News:

11 March 2016 - Forum Rules

Main Menu

Hello~ Hacking an N64 cart

Started by Airikita, September 23, 2013, 09:17:03 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Airikita

Hello all, my name (as you can see) is Airikita.

I have received an N64 recently, and it sparked an idea. I have bought Pokemon Stadium 2, and it's gotten me thinking into creating a custom N64 cart that will play GBC games.

I could possibly use a Gameboy Color handheld and splice it together with an N64 cart to create a way to do this, however I have considered using the N64 Transfer Pak instead.

I am going to create a custom ROM to load GBC games from the Transfer Pak, and part of that will use a mixture of Pokemon Stadium 2, Zelda OoT Debug Rom (due to documentation on code), and whatever ROM is needed to match the CIC chip for the cart I'm going to modify.

To accomplish this task, I am looking into the N64 cart repository:
http://tcsr2001.tripod.com/carts/nkte-0/

Also listed as "ROM chip" which are two black bars on the cart.

I decided to try some digging on Google, but I'm not having any luck finding out how to make a custom repository that uses the same configuration. I could probably find a chip that can match, but the issue I'm having is actually finding information on how a repository is created (or ROM chip).

I was hoping maybe this place could shed some light on how I could find out how these chips are created?

Jorpho

You mean you want to make your own N64 ROM chips?  I don't know if that's even possible.  Even the bootleggers didn't get very far with those, if I'm not mistaken.  See for instance http://web.archive.org/web/20010303035653/http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Black_market/Grey_N64/grey_n64.html .

If you want to run N64 homebrew, you should use an EverDrive 64.
This signature is an illusion and is a trap devisut by Satan. Go ahead dauntlessly! Make rapid progres!

Zoinkity

For development a 64drive is better, but that's beside the point.

What you want already exists.  It's called a WideBoy, and it's a bit pricey.
As for building your own, you can't flash and swap a chip on a retail cart--they use maskrom. 
Instead of some half-hearted code splicing you should grab a copy of libdragon and learn to program for the thing.  They should have a library for using the transfer pak, which has been used to make a GB dumper and GC camera image grabber.  A Z80 interpretter isn't that hard to write, and it wouldn't be a bad project to start on.
At the least, it will give you an idea what you're getting into.

As for using the code from PMS, they offload palette assignment and screen drawing onto the RSP--reason #1 it isn't emulated.  this isn't necessary though, and you can always write everything direct.  (There's just speed advatanges to using the COP)