Magician Lord Boot?

La4s

n00b
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Posts
23
I have never seen boards like these before, is it a boot?

mlord1iy4.jpg


mlord2zg0.jpg
 

Pas

Camel Slug
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Posts
507
Nope thats a legit cart. Looks just like both of the carts I have owned.
The old carts look alot different than the new ones...

Check out http://www.zen96737.zen.co.uk/originals.htm

Also check the pics for Ninja Combat and Nam1975 (similar in style to the ML cart)
 
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La4s

n00b
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Posts
23
Thanks Pas. Just found the chips very strange. I was thinking it had something to do with the game being and older one but wasn't 100% sure.
 
Joined
Mar 9, 2007
Posts
439
wow, that is weird.

Opening carts scares me. I always think I am going to mess up the labels. I usually just look threw the vents on the cart with a flash light.
 

Pas

Camel Slug
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Posts
507
I make sure to open every cart I get to check for boots, cover rom windows, and take a few pics so if I ever descide to trade/sell it I can send the person a pic of the actuall cart they are buying to know its legit. I have been thinking though that I have now taken pictures of almost 70 unique carts (some multiples and variants as well) and, although the pics arent great, of making a site like the one I referenced above for others to check...as well as some other pages that may be usefull all in one place for people to reference. I was also thinking of adding a jumper list for each cart that I own since that should be easy with pics of all the boards. Not quite sure when I will have the time to do the layout work though.
 

madman

Blame madman, You Know You Want To.,
Joined
Jun 1, 2007
Posts
7,518
That's legit, the early games used off the shelf logic parts before switching to the custom NEO chips which are essentially a bunch of those chips in a single custom chip. If anyone ever made a worthwhile homebrew, one could easily make new carts using those standard chips.
 

Neo Alec

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2000
Posts
11,927
Yeah, looking through the vents with plenty of light is often enough to verify that what's on the inside is normal. It's when I see something strange that I open it.
 

channelmaniac

Mr Neo Fix-it
15 Year Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Posts
4,275
Wow... I sure would like to borrow those boards for a few days to pin out the connections in an attempt to reverse engineer the NEO-273 IC

RJ
 

Pas

Camel Slug
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Posts
507
channelmaniac said:
Wow... I sure would like to borrow those boards for a few days to pin out the connections in an attempt to reverse engineer the NEO-273 IC

RJ

There are actually quite a few carts that use the old multichip method. I dont have every cart but the ones I know of so far are:
Blues Journey
Cyber Lip
Namm 1975
Ninja Combat
The Super Spy
Top Player Golf
Baseball Stars Pro
Magician Lord
Im sure there are others as well...
 

Kyuusaku

B. Jenet's Firstmate
Joined
Mar 26, 2003
Posts
419
Just want to point out that the 4x74273, 1x74174, 1x7404 circuit isn't exactly the same as the NEO-273, the TTL circuit can address 32M and IIRC the 273 can address 128M. Since the IC is just a bunch of DFFs to latch the address for the CROM and SROM it's pretty easy to derive the extra bits (and the last bits for 512M and 1G CROM). Basically on the rising edge, the CROM A bits are latched, on the falling SROM are, and that's all there is to the chip.

BTW, in case anyone's wondering the PROG board's TTL circuit is NOT equivalent to the NEO-PCM, it's completely different; the early boards have separate ROM bus for each of the YM2610's ADPCM-A and B ports while the NEO-PCM services both ports with one ROM bus.
 

channelmaniac

Mr Neo Fix-it
15 Year Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Posts
4,275
The only difference between 32Mb and 128Mb are 2 address lines. ;)

It shouldn't be that hard to figure out the majority of the pins on the NEO-257 from the existing cart then extrapolate the rest.

RJ
 
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