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View topic - Sonic 2-in-1 (was: Undumped Sonic game gear game..)

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  • Joined: 19 Jul 2008
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Sonic 2-in-1 (was: Undumped Sonic game gear game..)
Post Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 5:15 pm
I don't think this game has ever been dumped:

http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_2_in_1

If anyone has it or a scan of the cart It would be nice to see. It's hard to find any info about it on the internet, I've only seen a couple mentions of it on a few websites.
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Post Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:04 pm
I have it. It is an hardware mapper to switch between ROM on successive power ups. Dumped separately they are regular roms.
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Post Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 11:31 pm
So by hardware mapper, do you mean there is a switch somewhere on the game to choose what game you play? Also, could you take a picture of the cart if this is the case?
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Post Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:03 am
There's no switch, it changes automatically on a power-off power-on cycle.
I'll try to take a picture someday.
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Post Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 11:15 am
This is a common way of making multi-games, a lot simpler than menus. There is a simple counter chip that selects the high address lines and it is incremented on startup; a capacitor allows it to retain its value for a second or two while the power's off. Thus you can cycle through games with the power switch and it resets back to the first one if you leave it off for longer.

I have somewhere a Game Boy pirate cart with 20 games set up this way.
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Post Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:53 pm
My Game Gear gets sad if I turn it off and on quickly
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Post Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 7:27 pm
Here's a photo of Sonic 2in1 as requested.
Sonic 2 in 1.jpg (619.54 KB)
Sonic 2 in 1.jpg

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Post Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 7:29 pm
Thanks for the pic. I was wondering if the cart even exists. Sort of weird how the cartridge switches between games.
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 2:19 pm
So, the wiki could still use a full scan of the box. I finally found a good large pic of the cart on ebay.co.uk. Can Bock or someone else scan the front, side, and back of the box? Thanks. As a bonus you can post the scan on your website.
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:42 pm
I would like to see the board inside. I was working on a hardware switcher too, using a 74ls73 IC like maxim mentioned above. I never got to testing it however.

You can see that this was originally made for Sega Genesis/Megadrive, but could easily be used in any console with a reset pin on the cart-edge.
7473int.png (42.71 KB)
aaaa
7473int.png

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Post Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 6:32 pm
The Game Box series (TecToy) on Master System has this type of game switching.
Don't know how useful it is to you but I took some pictures of the PCB of a cart I have on eBay.
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 3:26 pm
Sorry for reviving a dead topic xD

But I have a question....

If I were to find the Sonic 2 in 1 Game cart and dump it, would the roms be separated on their own, or is there a way to dump the entire cart and then be able to emulate the 2 games with emulators that can do the power cycle game switch?
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 7:17 pm
You append the two roms together that would be the same as what's on the chip. Then up to the emulator to "simulate" the switch. Generally what people refer to as "Mapper" refer to any behavior expressed by the board so that would include it.
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 7:46 pm
I guess an emulator could detect the checksum and alternate between the contained ROMs. Few have the necessary power cycle UI, though. It's an extreme measure to emulate something essentially worse than just having the separate ROMs.
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Post Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 9:33 pm
Was the cartridge dumped yet? because I am seeing a bit of an update in the title of the topic. I am not seeing that rom in the releases section.
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Post Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2016 9:59 pm
It's already dumped, but is identical to the separate cartridges so there's no point releasing it.
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i want to play it
Post Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2021 9:20 pm
can you give me a link to download it
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2021 10:12 am
Tom wrote
My Game Gear gets sad if I turn it off and on quickly


Not if you use my GG Power Board Pro upgrade...[available sometime in 2023 :'( ]

But seriously though, rapid power switching is not a good idea on the old Game Gear power PCBs. I'm surprised they opted for that.
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Same here~ I intend to make a video on it.
Post Posted: Tue May 04, 2021 1:58 am
Can ya put down the link for sonic 2 in 1 (game gear)?
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Post Posted: Sun May 09, 2021 6:34 pm
The ROM contents were already released long ago and are literally a concatenation of the standard dumps of each game from the collection. So far as I know there is no point in doing this for FPGA consoles, emulation or flash cartridges though because none of them support this "swap on reset" circuit anyhow, so it would only be exactly equivalent to running the first game in the collection with a bunch of wasted bits at the end

(Unless of course the flash cartridge or emulator or FPGA console simply crashes or refuses to launch because of the ROM image being too large [1MB/8Mbit])

I believe it should always use df21d42b55b1b4a25704957fe323728b775eb84d for Spinball and for Sonic 2 it is always dabb452e416b4fa9cb83d8ddd307c2a32c3a1a7f
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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 3:02 am
Last edited by bsittler on Thu May 20, 2021 5:28 am; edited 1 time in total
I haven't yet dumped this particular cartridge but i thought I would share a few pictures in case anyone is curious

There are more pictures available (PM me for a link) but the sizes might be too large for this forum

There are no pictures of the inside of the cartridge shell because I only pried it open far enough to extract the PCB

