Forums

Is it possible to play an SG-1000/Mark III game on a US system by putting the bare board into the cartridge port?

No, you need an adaptor because the connections are different.

How do you create said converter?

The other problem being that most Japanese games don't have the necessary header for western consoles to detect them as valid games?

I guess you could put a custom ROM in the converter itself that adds the header?

I did this using a hand-built adapter and "hot-swapping" from a custom program that satisfies the export BIOS and then pauses while a button is pressed down, giving time for the swap. The system sometimes crashes during the swap, but you can simply repeat the process until successful. Putting the BIOS-appeasement program directly in the adapter seems both better and a bit more difficult to build — basically it's a custom mapper of a sort. You can use the very same program I wrote for my sg-1000 to game gear conversions, except you likely need to add an instruction to unmap the BIOS-appeasement ROM. The zip file attached to the post over there includes source code.

Post with ZIP file:
https://www.smspower.org/forums/16912-SG1000SC3000MarkIIIJPSMSRArrExportSMSRArrG...

Post with adapter details:
https://www.smspower.org/forums/16879-MKIIIJPToSMSAdapter?start=50#102297

Author	Message
boye Joined: 21 Apr 2019 Posts: 80	Playing Mark III/SG-1000 games on an SMS (was: Question about Mark III/SG-1000 games) Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:29 pm Last edited by boye on Sat Apr 27, 2019 3:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
boye Joined: 21 Apr 2019 Posts: 80	Is it possible to play an SG-1000/Mark III game on a US system by putting the bare board into the cartridge port?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14740 Location: London	Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 12:36 am
	No, you need an adaptor because the connections are different.

boye Joined: 21 Apr 2019 Posts: 80	Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:04 am
boye Joined: 21 Apr 2019 Posts: 80	How do you create said converter?

KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 510	Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 4:34 am
KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 510	The other problem being that most Japanese games don't have the necessary header for western consoles to detect them as valid games?

boye Joined: 21 Apr 2019 Posts: 80	Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 3:46 pm
boye Joined: 21 Apr 2019 Posts: 80	I guess you could put a custom ROM in the converter itself that adds the header?

bsittler Joined: 22 Apr 2018 Posts: 530	Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 12:54 am
bsittler Joined: 22 Apr 2018 Posts: 530	I did this using a hand-built adapter and "hot-swapping" from a custom program that satisfies the export BIOS and then pauses while a button is pressed down, giving time for the swap. The system sometimes crashes during the swap, but you can simply repeat the process until successful. Putting the BIOS-appeasement program directly in the adapter seems both better and a bit more difficult to build — basically it's a custom mapper of a sort. You can use the very same program I wrote for my sg-1000 to game gear conversions, except you likely need to add an instruction to unmap the BIOS-appeasement ROM. The zip file attached to the post over there includes source code. Post with ZIP file: https://www.smspower.org/forums/16912-SG1000SC3000MarkIIIJPSMSRArrExportSMSRArrG... Post with adapter details: https://www.smspower.org/forums/16879-MKIIIJPToSMSAdapter?start=50#102297

Forums

View topic - Playing Mark III/SG-1000 games on an SMS (was: Question about Mark III/SG-1000 games)