Heh, as if a bootleg wasn't hacked up enough...
My latest project will involve the documentation, dissection, and modification of one or more bootleg Neo Geo MVS carts. Yes, they are frowned upon and detested by the Neo-Geo.com community, but I intend to make something cool and/or useful out of them. After all, nobody really wants them around, people throw them away, but nobody in the community really knows how they work or what can be done with them. I intend to find out. A list of hypothetical uses for bootleg carts I have come up with should be helpful to clarify:
- document MVS memory mappers for homebrew developers
- salvage original PCB's for doing repair jobs on legit carts
- fix 'em up for personal enjoyment (I like fixing things)
- any other situation which requires an MVS cartridge that nobody cares if it gets broken
Most bootlegs are said to be buggy and it is often said that they seem to have reliability issues. The main reason for this is amateure soldering skills. Yup. Most bootlegs are done by one-man operations, working out of a basement with some flash chips or eproms. Most of the reliability issues have to do with poor soldering, which can be fixed easily in most cases. Most damage is caused by jarring the cartridge, which cracks the solder joints. With a proper heat-controlled iron these joints can be reflowed and the main problem solved.
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