TL866ii Plus programmer help - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: ironsniper1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2021, 05:50:18 pm
content: Hey everyone, I am trying to use this programmer to dump an old Sega Genesis cart, but I am having a hard time finding info on the chip or getting it auto detected in the software, I have already desoldered the main chip and have it in the programmer but could use help figuring out the software. if anyone has any advice let me know.And yes I am on Windows and Yes I know I should probably use Linux, but I don't want to have to use Linux unless I really need to and yes I know I can use a virtualmachine but I have had bad luck with USB devices with it.EDIT yes it is a mask rom and yes there are cart dumpers out there however this game is known to have the pcb go bad and so the only way to figure out if its the chip or pcb is to desolder the chip and dump it

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2021, 10:06:53 pm
content: Most masked ROM chips follow a pinout set forth by JEDEC. You can see examples of such pinouts on this page:https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Mask_ROM_pinoutAre there any markings on the chip which tells what kind of ROM chip it is?One way to get the pinout would be to trace the connections from the edge connector of the Sega cartridge back to ROM pins to see which pins on the ROM are used for what. Here is table of the signals used for a Sega cartridge:https://retroconsoles.fandom.com/wiki/Sega_Genesis_CartridgeOnce you know what the pinout of the ROM is you might be able to get TL866ii to read it or you could use an Arduino to read the ROM chip yourself:http://danceswithferrets.org/geekblog/?p=315

author: ironsniper1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 02:22:11 am
content: thanks for the links I will look them over when I get the chance, as for the arduino I am trying to use what I already have on hand with out spending more, as for the markings here is a picture of the chip itself

author: ledtester
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 02:44:17 am
content: I searched for "40 pin sega rom" and found this page:https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?16706-Trying-to-read-bin-from-Sega-rom-chipwhich suggests the chipmightbe a AM27C400.And then I found this page which sells an adapter for the TL866:https://www.tindie.com/products/GGLABS/e2r16-27c400-adapter-for-tl866-amiga-kickstart/which could explain why your efforts to dump the chip have failed so far.The wayback machine has the spies.com web page mentioned in the first link:https://web.archive.org/web/20030202004922/http://www.spies.com/~arcade/schematics/ROMref.txt

author: Electro Fan
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 04:22:48 am
content: Quote from: ledtester on January 15, 2021, 02:44:17 amThat’s some pretty good research.

author: retiredfeline
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 05:21:28 am
content: If you don't want to buy an adapter, it's fairly easy to rig an Arduino, and a couple of serial in parallel out shift registers to read the ROM, since you only need to read, not burn. The shift register is to drive the address lines to conserve Arduino pins. Or even a counter whose reset and clock are Arduino controlled.

author: ironsniper1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2021, 05:22:27 pm
content: Quote from: ledtester on January 15, 2021, 02:44:17 ami went ahead and got the adapter and all of its parts though i did get a zif socket rather than the regular socket

author: ironsniper1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2021, 02:09:32 am
content: hey everyone i got my adapter and am attempting to make a genesis eprom, but i need to do a endian byte swap but it seems the software for my programmer does not do this unless i am missing it, does anyone know of any software that works with my programmer that can do this?

author: ironsniper1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 03, 2021, 02:53:21 am
content: got the byte swap figured out but my adapter will not program, here is a short clip of what happens, i did buy a second and different adapter but looking at thishttps://gglabs.us/sites/gglabs.us/files/e2r16-A00_sch.pdfit swaps the pins around causing it to program the eprom incorrectly, so now i have bought a third to see if that will work, if anyone has any ideas please let me know

author: ironsniper1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 14, 2021, 06:32:30 pm
content: i figured i would update this, the issue was with both of my adapters, ended up buying a third that worked perfectly, however now i have a new question, i bought what i thought was a 29C256 flash eprom off of ebay from china and just recently got around to trying it out and couldnt program it and thought i was a bad chip,however i then remembered some youtube videos talking about fake chips from china and how to spot them and got a qtip and some ipa and used it on the chip and managed to remove the text saying what it was, so my question is,is there anyway to tell what kind of chip this really is using my programmer?