I bought this one loose so cannot help with box/manual/etc. scans or pictures
Screenshot_20210519-195259.png (3.02 MB)
Parts side of PCB
Screenshot_20210519-195259.png
Screenshot_20210519-195318.png (2.94 MB)
Reverse side of PCB (171-7146A-01)
Screenshot_20210519-195318.png
Screenshot_20210519-195829.png (2.65 MB)
Label side of cartridge (670-7612-50)
Screenshot_20210519-195829.png
Screenshot_20210519-195822.png (1.5 MB)
Reverse side of cartridge (ASSEMBLED IN UK)
Screenshot_20210519-195822.png
Screenshot_20210519-201001.png (1.83 MB)
Largest IC (SEGA MPR-18336-S)
Screenshot_20210519-201001.png
Screenshot_20210519-200939.png (2.02 MB)
Second-largest IC (SEGA 315-5426)
Screenshot_20210519-200939.png

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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 4:10 am
Just confirmed by dumping, the two ROM images this cartridge presents through the cartridge connector are bit-for-bit identical to the individual releases of these same games:

512K 'Sonic Spinball (U) [!].gg'
Checking for export header with matching CRC... NO
sha256:b19a326e2d19697f4fba02ab5cb0f1bba334d4b197d247a66d5dd609f9599540 Sonic Spinball (U) [!].gg
sha1:df21d42b55b1b4a25704957fe323728b775eb84d Sonic Spinball (U) [!].gg
md5:8e3b44fda375ad9748b678e9c6b45502 Sonic Spinball (U) [!].gg
mekacrc:B4010E08A03EFD5A Sonic Spinball (U) [!].gg
crc32:a9210434 Sonic Spinball (U) [!].gg

512K 'Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (U) [!].gg'
Checking for export header with matching CRC... NO
sha256:2826d679932566411003334cd4b9d8b3618248b6693e98822f5b2425430623e0 Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (U) [!].gg
sha1:dabb452e416b4fa9cb83d8ddd307c2a32c3a1a7f Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (U) [!].gg
md5:9c64846563d8b9a24400471322e53fb5 Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (U) [!].gg
mekacrc:D2612363E352F220 Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (U) [!].gg
crc32:95a18ec7 Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (U) [!].gg

I haven't unsoldered the ROM and anyhow lack the tools to dump it separately from the edge connector, so I don't know which order the two are concatenated in in the ROM. Probably a cleverer reader could analyze the circuit to determine this, though. At first boot after prolonged power off it presents Sonic 2 initially, and Sonic Spinball after a brief removal of power

The game-switching circuit didn't play nicely with the Tengu GG, so I dumped this using the Tengu Lythium (MD/GEN) dumper with an Analogue GG Adapter 1.1 on top
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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 4:40 am
Date codes suggest production in late 1995 or so, and this board revision (171-7146A-01) and ROM part number (MPR-18336-S) don't seem to be listed on https://www.smspower.org/Development/ROMPartNumbers (or anywhere else, for that matter!)

This mapper chip (315-5426) has been found before in other games https://www.smspower.org/forums/16487-UnknownSEGAGGMAPPERCHIP3155426#116275

I do wonder what's going on at pin 39 of the mapper IC. On this board it's connected to two passives, but I think in those other boards using the same mapper it only connects to one

The TI HC74 part seems to be a couple flip-flops https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/sn74hc74

The TI HC14 part seems to be six Schmitt-trigger inverters https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/sn74hc14
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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 8:14 pm
bsittler wrote
I do wonder what's going on at pin 39 of the mapper IC. On this board it's connected to two passives, but I think in those other boards using the same mapper it only connects to one
That's just a +5V pin. Here it's visibly connected to two decoupling capacitors instead of one. This makes sense: C1 is for the mapper IC, C2 is for the ROM.

Quote
The TI HC74 part seems to be a couple flip-flops https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/sn74hc74

The TI HC14 part seems to be six Schmitt-trigger inverters https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/sn74hc14
It looks very similar to the power-cycle-clocked 2600 multicart I found forever ago: https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=107406#p107406
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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 8:18 pm
lidnariq wrote
bsittler wrote
I do wonder what's going on at pin 39 of the mapper IC. On this board it's connected to two passives, but I think in those other boards using the same mapper it only connects to one
That's just a +5V pin. Here it's visibly connected to two decoupling capacitors instead of one. This makes sense: C1 is for the mapper IC, C2 is for the ROM.

Quote
The TI HC74 part seems to be a couple flip-flops https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/sn74hc74

The TI HC14 part seems to be six Schmitt-trigger inverters https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/sn74hc14
It looks very similar to the power-cycle-clocked 2600 multicart I found forever ago: https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=107406#p107406


Thank you! Your explanations make sense, and also good job having your nesdev post image attachments stull served/visible after so long! I rarely see such image hosting longevity on that forum
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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 8:28 pm
bsittler wrote
good job having your nesdev post image attachments stull served/visible after so long! I rarely see such image hosting longevity on that forum
I've been attempting to encourage people to attach images to the forum itself, because in the time the forum's had the "attach images" functioning, we've seen at least two different image hosting services come and go.

Only so much one can do, unfortunately.
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Post Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 10:22 pm
...which is why we have our “attachment fairy” mirror images as attachments, but it’s all manual...
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