Starpath Supercharger Questions

[lord_mike]

I have a few questions for Supercharger owners. I'd be grateful for any feedback. I am thinking about acquiring one some time in the future for development (and some game playing) of homebrews and hacks, but I am concerned aobut the fact that 50% of games won't run via the supercharger because of the memory banking feature on the cartridge. Does anyone have a list of which games work (or don't work) on an unmodified supercharger?

 

I was also wondering if anyone here has modified thier Starpath/Arcadia supercharger successfully.

 

Even though I am handy with a soldering iron, I am still concerned about opening up a rare and valuable piece of hardware. Rob Colbert's instructions are quite good, but the OR gate IC that he mentions using is no longer available from Radio Shack, and his diagram doesn't state which direction the switch should be in for each mode: http://members.cox.net/rcolbert/sc.htm

 

Does anyone know if this alternative 74HC32 chip would work ok?

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...;category=50913

 

It has extra letters after the model number, so it has me somewhat concerned.

 

I am also assuming that the switch in the diagram is a standard SPDT switch?

 

I've sent an email to Mr. Colbert himself, but since he hasn't updated his web site in over a year, I don't know if he's still around.

 

Any assistance and advice is greatly appreciated!!

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

[Uzumaki]

Switch direction don't matter. Just make sure you wire the right one to the center post of the switch. The diagram shows a black line from pin 1 of the gate chip to the center post. The other 2 can go to either side of the switch.

 

After you're done with the mod, play around with the switch to figure which side is normal SC mode and which is 4k compatible mode then label em.

 

As for the gate, any TTL OR gate will work. The one you linked in auction should be fine. The extra letters are design variations you can ignore it.

 

SPDT switch is used and you should be able to find one at Radio Shack. You could use DPDT as well but the extra row of posts are not needed.

[mos6507]

Air-Sea Battle is one of the games that has issues. That would be a good one to test.

[+remowilliams]

I was also wondering if anyone here has modified thier Starpath/Arcadia supercharger successfully

 

Yes, I've modded a few of them and it's a very easy mod.

[Godzilla]

I had it done by a friend who is better at those type of things than I am. It really does work great and I can still remember my amazement the first time I loaded roms on my supercharger (I wonder if someone could write a simple converter that would alter the non-working roms, thus no longer requiring the hardware mod... ? )

[Uzumaki]

That could be done but it would depend on how the non working game behaved and why the game needed to do it that way. Some games may be possible and then there may be some games that can't be converted to Starpath compatible version.

 

The OR gate hack is still the quickest and easiest way to make all 2k and 4k games work.

[shadow460]

For the record, I'd mod a Starpath one. There's an Arcadia brand model out there. IIRC, it is a bit rarer than the Starpath unit.

 

You might do a search for "Chimera" on these boards. I think that project might be more what you're looking for.