Video of dumping a NES cartridge
Supported cartridges
Here is the list of the currently supported mappers. The mapper is the first number in each line. To know what mapper a cartridge uses you can check this database
Setup
Switch settings for HW3:
The mapper and size gets selected automatically but that currently doesn't work for all games. So you might have to browse through the included database.
You can enable fast scrolling when you press and hold the rotary encoder button until the LED lights up. It scrolls 30 entries at once, to deactivate hold the button pressed until the LED lights up again.
Database
The database is still a work-in-progress. If you have a game that does not get automatically detected you can check the dump log and compare the first bank/last bank CRC32s that the OSCR reads out of the cartridge with the second CRC32 listed in nes.txt.
In this example the OSCR calculated 4AD01697 and 433706F0 for Super Mario Bros.
And the nes.txt database has 4AD01697, so the game gets recognized correctly. Note: It will most likely not detect the exact region or revision, that's normal.
Super Jeopardy! (USA).nes
CF4487A2,9B25F249,4E45531A081010080000000000000002
Super Mario Bros. (Europe).nes
9A2DB086,4AD01697,4E45531A020101080000000001000001
Super Mario Bros. (World).nes
D445F698,2F5CD53A,4E45531A020101080000000002000001
Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt (Europe).nes
91B4B1D7,300619D4,4E45531A04022148000000000100002A
Manual mapper setup
If you can't find the game in the database at all you can also manually select the mapper and size information of the cartridge.
You can find the needed info on one of those websites, it's important that you input all the info correctly and don't leave anything out.
- http://nes.dnsabr.com/
- http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777
- https://nescartdb.com/
- http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txt
The Cart Reader can output both a *.bin and *.nes file. The *.bin file contains just the maskrom data of the cartridge while the *.nes file has an addition iNES emulation header added. This header is not found in the cartridge. The Cart Reader has a database with all the emulation headers and tries to add the header to the bin file after dumping but it might not recognize all the games.
To manually add the emulation header you can go to http://nes.dnsabr.com and search for your game. Once found copy the 32 letters/numbers from the Header (hex) column and paste them in front of the data in the nes bin file using a hex editor. It is important that you don't overwrite any of the existing bytes but add it in front.
