What would it take to make my own pirate carts?

[toredauei]

Ive taken to the idea that making my own pirate carts would be friggin awesome but I really have no idea how it would be done. As far as hardware goes, I figure I would probably need an eprom writer and the famicom boards at the very least. What kinds of technical information would I need to know? If anyone can shed some light I would be eternally grateful. Thanks!

EDIT: anyone know anything about the copyNES? found here -> http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=36

[L___E___T]

I looked into this recently.  Making single games is not hard, but can get expensive and is rather tedious unless you're a total electronics wiz.
I got in touch with chinese wholesalers you can make your own custom multicarts which would be amazing, but they need a minimum order of 1000 and the cost is not as cheap as you'd expect, around $7 per board so I let it go.

You can get an EEPROM writer and burn games but it's so expensive it's really not worth it, I'd suggest getting a powerpak from retroUSB, you can then put any pirate you want on it unless it uses a rare mapper. 

Don't get the copy NES, it's much better to just shell out on a powerpak and reap the rewards afterwards.

[UglyJoe]

The CopyNES can do things that the PowerPak can't do.  However, if all you're looking to do is put roms onto a cart, the PowerPak is probably the way to go.

[L___E___T]

What kind of things can it do?  Sounds interesting.

[UglyJoe]

Check the description on the site.  I guess the big features are cart dumping and debugging.

[L___E___T]

right that's decided for me then, gotta get one of these at some point.  Why would you want to reverse engineer games though?

[toredauei]

if all you're looking to do is put roms onto a cart, the PowerPak is probably the way to go.

I guess the reason Im against the powerpak is because I like to have individual copies of my games.

Check the description on the site.  I guess the big features are cart dumping and debugging.

What exactly does cart dumping entail. Does that mean it can bypass the need for an EEPROM burner and straight re-write the carts (unlikely but I had to ask as thats what it sounds like) Also, how difficult is it to write EEPROMS? Is it a fairly straight forward process or is it somewhat involved?

[UglyJoe]

right that's decided for me then, gotta get one of these at some point.  Why would you want to reverse engineer games though?

For hacking purposes, mostly.  Some people do it to analyze how experienced coders handled certain tasks or caused specific effects -- either out of curiosity or to use it themselves in homebrew stuff.  I think most people stick to software debuggers now, though (although they're not quite perfect, so using the real hardware is required sometimes).

if all you're looking to do is put roms onto a cart, the PowerPak is probably the way to go.

I guess the reason Im against the powerpak is because I like to have individual copies of my games.

In that case, get an EEPROM burner from somewhere and some of those boards that MasterDisk posted a link to.

Check the description on the site.  I guess the big features are cart dumping and debugging.

What exactly does cart dumping entail. Does that mean it can bypass the need for an EEPROM burner and straight re-write the carts (unlikely but I had to ask as thats what it sounds like) Also, how difficult is it to write EEPROMS? Is it a fairly straight forward process or is it somewhat involved?

The CopyNES does not write to carts (other than to the PowerPak Lite, which is not what you're looking for).  Dumping gets the data off of the cart and onto your computer.  Savegames can be written to carts since the SRAM is writable.  I've never done EEPROM burning myself, but I don't believe it's too complicated.  It's just a matter of getting the (kinda expensive) hardware for writing them.

[toredauei]

Very enlightening. So once ive got the EEPROM burner and the pcb its just a matter of recreating the layout of the original cart? Ive found this site -> http://www.thenesdump.com/New%20Website/mapper%20info.html which includes most if not all of the different pcb mappers for NES repros and such. It doesnt sound that complicated unless I'm missing some important piece of information.

[L___E___T]

Alternatively, there is a guy who does repros via this method - but last time I asked him he hadn't much experience with famicom roms (though I don't see it should be any different.

[famiac]

Does any one know how to do this?

[133MHz]

Just like UglyJoe and others mentioned, how to do it is no secret, but it gets kinda expensive.

[famiac]

where can i find an eprom chip and where can i find the burner?

[famiac]

Awesome!

But where can i find the famicom board to put the game on and where can i get the plastic? Famicom cart not nes

[L___E___T]

Check with the guy, because last time I asked him he wasn't doing Famicom repros.  He said it was slightly different and needed to check it out more.