claudespeed:
In the meantime I digged a little bit more and indeed, NP only needs clock gen where SA-1 needs both clock gen + the additional chip.
So the seller on eBay was very kind to cancel my buy. I'll look for a full-sized Sanni's cart reader (I'm in contact with him) and if possible, I'd like also to put my hands on skaman's retrode 2 adapter for SA-1 cartridges.
NB: I've no skills in electronics, that why building it myself would be very very complicated and I don't want to just "download" the rom file of my cartridge on the Internet because I participate in the no-intro initiative (game preservation project) and I'm in the process to dump all my cartridges for verifications.
Good work man!!
So to make pocket SNES work with BSX and SA1 a second dongle in addition to the one Ive posted would be REQUIRED.
On the larger Sanni's I noticed an odd behavior with clock gen I think. This based off memory, might not be accurate.. in circuit it seems to always be on despite the switch. when making dongle for pocket I couldn't get the clock gen to fail without pulling it out.... as if switch did nothing.
I'm thinking whomever manufactured your repro locked it via cutting a trace or someone got real fancy with security on the flash chip( I think post about swapping flash on gameshark64 pertains to this also). How would you setup so Flash to only read via console and not "officially" ie dumper or flash chip adapter. I don't know as much as I should about flash chips and security via its internal embedded applications.
I think for all intents and purposes Skaman has added lots if not all code from retrode to Sanni? Perhaps that can be cleared up? I don't have retrode, but methinks its ATmega64 based and I'm assuming porting the code is "easier"?(I could just look at the code,I think? or would I have to decompile?) Point being, my experience with others has taught me If retrode will/wont, you will get same behavior on sanni with unusual/secured/gameshark64 repros. The repros themselves have been manipulated into such behavior, so no easy fix is in either/any dumpers software.
Case and point...
I've seen retrocircuit boards that refuse to read rom via the official programmer, Sanni or the retrode but work fine on console. Board looked perfect no obvious signs of cut traces but they could have been hidden under chips. I didn't own/physically have access to this board so I was unable to trace WE and such. MFR stopped it from being dumped very clearly.
I can remove, socket and dump chips in theory but really I've only done the other way. Program flash and add to PCB. Perhaps more service needs offering in this area. Getting the flash chips off PCB cleanly to socket/dump is trivial from a skill point anymore for me. I think id make quick work of a lot of these troublesome dumps if given access and free reign over the hardware.
I'm trying to teaching myself to dump pirate/unknown mappers on NES(Was surprised Tengen/RAMBO mapper was not supported in Sanni code. I guess its not "official")so hopefully going forward, SNES/N64 will be "easier" and bumps in road like this wont be an issue for what the heck ever I may be attempting. Pirates did REALLY interesting things here with flash chips (lots of 3.3v, oopsies) and or straight digital logic IMHO.
Recreate MMC3 in digital logic chips.. are you kidding me... just wow.