Cheat Cart PCB questions.

[PhyChris]

I have a Game Hunter PRO 2Mb and I'm wonder what device its PCB Is based on, what are my FW options and the quickest/easiest way to flash it?

[Shadow]

There is no point really in re-flashing this cartridge. The only thing you can do with it is load cheats, and boot copied games. I think you need the "AHOY!" firmware to boot copies games (it uses the swap trick, but stops the drive spindle so it's easier to do so).

[PhyChris]

There is no point really in re-flashing this cartridge. The only thing you can do with it is load cheats, and boot copied games. I think you need the "AHOY!" firmware to boot copies games (it uses the swap trick, but stops the drive spindle so it's easier to do so).

Yeah, the current FW stops the motor and lets me swap with ease. just checking my options. Im asking what version the PCB is based on because there is an LED spot on the PCB, but it dont seem to have any power plus it looks like more hardware could be added.

[sickle]

If you’re wondering about the origins of the hardware, I think it all began with a similar unit by Sony as part of the dev kit (Shadow has pics somewhere; the blue thing)- and then Datel released the Action Replay cartridge (probably) based on that design… though, with cheats. From that point on, there were 20+ different carts released by various companies ripping off the ROM and making minor tweaks here and there.
To the best of my knowledge, there wasn’t much originality after that besides the Xplorer (Completely new ROM, could handle parallel port voltage, in-game menus) and some of the newer Action Replays (in-game menus, kinda new ROM). There were a few random weird ones which could play MP3 and stuff (which I’ve never got my hands on) and a VCD player (which I lost years ago)… but for the most part, there were loads of ripoff carts.

Towards the top of the pic you see where they gradually transitioned from through-hole flash memory to smaller and smaller surface mounted chips, and at the end there most settled on something like the one you see bottom left. (Though most I’ve seen have that chip up where the old flash me was, and don’t have the other other chip globbed to the board).
So god knows what that LED actually does, but there definitely was a lot of redundant stuff left on the boards between redesigns. It seems to have a trace to the flash me and the DB25, so my best guess is just flashed a bit when data was being transfered.

Since you made the post I released a ROM which should work on most carts which will use no cash’s secret unlock to unlock the CD (no need for disk swap). It’s got a bunch of other handy things too, and you can flash from a CD if you CBA building a parallel adapter.
http://www.psxdev.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=722