Struggling with a Nintendo 64 Cartridge

[ZBroadcast02]

I have recently bought a used copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (PAL, Australia) so I could use the ROM for the Ship of Harkinia PC port (As it requires a PAL version to work).

When the cartridge arrived I used isopropyl alcohol and q-tips to clean the inside before inserting it into the N64 slot of the Sanni.

I turned the Sanni on and selected 'Nintendo 64 (3V)', then I selected 'Game Cartridge'. After searching the data base this was the message:

Name: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
Serial: NZLP
Revision: 0
ROM Size: 32MB
Save Type: SRAM
CRC1: B044B569

After clicking the button and selecting 'Read ROM', the Sanni proceeded to save the ROM to 'N64/ROM/THE LEGEND OF ZELDA/26:...'

After loading for a bit, it sent this message:

CRC32... D6B143D6 -> Not found
Press Button...

When putting the SD card into my PC, there is in fact a Z64 file of the game in the files, and upon placing that file into my folder for N64 games, the Project64 emulator is able to recognize the ROM as 'The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time (E) (M3) (V1.0)'. The first time I tried to start the game in the emulator it didn't work, instead giving this error message:

Unhandled zip code
RSP: Unknown 7C 1C 97 C0
Stopping emulation
WOuld you like to open the debugger?

I've tried redumping the game again, and strangely some instances did in fact load up the game, however when I tried to use it for Ship of Harkinian it called it an Unknown ROM and wouldn't start up (Which shouldn't of happened since the SoH Compatibility Checker makes it clear that all PAL versions of the game should work.

So in short, the Sanni is able to identify the game as Ocarina of Time, yet is struggling to find something in the process and the game doesn't work half the time and doesn't appear to be applicable to SoH despite being a PAL version of the game with even the emulator identifying it as one. Anyone know what issue I'm having?

[cmcm711]

This is usually an issue with cleaning your cartridge even more than you would think necessary. Try cleaning it a bit more.

That said, since we’re talking about an N64 game, can you tell us where you obtained your OSCR? Did you build it or buy it? If you bought it preassembled, where did you purchase it from?

[ZBroadcast02]

Tested it and sure enough the CRC32 is different each time! I'll still get the gamebit driver, but it definitely looks like something just isn't dumping right like you said.

So would the card that goes into the console/Sanni be the only thing I have to clean, or is there anything else that could be causing the card to get stuck? I've cleaned this one about three times until white q-tips so it is kind of surprising that it hasn't worked yet.

[PsychoFox11]

I mean it could be anything preventing a pin from having a good connect from traces to issues inside a chip, but usually is something visible. Once you open it you can clean better with more pressure typically too. I'd recommend a good q-tip 99% alcohol scrub (or 90% is fine), and if that doesn't do it, get a soft rubber pencil eraser (not the harder plastic kind), and rub it on the contacts really well, to loosen up stuff, then do another alcohol/q-tip cleans (make sure you get all the little eraser bits). That's gotten a couple carts that were stubborn to dump for me. I really like the Ticondaroga erasers here, really flexible and soft:
https://www.amazon.com/Ticonderoga-Carnation-Erasers-Medium-38943

If the board has any dirt, dried up soda, etc, get that as well. Also look for broken traces/pins/connections in general. That's really about all the advice I got though. Any N64 game that works should dump with a consistent CRC32 on OSCR though in my experience. Only tweaking I've ever had to do is specify the right dump type or size in ones with weird headers, or newer ones with intentionally misleading headers - Zelda should be straightforward though. The US version was one of the first I dumped with my OSCR back on version 12 of the software.

[ZBroadcast02]

Alright, well, thank you so much for all the help! I'll definitely try out everything you've said.

I'll be sure to comment the final reaults!

[ZBroadcast02]

So the driver for the gamebit screws will be arriving this Saturday, so there's not much I can do until then.

I did want to ask, does the PCB look the same for all official Nintendo games regardless of region?

[PsychoFox11]

There can be small differences, and I'm not aware of it with any N64 but there's definitely NES games where JPN and US were different (content stripped out to use smaller ROM etc.). If you search for Ocarina of Time under No-Intro's N64 database, several of the dumps for different versions have PCB pics, so you could view those to compare.

[ZBroadcast02]

Also want to note:
I have successfully dumped other N64 carts among other systems with this Sanni before.

[Cephiros]

Additionally i can recommend trying another sd card, enabling the 3v3 fix. Or opening and really going to town on those contacts with a pink rubber eraser then more ipa. Oscr is very picky with anything on the contact.

To verify, It is set to 3v3 or has the vselect installed and enabled, correct?

[sanni]

There are several things you can try:

(1) Open up the cartridge and see if anything looks odd, maybe some lines are corroded or the battery leaked.

(2) Try a different cartridge that has the same size, 32MB in this case, if this one also fails, try the next steps.

(3) Try a different SD card, with HW5 SD card compatibility is quite high but there are still some cards that do not work very well.

(4) Format the SD card with Rufus as non bootable FAT32.

(5) Enable the internal pull-up resistors on the data lines to help against interference by removing // in front of line 524 and 525 in N64.ino

(6) Disable fastcrc in config.h for HW5 or for HW3, this will first dump the ROM, then calculate the CRC checksum, by default the N64 code does both at the same time which can be quite stressful for the Mega2560

(7) Enable 3v3 fix in config.h, this will run the Mega2560 at half speed.

[ZBroadcast02]

So... I seemed to have figured out the problem.

So the screwdriver arrived today, and I was able to open up the cartridge and verify that it is indeed an official Nintendo board, and not a repo:

After giving it a thorough clean with the alcohol and q-tips I reassembled it and tried again, yet was still met with the same screen.

However, then I got the idea to turn on the second switch that was by the power switch and now it's suddenly worked perfectly...

So I'm guessing that Switch is mean to be turned on for larger sized files, otherwise it won't work?

[sanni]

I've just added a picture to the Wiki to explain the switches in case the enclosure does not have labels. But you should still label them out of convenience. You can kinda tell what is 3V and what 5V by looking at the display brightness but labels are better.

Systems that need to be switched to 3V have "(3V)" in their menu name.
If a cartridge is run at the wrong voltage it can confuse 0 and 1 and the dump can be bad.

[cmcm711]

That is the voltage switch. It’s required for N64 and GBA cartridges to be set to 3v. It’s a bit of a shame the seller didn’t communicate that to you or label the switches.

[PsychoFox11]

Ah yeah, pretty important knowledge to avoid damaging your carts (and possibly reader). If using any adapters for systems beyond what is built in, be sure you know the voltage for that system, for example, Pokemon mini is also 3.3v. You don't want to overvolt or undervolt your carts. GBA/N64 are the only two built in currently that use 3.3v.
Also switch it to 5v (with no cart) when doing an update.