A couple of days ago, I was looking through my games collection and I found a copy of Sonic 1 (MD) that I've had since I was a little kid. It hasn't worked in quite a while, but I always kept it because...well, I don't know why. When it was playable, back when I was around 8 or so, it started to screw up over time. I don't remember specifics but it used to have Illegal Instruction errors frequently. After a while, it started to get closer and closer to the beginning of the game, eventually creeping up to the Title screen, then to the 'SEGA' screen, then finally, nothing at all. The thing I don't get is, is that when I try it in my MD2, it shows the 'Produced by or under License by SEGA Enterprises LTD' screen, but nothing after that. Now...from what I remember, I always thought that for that screen to come up, there has to be valid data in the header of the ROM (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). So, It has me wondering what's going on in the cartridge. I've been tempted to get it dumped but I don't have my own dumper and getting the components to make my own around here has proved to be difficult. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be going wrong, or how I could get it dumped? (If it's even really worth it).
Sounds like it could either be a case of bitrot or general corruption. It's not too uncommon for the contents of an EPROM to be corrupted over time, really; I'm betting that's exactly what happened here. I wouldn't doubt that the header was still intact, in any case—it's a very minimal part of the ROM which can suffer small bits of corruption here and there and still be valid according to the system. As far as I recall, all a cartridge needs to boot is to be able to read "SEGA" at a certain part of the header—the rest of the header doesn't matter. You could try dumping the cartridge if you wish—hell, it could be interesting to play around with—but I'm definitely betting that there's nothing special about it. Good effort, though.
"SEGA" or " SEGA" at $000100 (no idea why it also checks for the latter, I think there's one legit game that uses that >_>). It could be memory corruption like Tweaker said, or it could as well be that the address bus pins got damaged. After all, the header is at a very small address, so if the higher pins got damaged, that could make sense.
I remember andoba, my spanish friend. Speaking on MSN about how he had a version of Sonic 1 that was messed up bigtime, especially having illegal instructions after levels, or if going past walls. Going back on topic, it's probably worth getting dumped.
Or, maybe when you were a kid you did the whole "swap carts while the power is on so I can glitch" deal. That might have ever something. It fried my only copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
Stop me if I'm completely wrong here, but why would a regular S1 cart be EPROM? Wouldn't it be a write-once-read-many rather than something rewritable? Or am I mixing EPROM up with EEPROM or something =P
General corruption was one of the things I had going through my head. I just wasn't too sure how common it was with EPROM's. It's been quite a while since I've tried the cart (several years) so I may just try it again shortly, to see if it still shows the TMSS screen or not. I would like to get it dumped, for curiousity purposes and stuff, but only if I can get it back again (it's like, one of my first video games ever). And also, replying to Maxd, I never did the swap-the-game-to-make-it-glitch trick back then, not when I was that young anyway. I did try that a few times a few years later (mainly pulling Sonic 2 out of S&K really carefully and watching Knuckles fall through the floor) but this Sonic 1 cart hadn't been working for years already by that point in time.
Both EPROM and EEPROM are erasable. EPROM using UV, EEPROM using 12V. PROM is the write-only-once technology. And it could make sense if it's a pirate cart.
I don't think it's a pirate cart. The label seems to have a bit of discoloration, but I think thats just happened over time (Sonic looks more purple/pink than blue). Other than that, it looks like the standard EU/AU cart. I could take a few pics of it if you'd like?
Wow, that's actually a really scary story. I've never heard of a cart doing that, but then I don't really know the technicals behind them as well. I just know that my Sonic 1 (Not for Resale) edition still works like it did back in 1992 :/. It hasn't got regular use since about 1994 and I keep it in a TV cabinet, but I'm sure deterioration is still possible. Thank god for roms!
Something similar like that happened to me once. I had one of those plug-and-play packs with Sonic 1 (unsure what version) in them. After some fiddling in debug, it not only crashed Sonic 1, but none of the other games would work properly anymore, slowly dying up to the beginning like your cart. Could it be something related to a fatal error in debug mode or something along those lines?
Wow..thats really strange. I haven't really had anything to do with those plug and play packs, but it has me interested. I wanna get one now and see what happens if I mess around with it. Do you remember what you did in debug to make it crash?
Debug mode could cause things to try to write to places that don't exist, but in general, it would seem power surge or something took it out. Not so much a programming error. It seems to be a reliable pattern too...
Genesis carts seem to go bad more often than any others. I don't know why, given how simple they usually are. I have a Quackshot cart that produces no sound in a model 1, and flat-out doesn't work in model 2s or Nomads. Even plugging it into a Game Genie or Sonic & Knuckles cart will cause the sound to fail. If I boot up S&K and plug in Quackshot while the game is running, the sound will either die immediately or make strange, unholy noises for a while (sounds I didn't think an FM chip could make) and then die. Friggin' bizarre. I think I eventually traced the problem back to a bad capacitor in the cart, as odd as that sounds. Maybe yours has a similar problem?
First thing anyone can do is take a cotton swab, then some kind of alcohol, dip the swab into the alcohol (must be clear, not colors) then use that swab on the the cart contacts. in most cases, the cart becomes alive again.
I would suggest performing an excorcism on the cart. Just in case, make sure there are any Belmonts within the vicinity incase of demons or Dracula infestation.
Bad capacitor in the cart? And I'd think that carts only had the ROM chip (excluding Virtua Racing, the few games with mapper and the games with save RAM for obvious reasons).
This. I did this to a completely dead Sonic 3 cart, by the end of the night I had it working perfectly.
