBA expansion that measured blood sugar.

It's called the Didget blood glucose monitoring system, and I found it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_DS_accessorie...

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#73

Post by wazoox »

solarized wrote: post #5

I hope developers still love to blog details with article mode like this, rather than vlogging it on YouTube. A lot of detail packed into a few kilobytes only. "Super Mario World" is still the masterpiece game ever. It has amazing characters, sprites, and stages packed into only 360 KB.

"Pitfall!" on Atari VCS held 255 entirely different game screens in a 4k cartridge :)

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#75

Post by MBCook »

easyThrowaway wrote: post #62
jsheard wrote: post #61

Another detail not mentioned here is that even carts which didn't contain enhancement chips had different levels of performance - the SNES CPU nominally ran at 3.58mhz, but it would only actually run at that speed with a "FastROM" cart inserted. Nintendo also offered publishers a "SlowROM" cart format, which was cheaper, but would downclock the CPU to just 2.68mhz. There is a community of modders developing patches t…

Always wondered if that was just an arbitrary licensing distinction made up by nintendo or there were actual differences between carts data reading speeds. At the end of the day, all SNES carts sported mask roms.

At various points it was very hard to get ROM made due to shortages. It may have been an attempted solution to that, can’t get fast but you could have slow.

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#76

Post by Rychard »

goosedragons wrote: post #51
Mizza wrote: post #40

Really specific question, but can anybody explain what looks like a bodge resistor on the Star Fox cart (on the missing 74HCT04 chip in the bottom right)? Everything else is SMD, so it looks to me like they realized some mistake after production and had to manually fix every cart. Or maybe this is just a scan of a hacked/prototype cart.

I just opened my Japanese Starfox cart. It must be a later revision because it's a half height board with the 4 chips covered in black epoxy. It still has that resistor, although I'm not sure if it's connecting the same traces because the board is completely different.

This Reddit thread seems to suggest that it's from an early production run of the game. (though that seems strange to me as normally the glob top chips come as a cost-cutting measure on later revisions of a chip.)

https://old.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/5ddcse/anyo...

One of the comments links to this page which shows a picture you can use for comparison:

https://snescentral.com/pcbboards.php?chip=SHVC-1C0N

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#77

Post by masklinn »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #69
jsheard wrote: post #61

Another detail not mentioned here is that even carts which didn't contain enhancement chips had different levels of performance - the SNES CPU nominally ran at 3.58mhz, but it would only actually run at that speed with a "FastROM" cart inserted. Nintendo also offered publishers a "SlowROM" cart format, which was cheaper, but would downclock the CPU to just 2.68mhz. There is a community of modders developing patches t…

Was there any hardware reason for this, or was this just nintendo making gamers' lifes worse by gouging their customers?

The ROM chips were literally lower specced / worse tolerances, and thus cheaper. FastROM chips were guaranteed (by the manufacturers) to yield stable results in under 120ns, versus 200 for SlowROM.

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#78

Post by skhr0680 »

icodestuff wrote: post #26

> Even Super Mario World[10] got the treatment (I can't remember slowdowns but I was only twelve can then). Yoshi’s Island 4 has a slowdown in some circumstances (have Yoshi, get Starman and hit P-Switch), as does another level I can’t recall, exactly… it has a bunch of Monty Moles that explode all at once. I think it’s on Chocolate Island. I think there might be a third with two Sumo Bros. and an Amazing Flying Hamm…

I remember a ton of lag in Outrageous

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#79

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

jsheard wrote: post #61

Another detail not mentioned here is that even carts which didn't contain enhancement chips had different levels of performance - the SNES CPU nominally ran at 3.58mhz, but it would only actually run at that speed with a "FastROM" cart inserted. Nintendo also offered publishers a "SlowROM" cart format, which was cheaper, but would downclock the CPU to just 2.68mhz. There is a community of modders developing patches t…

Out Of This World is a case of SlowROM/FastROM where the dev was not allowed to use FastROM. Iirc they claimed it saved a whopping 50 cents a cartridge to use slowrom in that case.

Re: Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

#80

Post by RetroTechie »

sharpneli wrote: post #49
rvense wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games on cartridge were quite expensive, I think.

They were around $60 or your regional equivalent. This means $140+ today assuming 1990 dollar.

$60 doesn't justify the expense of custom ICs.

It's that some consoles like the (S)NES were extremely popular, sold in the millions. And some games sold in similar numbers. Or were expected to. Or custom IC was (expected to be) used in a # of games. Or some of these publishers were just awash with cash + crazy high expectations for their products. Or some combination of the above.

Iirc for custom ICs, you're usually talking about production runs in the many-thousands. Say, 10k+.

But in the above example: if $60 provides a $10/sale budget, 10k sales gives you a $100k budget to work with. 100k sales -> a cool 1M budget.

Numbers add up quickly if it's mass-produced and 'everyone' buys one.

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