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ForumsSega Master System / Mark III / Game GearSG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV |
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View topic - Mark III Edge Connector
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 Mark III Edge Connector
 Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2014 12:33 pm
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Sullins makes a 0.125" series of edge connectors. They are usually very good about sending out samples - I ordered 2 yesterday.
http://www.sullinscorp.com/catalogs/119_PAGE50-51_.125_HP_DS_WW_RA.pdf EBA22DCTN would be a valid part# for Mark III edge. The part is non-stock at most distributors but you can still place an order directly on the Sullins website. As someone pointed out in the FM Power Base Converter thread, Tototek also sells Mark III edge connectors but their stock seems sporadic at best; I wouldn't rely on them. There are also batches of Chinese 0.125" 2x22pos edge connectors which show up on eBay from time to time. |
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 10:27 am
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I wonder, would it be possible to use one of these edge connectors to produce a MarkIII-to-SMS converter? Something which is essentially the opposite of this?
Although such a converter would not be particularly useful for playing games, it would be very helpful for dumping. Most current dumping methods (SMSReader, Gender Adapter, Retrode) assume a Western cartridge. A converter would make it much easier to dump Japanese, Korean & SG-1000 carts, and it should also allow cards to be dumped using an off-the-shelf Card Catcher. |
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Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2014 7:15 pm
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| I've made such cart few weeks ago for Bock (to help him dumping games). I send them to fab this week. | |
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Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 5:04 pm
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It sure is, and you can play SG-1000 games and early Mark III games so long as you've done a BIOS mod on the system you're playing on. |
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Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 12:14 pm
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Are you making several of these converters? Will they be available to other people? |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 5:42 pm
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I beg to disagree. Such converter is very helpful for playing games. I made one for myself a few months ago and it's working flawlessly. None of the SG-1000, and some of the early MarkIII games don't have the checksum header needed to work on export BIOS, but many (I'd guess most if not all) of the later games have it, even the games never exported or with different code between jp/export. The japanese cartridges I have personally tested are: Phantasy Star, Alex Kidd BMX Trial, Megumi Rescue, Galactic Protector and Hoshi Wo Sagasite. Sukeban Deka 2 didn't work. I noticed a trend to guess which game would work out of the box on an export system: games with the label MarkIII / Master System 共用 all played fine on my unmodified system whereas the game with the label MarkIII 専用 gives me a BIOS error. It's not that reliable as Alex Kidd BMX Trial works even though it's labelled with only MarkIII. For the paddle games you also need a region mod for the paddle to work properly, but the game itself works with the export BIOS. |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 8:44 pm
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I've passed a complete mark III set through a little python script and I only found these titles without header :
file: Argos no Juujiken (J) [!].sms
file: Astro Flash (J) [!].sms file: Castle, The (SG-1000).sg file: Final Bubble Bobble (J) [!].sms file: Fushigi no Oshiro Pit Pot (J) [!].sms file: Ghost House (J) [!].sms file: Great Baseball (J) [!].sms file: Great Soccer (J) [!].sms file: Hang-On (J) [!].sms file: Loletta no Syouzou (J) [!].sms file: Machine Gun Joe (J) [!].sms file: Satellite 7 (J) [!].sms file: Seishyun Scandal (J) [!].sms file: Solomon no Kagi - Oujo Rihita no Namida (J) [!].sms file: Spy vs. Spy (J) [!].sms file: Teddy Boy Blues (J) [!].sms |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 8:50 pm
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Yes, but that's only half the battle. Did you verify that the checksums are correct in the games with the header? As I understand it, many Japanese titles have incorrect header checksums, which also cause failures on the export SMS. |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 9:15 pm
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yes you're right....I've only checked the "TMR SEGA" string >_<
i've checked all roms and these ones have a faulty checksum : - Anmitsu Hime - Ashura - Golvellius Valley of Doom - High School! Kimengumi - Nekkyu Koushien - Pro Yakyuu Pennant Race I do not understand the idea below putting a wrong checksum... |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 9:28 pm
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I don't think that they intended to... it's probably a mix of being lazy or a last-minute change (i.e. they generated the header, then found an issue, patched the issue, and forgot to update the checksum). Then they tested it on Mark III, it booted, ship it! ;) |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 10:17 pm
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| You need to check the region code too, export BIOSes demand 4. | |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 10:53 pm
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That's actually a pretty small number of Japanese SMS cartridges when you consider that eleven of those are cards, and two are technically SG-1000 games. That leaves just the two Salio SMS games and Bubble Bobble as the only Japanese SMS cartridges without a header. Then there's a further six which have a faulty checksum. A cartridge converter would actually have a very high level of compatibility on a Western SMS (should be 100% on a Mega Drive or Game Gear).
