Butter Meister
Student
As my quarantine project, I have been experimenting with the 161 in 1 cartridge. https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=161-in-1_Series_1 You've heard about this multicart before i'm sure, or at least seen it on eBay or AliExpress. It holds several Neo Geo games, and then a bunch of lousy ROM hacks.
Like many others I had been curious to see if its contents could be modified, mostly out of rage that Windjammers wasn’t in it. I’ve used my JTAG and soldering abilities to figure out how it works and if anything can be changed Here’s the specs:
I’ve bought 3 carts, new off AliExpress, and all of them are Version 4, they must be the only ones in production now.
CPLD - ALTERA MAX EPM3256ATC144 - 10N
There’s three of these on the board, each connecting to the flash chips, the cartridge pins, and each other. In addition, the CP1 on the SB board connects to the microcontroller, and CP1 on the XB board connects to the NOR flash chips.
Microcontroller - STC 11F08XE 351 - LQFP44
This connects to the CP1 SB, however I am still unsure exactly how it is used.
NOR - Micron JS28F512M29EWL
Two NOR flash chips 64 megabytes each, enough to have any released Neo Geo game loaded into from the ‘mystery flash chips’. Multicarts often load a ROM into a flash bank to play off of, which is possibly what these do.
Flash storage - F0095H0
And now the biggest mystery. Four flash chips of unknown origin resting on weird adaptor stilts. I haven’t found any information about these online, no datasheets or nothing. I even resorted to emailing AliExpress sellers of this chip for information, but they had none. I did find a possible alternate name for these, BK58F0095HVX010A. All I can surmise is the P chip holds game programming, the V chip holds sound, and the C1/C3 and C5/C7 chips hold the graphics, as they go to the CPLDs that connect to those relevant cartridge pins.
I am continuing to trace the pins of each chip on this cartridge with boundary scanning, and sometimes by eye, just to figure out the pinout of the stilt chips. I do have some useful things for you here. I have dumped the NOR chips, and the programming for the CPLDs, which you can download here. I also have my (as of now incomplete) board tracing work for you to see.
As of now, my goal is to discover the pinout of the mystery “stilt chips” and construct an adapter board to read its contents. My dumps and research are available for you all, and I hope for assistance or contributions on this project
Dumps - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBwigZcanxIWmZf6rJRyfP-kC3phxE3t?usp=sharing
Pinouts, my notes, and datasheets - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-YMRnKtDR4kIXg0ZiDjbrplcoMx6NIcARI7GP8PLKb0/edit?usp=sharing
Like many others I had been curious to see if its contents could be modified, mostly out of rage that Windjammers wasn’t in it. I’ve used my JTAG and soldering abilities to figure out how it works and if anything can be changed Here’s the specs:
I’ve bought 3 carts, new off AliExpress, and all of them are Version 4, they must be the only ones in production now.
CPLD - ALTERA MAX EPM3256ATC144 - 10N
There’s three of these on the board, each connecting to the flash chips, the cartridge pins, and each other. In addition, the CP1 on the SB board connects to the microcontroller, and CP1 on the XB board connects to the NOR flash chips.
Microcontroller - STC 11F08XE 351 - LQFP44
This connects to the CP1 SB, however I am still unsure exactly how it is used.
NOR - Micron JS28F512M29EWL
Two NOR flash chips 64 megabytes each, enough to have any released Neo Geo game loaded into from the ‘mystery flash chips’. Multicarts often load a ROM into a flash bank to play off of, which is possibly what these do.
Flash storage - F0095H0
And now the biggest mystery. Four flash chips of unknown origin resting on weird adaptor stilts. I haven’t found any information about these online, no datasheets or nothing. I even resorted to emailing AliExpress sellers of this chip for information, but they had none. I did find a possible alternate name for these, BK58F0095HVX010A. All I can surmise is the P chip holds game programming, the V chip holds sound, and the C1/C3 and C5/C7 chips hold the graphics, as they go to the CPLDs that connect to those relevant cartridge pins.
I am continuing to trace the pins of each chip on this cartridge with boundary scanning, and sometimes by eye, just to figure out the pinout of the stilt chips. I do have some useful things for you here. I have dumped the NOR chips, and the programming for the CPLDs, which you can download here. I also have my (as of now incomplete) board tracing work for you to see.
As of now, my goal is to discover the pinout of the mystery “stilt chips” and construct an adapter board to read its contents. My dumps and research are available for you all, and I hope for assistance or contributions on this project
Dumps - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBwigZcanxIWmZf6rJRyfP-kC3phxE3t?usp=sharing
Pinouts, my notes, and datasheets - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-YMRnKtDR4kIXg0ZiDjbrplcoMx6NIcARI7GP8PLKb0/edit?usp=sharing
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