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cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

Guys,
I managed to bag a Super Wild Card SMS3201 for a great price, but got sick of unreliable floppies pretty fast, so I decided to have a play with the parallel port on the back. This is on version 2.6CC...

First the PC - I am running Windows7 and had to buy a parallel port PCI card as there is no port natively on my PC motherboard. This has a 25 pin socket on the back.

I have windows recognising the card, and have the printer port as LPT1 and the PCI EPP/ECP Parallel Port as LPT3 (communications on COM1, but I assume we are not using that).

I tried to use SNESTL12, but this just crashed, I have since found a program called RBDU200, which seems to do something, but I have no idea how I go about running the game on the Wild Card, as there does not seem to be an option to do anything other than load a game from floppy!

I have the port set to LPT3, as this seems to be the only way to transfer the rom (when it is set to LPT1 it puts up an error box stating 'LPT read timeout. The backup device is not responding. Make sure it is connected and the Super NES is turned on'. When I set it to LPT3 and click 'upload ROM' it runs a number in the bottom corner of the program box (????/whatever the ROM size is', but when I click the play button on the program it does nothing, neither does 'upload and run'.

There does not appear to be an option on my SWC to play the transfered game on the backup unit, but why is the parallel port there? Do I need a BIOS upgrade?

Please can anyone help me here!
Thanks,
Paul

cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

Is it that simple that I need a better bios than 2.6CC?

cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

Or is it that I am using a parallel cable for switchboxes and some sites make reference to a serial cable - these are not the same thing, are they?!

Mystic_Merlin · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 496 Location: Bangkok

Ok where to start...

First, yes 2.6CC works with parallel transfer as any version of the SWC starting from the Super Magicom.
If you look carefully on this board, you'll find many topics related to parallel transfer and end up realizing your best try is:
- an old computer with a built-in parallel port
- an old os such as DOS, Win95 or 98
- a software such as VGS(DOS) or ucon64, and even better with its front end.
- avoid any PCI, PCMCIA or USB/Parallel adapter

You can even run ucon on Linux but you'd rather start troubleshooting with a MS os.
What is RBDU200 btw? Never heard of it.

Under ucon64 with its frontend, when you transfer the game to the SWC, you should see a progress bar when the connection is properly established.
When the game is successfully transferred, a popup window will appear on the SWC, the same you get when finished loading from floppy.

Regarding the cable, check this doc from SCHEIWNO's archive:

cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

OK,
It seems I have now managed to get a PortIO driver working in Windows7, and I have reverted to ucon64 to send the ROM to the Wild Card.

If I do not specify the port, the program hangs (defaults to port=0x378). If I do the command line 'ucon64 --xswc --port=0x379 romname.swc then I get a green bar with the rom seemingly transmitting, but nothing happens on the Wild Card side of things, it just sits there, and as I said before there is no option to run a game from anything other than disk.

I tried turning the SNES off incase it runs when you switch back on, but nothing.

I had to remove the battery in the Wild Card as it had leaked, but this is only for SRAM saves anyway, right?

What do I do now to make this work?!

madman · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 598

I've never heard of anyone getting a send utility to work properly using a PCI LPT card.

cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

Guys,

** SUCCESS! GOT IT WORKING IN WINDOWS 7! **

Acheived by plugging the parallel port header into the socket on the motherboard, and runing the lead directly through this. Configured as LPT1 and I removed the parallel PCI card.

I am running a program called User Port (to be more specific, I have put a file called userport.sys into the windows/system32/drivers folder) that runs at startup. I also have io.dll and userport.sys in the users/paul folder where ucon64 puts it's config file.
I then use ucon64 with the --xswc --port=0x378 options and it sent the rom to the copier first attempt!

Since using uf-FOX I can also transfer files using this frontend!

So it is possible to do a parallel transfer in Windows 7, but not using a PCI card!

Now all I need to do is figure out the fact that the wild card is retaining the ROM (or displays a black screen) when I switch the Wild Card off. I have to unplug the parallel cable from the wild card to get rid of the ROM file! I saw a post telling me to remove pins 12, 14, 15 & 16 on the parallel cable, but this did not work!

Anyone know how to fix this?
Thanks,
Paul

madman · Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 598

You will likely need to remove a few more pins. I remember having to remove quite a few to solve the issue, but this was probably 15 years ago so I couldn't tell you which ones. There is probably still a +5v pin active on your cable, check an LPT pin out and work from there.

cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

OK, this ROM storing at power off at the SNES end gets stranger!

I have two NTSC SNES, an original, and a Jr (which I have connected as I have a lack of space!) I also RGB modded the Jr and the RGB output is miles better then the original, so another reason to prefer to use that one.

Where am I going with this? Well, with the pins removed on my parallel cable (as shown in the post further up), the SNES Jr stores the ROM after power off, and will only loose it if I unplug the parallel cable, or I switch off the PC. However, with the original SNES, it looses the ROM when I switch the console off! What is that all about?

If anyone knows what other pins I need to remove from the parallel cable to make it loose the ROM at power off with my Jr, I would appreciate it!

Thanks,
Paul

Oh yeah - although I got it working in Win7, I picked up a Win98 for less than the price of the parallel cable at a boot sale today, so I now have a dedicated SNES PC!

Mystic_Merlin · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 496 Location: Bangkok

Here I found something that might help you.
I'm not sure I understand properly but it seems the guy is saying the caps in the RGB cable retain power and that prevents the SWC to wipe out its memory content.

Best thing to try prior to cutting that wire would be testing a standard composite video cable.

cawley1 · Joined: 02 Oct 2010 Posts: 8

Thanks for that Mystic_Merlin, but sadly it does not work Sad

I guess I will have to pull some more pins in the parallel cable to see if I can stop it holding data that way...

sonofx51 · Joined: 15 Jan 2008 Posts: 49

try this program, so far it works awesome, convert roms with ucon64 then transfer with RBD http://www.alpha-ii.com/Download/RBDU200.zip

The program will convert the roms or sram to SWC format as it transfers, but I had already used Ucon64 to do this.

The best part about this program, for me anyways, is that it can transfer the rom into DRAM and then give you the option to start with real-time save option. Ucon64 doesn't do that, it transfers and autoplays.