Edit: I guess compatibility would probably be lower taking into account Maxim's comment. I wasn't aware that some SMS games were intentionally region locked. |
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 11:24 pm
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Yeah, that will be the major issue probably. I'm guessing many of them don't have that set to 4. |
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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 2:50 am
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There's a few more Mark III carts that lack a header as well, here's a list of them based on research I did last year: Action Fighter Alex Kidd no Miracle World Astro Warrior Fantasy Zone Great Golf Great Soccer Masters Golf |
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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 10:24 pm
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| I thought the colour pallette is wrong on SG-1000 games on SMS/GG/MD? | |
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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2014 11:01 pm
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| You can use a loader to get correct colours on a Game Gear, otherwise you get nothing. On a Mega Drive, you can't get any graphics. The Master System does indeed have a rather different palette. | |
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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:37 am
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Here's some data from an old analysis (from 2007) - which might have some bad dumps clouding the issue:
Games with no TMR SEGA:
Games with bad checksums:
Games with Japan region codes:
Games with invalid region codes:
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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 12:03 pm
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| There's no program to fix checksum/region code? | |
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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 3:56 pm
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I think it may be more likely that people have fixed the checksums and added headers to many of the ROMs circulating around online in the years since. Certainly on other consoles, that has been the case, where region and copy protections have been patched out of a number of the ROMs you can get today. |
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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 3:59 pm
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I think there are some, but one I tried awhile back (sorry, can't remember the name) seemed to break if the ROM wasn't at least 32KB in size (the one I was trying to fix wasn't). It was looking for the header only at 0x7FF0-0x7FFF, so since the ROM ended at 0x2000, it was very confused. |
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Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 4:46 pm
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The ROMs you see are remarkably clean, there's usually no need to patch the headers as piracy devices boot to a loader first. We are seeing hard-patched hacks for other reasons though.
Nobody released a header editor because we want to avoid these "fixes" happening! Once emulators started booting to a BIOS, people started wanting to patch ROMs to work, which is silly. I guess now either they boot to a different BIOS, or to a patched BIOS (as in Meka), or the emulator soft-patches the files. In all cases, there's no need to edit ROM images on disk. |
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Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 2:03 am
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I too have performed an analysis of Japanese SMS games. I found 73 Japan exclusive ROMs (including SMS-GG ROMs) - of these, 43 had one or more of:
That leaves 30 Japan exclusives which should pass the tests performed by export BIOSes:
Of course, all of the ROMs which were released both in Japanese- and export-style cartridges also pass.
It's good to hear that in fact, a MarkIII-to-SMS converter would be useful for playing games, as well as for dumping. So, is there any way to get hold of one of these converters, other than by building it myself? |
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Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 6:48 am
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Nobody out there sells one, it's a DIY thing at this point. |
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Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:54 am
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| This is probably well documented but is there a circuit diagram available somewhere on the website that shows Mark III to SMS pin conversion? | |
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Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 8:07 pm
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I don't have a diagram, but I did make up a table showing the pin arrangement for making such a converter: http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=76032#76032
This post of mine also has some important info: http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=76089#76089 |
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Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2014 9:51 pm
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This is the wiring I used:
http://pastebin.com/BDwLurrR Unfortunately I don't have many games to tests, but the ones I have all worked nicely. I didn't know of your adapter when I tried to do mine. I tried to use the indications on Maxim's page to the best of my knowledge (which doesn't say much, eh). Differences with yours: - B2 isn't connected to anything (yours is to +5V). I had it initially connected to 46 (CSCN4 / Reset) but it gave me a black screen. - B4 is connected to 5, you said it breaks compatibility with two games. I'll remove it eventually. - B9 is to 39 (Refresh) (yours is to 3) - B11 is to 34 (CONT) (yours isn't) - B19 is to both 11 (M0-7) and 36 (A15) (yours is 36 only) Any thoughts on these differences? |
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 4:54 pm Last edited by ichigobankai on Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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PCB for Bock received and soldered.
