Mario 7 in 1




Cartridge Front




Cartridge Board


What Is It?

An interesting multi, since it has a bunch of Mario games on it. Though, some are just hacks- replacing sprites in games like Adventure Island 2 with Mario-themed items.

The Games:

Super Mario Bros 3 (Japanese version), Super Mario Bros 2 (PAL version), Mario is Missing, Jackie Chan Kung Fu (With mario sprites), Adventure Island 2 (With mario sprites), Dunno (But with Mario sprites :-), and Flintstones.

The Tech:

A 1Mbyte PRG ROM, 1Mbyte CHR ROM, MMC3-like mapper with a cascaded post-mapper, and an 8K WRAM. The two red wires are from where I had to fix the cart.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------

This mapper has been assigned the number 52.  (that's 52 decimal)


OK, this mapper is fairly straight foreward.  Another cascaded mapper.
This time, it's MMC3 and an extra bank control register.  There is 1Mbyte
of PRG ROM and 1Mbyte of CHR ROM on this cart.

On this cart are 7 "Mario" games... well, three are "legit" Mario games-
SMB2, SMB3, and Mario is Missing.  The rest are weird graphics hacks.
Interestingly, all the games appear to be NTSC, except SMB2.  For some
reason, this is the PAL version!

---


The hardware:

It consists of 1 6264 8K RAM chip (for WRAM), and 3 glop-tops.  2 are
1Mbyte ROMs while the remaining chip is the mapper.  That's it.

An aside:  When I got this cart, it was sort of DOA.  The CHR ROM had some
major problems... apparently the CHR ROM underwent an ESD event (read: static
electricty) which blew the input protection circuitry.  There was a "soft"
short between A8 and A13 of about 34 ohms.  I managed to fix this however
by connecting A8 to 5V and then shorting A13 to ground.  The cart functions
properly and I got to dump it :-)


-

This mapper operates like any other MMC3, however it has a single byte
register at 6800h.  (This is probably mapped in at 6000-7FFFh, but I didn't
check)  After a reset, this register is 00h.  Writing to this area
sets the bank control byte.  It can only be written once.  To reset it and
allow another write, you must reset the console.

The rest of the registers are standard MMC3, and will not be discussed
further.

-

Bank Select Register:

7  bit  0
---------
xABC DEFG

x- not used
A- CHR ROM bank size.  1=128K, 0=256K
D- PRG ROM bank size.  1=128K, 0=256K
G- PRG ROM bank "part" (for 128K banks)

E,F- PRG ROM 256K bank


---***---PRG bank selection---***---

The D,E,F, and G bits control the PRG ROM banking.  On this mapper, the
MMC3 can "see" either 128K of PRG ROM at a time, or 256K of PRG ROM.

When operating in 256K mode (bit D=0), only bits E and F affect the bank;
bit G is ignored.  While in 128K mode (bit D=1), bit G selects which 128K
"part" will be used.  0=lower 128K, 1=upper 128K.


PRG bank selection: (128K banks)


Pbank:  output of our formula
Select: the above Bank Select Register
MMC3P:  A17 out of the MMC3 PRG select registers

Pbank = (Select AND 06h) OR (D and G) OR (!D and MMC3P)


---***---CHR bank selection---***---

The A,B,C, and E bits control the CHR ROM banking.  Note: bit E is shared
between the CHR and PRG bank controls.  This operates identically to the
PRG switching, except it uses different bits and operates on CHR banks.

When operating in 256K mode, (bit A=0), only bits B and E affect the bank;
bit C is ignored.  While in 128K mode, (bit A=1), bit C selects which 128K
"part" will be used. 0=lower 128K, 1=upper 128K.


CHR bank selection: (128K banks)

Cbank:  output of our formula
Select: the above Bank Select Register
MMC3C:  A17 out of the MMC3 CHR select registers

Cbank = (B*4 + E*2) OR (A and C) OR (!A and MMC3C)



All HTML and graphics designed and © by Kevin Horton .