ToToTEK.COM

[Ivo Robotnik]

Hello all! I recently got a Game Doctor SF7 unit from this site, and I'm having a blast with it [Tetris Battle Gaiden is the best party game ever] but I've got a few questions:

1. I know it's possible to upload ROMs and other stuff to the unit with a paralell cable. Is there any way to do the opposite, though? Copy the BRAM from the unit to the PC, bypassing the floppy-exchanging when dumping games? I know several other units support this, but does the GD7? I'd be willing to test this feature should it be implemented into uCON64.

2. I've read it's possible to dump games with those extra chips (SA-1, S-DD1, C4, OBC-1, etc...) with the SWCDX2 using certain techniques. Is there any known [or even theoretical] way to do this with a GD7, or would I have to track down a DX2 or similar unit to dump these games?

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to respond.

-Ivo

[runderwo]

As far as the dumping goes, I don't think you can do what you want with the SF7. The main reason is because it doesn't include the debugging facility the DX2 does. So you can't tell it to tweak registers on the protection chips to get them to reveal the ROM. The second problem has to do with how it dumps the ROM. I think the SF7 is more "aggressive" or something and tends to touch protected carts in sensitive areas that cause a failed or corrupted dump.

[The Dumper]

All standard games 32Mb or less should dump fine on the SF7. Some special chip games probably dump too (maybe OBC1 and maybe others?) but some special chips get heartburn when the SF7 BIOS gets hold of them and probes addresses looking for the map. There is a way around this if you really, really, really have to use an SF7 for dumping these games, but it entails writing your own custom software. Neviksti has an SF7 BIOS exploit that will get you in the door, you've got to take it from there. The odds are unless you got a beta game from a collector you're not going to find something that hasn't been dumped anyway. It's far easier to use a DX2 to dump most of the special chip games.

And yes, the SF7 does support transfers of BRAM over the parallel port. I think this is in ucon64 now (I think I put it there), but you can also use Bung's tsf3.exe program to do it. You've got to be in the SF7 menu and the unit has to be in parallel port "Linking..." mode (same as if you were going to transfer a game).

You can also transfer SF7 save states via parallel port. You have to be in the SF7 menu and the pointer has to be pointing to a slot used by the game you want to get/send the save from/to.