Juste a little mistake with the reset line, need to be cut. The part/ref given by DB is really good (more than the Chinese one sells buy tototek), i've asked/received 3 samples from sullinscorp. I'll test my whole Mark III set and make a compatibility list. I've only tested ~20 games for the moment. 
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:03 pm
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Thanks! I'm trying to make an FM PBC version to support Mark III games. I've got the connectors (ironically the same two types as you!) and I need to make a few tests before ordering boards... What's the issue with the reset signal you encountered? Raphnet made a regular Mark III PBC and, looking at his schematic, he also seems to have encountered an issue with Reset. Maybe there is something wrong with available documentation? |
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:38 pm Last edited by jarreboum on Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
What pinout have you been using?
I also had a problem With Reset. According to http://www.smspower.org/maxim/Documents/Pinouts , several commercial adapters connected Reset to +5V and CSCN4. While it may work to play export games on a Jp console, the opposite just makes the console hang at boot. I decided not to detangle Reset, +5V and CSCN4 and just disconnect these pins. I wish we had a definitive pinout for everybody to see on the website, currently people just try to devise their own based on incomplete information and tend not to share their findings. Someone posted on the Japanese side of the forum with an admittedly slightly different one to work on the Game Gear. No pinout either. |
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:43 pm
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AWESOME.
I have been waiting for this for years. |
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:53 pm Last edited by ichigobankai on Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:59 pm; edited 3 times in total |
I think too ! If /reset is connected to VCC I'm only getting black screen. For B19, It's only connected to 11 (M0-7) on my board. I've tested games with and without mappers, and save (Phantasy Star read/saves are working) B1, B2 are connected together on mark III pcb B4, B20 are not connected to anything For the pinout, i've taken maxim's pinouts/informations. I'll make / post it here. (see pictures) 
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 5:57 pm
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| Thanks for that info guys, when I can make my Japanese Phantasy Star sing in glorious FM on my NTSC Genesis I will post my pinout for all. | |
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:29 pm
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| Now is the opportunity to find what works and make schematics that are correct! My pinout docs were just collected from various stuff spread all over the place. I find it particularly hard to deal with bare lists of pins to connect, I think you need to have some understanding of the functions you're connecting. | |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:36 am
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Success, I made a very crude adapter which enables an Mark III FMPBC!
The only difference I noted from SMS FMPBC is: on SMS PBC: -MD_A16 to SMS_A15 -MD_CE to SMS_M0-7 on M3 PBC -MD_A16 to nowhere -MD_CE to M3_A15 Else I followed ichigobankai's suggestions and everything worked well. I attached diagrams of my SMS PBC and M3 PBC pinouts on FM PBC. The only thing to note on my diagrams is that CARTOE (from Megadrive) goes to a CPLD which gates it into #CART - I do this because the FMPBC has a BIOS which sets up the Z80 stack pointer and therefore needs to disable game ROM at startup. Video or it didn't happen: http://youtu.be/JYZMHL3xyfU 
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 6:48 am
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very nice !
