Racketboy

Warning, rant:

God damn! I finally got a confirmation email from Allied which included an order number and whatnot. I was thinking about calling up to cancel but decided not to. I wanna get the flux right away, so I figure I'll just let the order go through.

So here's how Allied works, you place an order with out knowing how much shipping will be. They send you an email once it ships with how much the total actual is. So when I placed the order, there was a $5 handling fee plus shipping AND tax which was yet to be determined. So I'm figuring, whatever, shipping will be like $5-10 and not that big of deal. They charged me $17 and change for shipping! What a bunch of ass holes they are! PLUS tax, too! They suck. I ordered like $12 worth of stuff and it ended up costing me almost $40. That'll probably be the last time I order from them.

I don't think I've heard of many S&H processes that could be worse than what you just experienced. Is that even legal? 0_o

I guess so. They pulled some shit saying the flux is a "hazardous material" so it can't ship USPS. But $17 to ship a 4oz bottle and an empty plastic bottle? Did I not hear about UPS' rates going way up this past week? And of course I'm forgetting how heavy they are, thus the $5 handling fee.

Sounds like a bit of a con. They probably make their items appear cheaper then add it to the "postage" charge. Personally, I don't do business with people who can't tell me up front what the total price is before I decide (exactly for the reason you encountered); if they make an error afterwards, then that is their issue not mine!

It seems you are pouring too much money into each repro with the methods you are using... but if you are inclined to go with 29f032 in tsop form, I can hand you a few tips.

First, make a cart with a socket that matches your programmer's tsop top adapter that has the socket. I used ide ribbon cable (the kind for hd's) since it has 2 rows of 20 and is perfect for this task, and was free since it was laying around for me. Wire it to where the maskrom goes. Then after you program, you can take the top adapter with the tsop chip and confirm it working on the real hardware, so you can be sure it is a soldering problem.

As far as soldering the buggers go, I tin the bottom of the pins with solder before i even put it on the board, suspended upside down so there is no chance of shorting them. Then I put it on the board, take a clean tip, and just heat the pins. This works almost all the time with minimum heat to the chip (just touch the pin with the clean tip). Of course, it has a very small chance of shorting still but this is your best bet, no need for extra process and materials.

(Yes, I registered just to post this, hi Racketboy community)

*Edit: another low budget tip: Get a 9 volt battery, a resistor, and an LED. positive > resistor > led > wire with open end. Connect the negative terminal to another wire. Touch the two wires to the dip pads on your tsop to dip pcb that represent adjacent pins on the tsop chip. This is a quick way to tell if you have a short between pins (it will light up since the short completes the circuit). Of course, do this before you solder this onto the main cart pcb

Yeah, that really sucks. I know they mostly cater to large industrial companies, so the little guy ends up getting screwed. My friend clued me in to them, as I said, he knew of them from his intern. But after I saw a TV ad, I figured they might be a great place to order from. In the end, that might be the first and last order I give them.

Nah, I just used a standard tsop test board to wire to the cart. I decided I'd make an pcb adapter if I was going to go with that chip, but it proved to be too costly/annoying.


I was referring to the tsop to snes dip adapters and the memory you were using


Sorry, it wasn't the flux i was on about. I was rushing when I typed this. I meant to preapply the solder to the pins before resting it on the board.


The dip pins that represent adjacent tsop pins on your adapter. Like, tsop pin 1 is dip pin 32 (my memory serves me), and pin 2 is dip pin 4, so you would touch the positive to 32 and negative to 4, to see if those tsop pins were shorted.

Oh, I know exactly what you mean. That's a great idea, and I have all that junk lying around. Thanks for the tip.

Some news in my little world of repros....

I got the *method working!!









But in other news...

I found out it's VERY easy making Genesis repros, they're probably the easiest repros you can make lol. I'm gonna have to make one, I'm thinking about doing a translated Bare Knuckle 3. There's also a nice hack of Mortal Kombat II which adds in the hidden characters as well as the bosses as playable characters, among other things. But other than that, I'm kinda clueless as to what Genesis repros I should make. I was a SNES guy back in the day lol. Does any one have any suggestions?

I also found a site that shows you how to make Gameboy & GB Color repros. And even better, they show you how to turn a Gameboy pak into a flash cart AND how to build a programmer for it! They also show how to make GBA repros.



While I found out how to do it, I definitely wouldn't call it cheap/easy. Cheap, eh, wouldn't cost more to make than any other repro but I'd probably be inclined to charge more to make one because of how easy it is not. I'm also not sure if I have the right equipment to program the necessary flash chips anyway.

Would it be possible to put some of the Sega Channel releases on cartridges? Such as the American versions of Mega Man: Wily Wars and Alien Soldier?