Reprogrammable Genesis Cartridge


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

Build a reprogrammable cartridge. Many things can be done with such a cartridge: You can develop your own applications or games and try them on real hardware instead of using an emulator. If you`d like to get into genesis development, I think the genesis technical documentation available at zophar is a good starting point. You can listen to genesis music (. gym) on a real genesis.


Reprogrammable Genesis Cartridge
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.

There is a rom named Flavio`s GYM Player which needs to have a. GYM file appended to it. Once loaded, the rom plays the gym file. Yes, it`s possible to download real games roms and use them with this cartridge. Unfortunately, it`s illegal. Some people say that if you erase the rom within 24 hours, it`s legal to use them. (I dont know if it`s true, I am not a lawyer). Since many of those games are not sold anymore and have been `abandonned` by the company owning the copyright, they may be considered as abandonware. (And even then, I`m not sure if it`s legal) Here are a few pictures of the second version, which supports games up to 1024K (1Meg) by using 2 AT49F040 512K flash chips. This new version can also hold 2 games of 512K each. Each time the console`s reset switch is pressed, the current game is changed. A jumper selects between the 1x1024K and 2x512K mode. Here`s the second version schematic. I used two AT49F040 512K flash chips. The cartridge can hold a game of 1024K (1Meg) or 2 512K games. When 512K games are used, we can alternate between them by pressing the reset switch on the genesis: The first version which used AT49F002 flash chips did not have the 74ls90 to alternate between banks. The A18 signal was simply not connected since the flash chips addressing stops at A17. To program the flashs, I use an old universal programmer from xeltek. You can buy an universal programmer from ebay for approximately 50$ US....




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