I've wrote my pinout : FRONT side mkIII #jap #euro euro
b1 vcc vcc 1,35 b2 /csnc4 vcc 1,35 b3 /cs - - b4 /m8-req - - b5 /rd /rd 4 b6 /wr /wr 2 b7 io rd - - b8 io wr - - b9 /mreq /mreq 3 b10 /crt0e /ce 13 b11 /cont - - b12 /ras0 - - b13 /cas0 - - b14 ca7 - - b15 /ras1 - - b16 /cas1 - - b17 /rcsel - - b18 a14 a14 6 b19 a15 a15 36* b20 /m1 - - b21 gnd gnd 19,20,21 b22 gnd gnd 19,20,21 * can be /m0-7 (pin #11) or both. Works in all cases, tested with and without mapper BACK side (very easy) mkIII #jap #euro euro a1 a0 a0 25 a2 a1 a1 26 a3 a2 a2 27 a4 a3 a3 28 a5 a4 a4 29 a6 a5 a5 30 a7 a6 a6 31 a8 a7 a7 32 a9 a8 a8 8 a10 a9 a9 9 a11 a10 a10 12 a12 a11 a11 10 a13 a12 a12 33 a14 a13 a13 7 a15 d0 d0 24 a16 d1 d1 23 a17 d2 d2 22 a18 d3 d3 18 a19 d4 d4 17 a20 d5 d5 16 a21 d6 d6 15 a22 d7 d7 14 |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 1:04 pm Last edited by Paul Baker on Sat Nov 29, 2014 1:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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In order to help with the design of a MarkIII-to-SMS converter, I have traced out the connections within a Card Catcher. Other than the Japanese SMS, I believe this is the only piece of hardware which can give us official information on a mapping between the Japanese cartridge port and the export cartridge / expansion port.
The table below contains the Card Catcher connections in the first 2 columns. It also consolidates the other pinouts mentioned in this thread, so that everything is in one place: Japanese Card ApolloBoy jarreboum ichigobankai
* ApolloBoy reports that connecting B4 and 5 "breaks compatibility with After Burner and Space Harrier".
Cartridge Catcher Connector A1 25 25 25 25 A2 26 26 26 26 A3 27 27 27 27 A4 28 28 28 28 A5 29 29 29 29 A6 30 30 30 30 A7 31 31 31 31 A8 32 32 32 32 A9 8 8 8 8 A10 9 9 9 9 A11 12 12 12 12 A12 10 10 10 10 A13 33 33 33 33 A14 7 7 7 7 A15 24 24 24 24 A16 23 23 23 23 A17 22 22 22 22 A18 18 18 18 18 A19 17 17 17 17 A20 16 16 16 16 A21 15 15 15 15 A22 14 14 14 14 B1 1,35 1,35 1,35 1,35 B2 1,35 1,35 - 1,35 B3 3 - - - B4 5 5* 5 - B5 4 4 4 4 B6 2 2 2 2 B7 - - - - B8 - - - - B9 - 3 39 3 B10 13 13 13 13 B11 34 - 34 - B12 - - - - B13 - - - - B14 - - - - B15 - - - - B16 - - - - B17 - - - - B18 6 6 6 6 B19 11 36,11 36,11 36,11 B20 - 37 37 - B21 19,21+ 19,20,21 19,20,21 19,20,21 B22 19,21+ 19,20,21 19,20,21 19,20,21 + The Card Catcher leaves pin 20 disconnected. The only pins for which there is not complete consensus are: B2, B3, B4, B9, B11 and B20. |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 1:38 pm
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very nice work ;)
I've tested B9 without connection (like card catcher), games runs fine (with & without mapper) - on my pcb B4 "is" connected to 5, but it did not make any difference, it's not connected on MARK III games pcb. - same thing for B11 (connected on my board but not used/connected on MARK III games pcb) A pictures of games pcb variant (minus the one with sram/battery) NB. I've checked connection on phantasy star pcb, and B3 seems to be connected to something... unfortunately i've got only one PS (so i will not open/destroy it). BTW i've tested save & load everything runs fine. 
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 5:37 pm
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The Card Catcher is a very interesting find, and brings a new light on some of the pins.
