Writable Carts

[Senk]

So, on the page detailing the Linkmasta (http://www.flashmasta.com/hardware-info/...linkmasta/), it mentions that you can write to writable carts.

I was wondering exactly what carts are writable. Are any of the commercially-released carts writable? Is just the Flashmasta writable? I'm not sure how the hardware is designed with these cartridges.

My thoughts would be any of the carts could be flashed, especially since SNK did that when they pulled out a lot of the US/EU carts and reflashed them to be the Japanese versions, right? Isn't that what they did?

[Biogon]

The carts are homemade by Flavor, the administrator of this forum. The carts aren't liscened by SNK in any way.

No commercial carts can be flashed, except for an official(?) flash cart kit that's extremely rare now, unfortunately. Hope that helps.

[Senk]

Yeah, just saw the option to list protected blocks using the Linkmasta software. I've already got the Flashmasta and Linkmasta from Ed; so, I'll be playing around with it. Been trying to edit a save file, but for some reason editing what I know is a valid value to another valid value gives me a save error.

[Flavor]

Well, there was a kit made by Bung (also under the name UFO and Mr. Flash) that was sold for a while years ago. They're pretty rare and hard to get ahold of nowadays. They came with a parallel port "linker" to write to the cartridge.

The point of that statement you referenced is that you could use the Linkmasta to write those carts, too. There have been some people that own those old kits that wanted a good way to use their old cartridge. It's harder and harder to find (let alone use) a parallel port these days. Many of those guys like the USB option.

[Senk]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.