- B2 can probably be safely connected to +5V. I can only attest that an adapter without this connection still works with the few games I was able to test it with, but I can't guarantee it doesn't break compatibility for some cartridges. I will modify my adapter to include it. - B3 and B9 are the main differences I guess. I connected Refresh(B9) to Refresh(39) based on the Master Gear adaptor pinout, and I was surprised to see the others connect it to MReq(3) instead. Maxim however says the function of B9 is uncertain yet. - The card Catcher lacks the pins 36 to 50 from the export cartridge. This would account for the lack of consensus on pins B9 B19 and B20. It could be an indication these aren't really needed in an adapter? Were these pins (36 to 50) ever shown to be used by commercial software on an export system? |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 5:50 pm Last edited by ichigobankai on Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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I've checked my whole Mark III set (minus cards, because i do not have a card catcher)
Just need some time to write it properly. Edit. here we go : 1301 Fantasy Zone
1302 Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto 1303 Hokuto no Ken 1306 Alex Kidd no Miracle World 1307 Ashura 1308 Ninja 1309 High School! Kimengumi 1313 Great Golf 1314 Double Target - Cynthia no Nemuri 1315 Loretta no Shouzou - Sherlock Holmes 1318 Sukeban Deka II - Shoujo Tekkamen Densetsu 1323 The Pro Yakyuu - Pennant Race 1324 Makai Retsuden 1328 Anmitsu Hime 1331 Haja no Fuuin 1346 Super Wonder Boy Monster World 1355 Tensai Bakabon 1361 Lord of Sword 1362 Final Bubble Bobble 1363 Maou Golvellius 1367 Nekkyuu Koushien 1046 The Castle 001 Argos no Juujiken 002 Solomon no Kagi - Oujo Rihita no Namida = 24 cartridges |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:10 pm
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| Those are the games which do not work, right? | |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm
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| yes ;) | |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:55 pm
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I have checked the header of all those games. They all have either an invalid checksum either a region code set to Japan.
Apart from Ys: [./Ys (JP).sms]
Size ...... 262144 Header .... 54 4D 52 20 53 45 47 41 20 20 10 9D 13 70 01 4F System .... SMS Export (4) Size ...... 128k CheckSum .. 9D10, Ok FullSum ... 178D37C It AFAIK should work. Can you try again? |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:58 pm
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My bad !
It is working perfectly.... NB. I've deleted it from the previous post. |
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 9:07 pm
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With this adapter + a "sms boot loader" type of ROM available one would be able to run more games on a unmodified system.
( Idea: it would be nice to develop a "boot loader" stub that could be easily embedded in homebrew code (say, as a cheat code, hold 1+2 on startup to go to Boot Loader) so that more people could access a Boot Loader. A very small version could fit in less than 1 KB and could even be included with some repro/patches as an extra. Something like this with as small as possible (with minimal menu) http://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/SMSBootLoader-SMS *EDIT* additionally, if we are going this way of embedding "tool" in homebrew if would be even better to also have something like "sms dump" http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12294 ) |
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 2:08 am
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I've only used the one from tototek, what makes the other one better? |
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 7:35 am Last edited by ichigobankai on Sun Nov 30, 2014 10:23 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Overall quality :
- "Stronger", gold contacts do not/can not move when you bend/solder pins. - Pins are easier to bend But no one sell them (non stock), you need to ask a quote directly at Sullins (btw price is a complete mystery), maybe DB know how much they cost. Other companies may have a compatible reference, like TE Connectivity, (i do not check this for the moment) 
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 9:13 am
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There is a lot of information about the pinouts of the Japanese SMS in this recent post. For example, the post tells us that the Japanese SMS leaves pin B20 disconnected. Therefore it should be safe to do the same in any adapter. |
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 2:33 pm
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as for B2, most carts actually connect B1 to B2. It is used to say "there's a cart, disable the card reader." The only japanese games that do not have the bridge between B1 and B2 are the ones that use the 3D glasses, because in that case both slots should be enabled.
For the cart, it makes no difference if B2 is powered or not. However, since B2 is read, and not written, I'd definitely say it should be left unconnected |
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2014 3:40 am
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Digikey is non-stock but shows price and minimum order quantity of 10. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/EBA22DCTN/EBA22DCTN-ND/4537383 |
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2014 3:27 pm
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What tool gives that particular output, if you don't mind me asking? |
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