Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

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neorichieb1971
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Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by neorichieb1971 »

Hi,

A few months ago I bought Battletoads on FC, then I read its a bit dangerous to use certain NES/FC's to play it on because it uses modern 3.3v chips in the cartridge when the original carts used 5v.

Is it safe to put in a Mini NT or an original AV famicom? I did google but nobody has reported problems, just seems to be mismatch in the tech.

Thanks for any info.
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jd213
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by jd213 »

Columbus Circle stuff is all poorly made crap last I checked. Maybe they've improved lately, but I wouldn't use any of their carts on hardware that you care about.
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NewSchoolBoxer
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by NewSchoolBoxer »

Sorry I have to answer for SNES. The 3.3V undervolting on Chinese flash carts and illegal repros is/was hotly debated. Expert opinions on both sides saying safe or unsafe for real console. I read that Super NT was designed to be safe for 3.3V carts and I would presume Mini NT is okay. Maybe you can open a support ticket and get confirmation.

As for real SNES console, I'm on the side that is unsafe but not sure how unsafe.
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Sumez
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by Sumez »

Yeah, I've heard way too many people who know their way around electronics much better than I do state with no hesitation that running those 3.3v components in a 5v circuit is a very hard "never do that". That's enough for me to oppose quite strictly against it, those things are never going into my consoles.

Now from that stance to "what is the actual consequence" is kinda hard to settle on, and I guess the main reason behind the debate. Because any evidence would have to be anecdotal, and has a massive margin of error in both directions. Anything that breaks down over time could be for any unknown reason, just as well as a system could likely survive for another decade or more despite being regularly exposed to the strain from running 3.3v components.
It's not like you just plug these things in and your NES breaks down immediately, that's never gonna happen. The best comparison I've seen is that it's like smoking - you might smoke and live till you're 100, but it's still gonna wear down your lungs over time.

Either way, no, an AV Famicom won't be better off, and you shouldn't expect modern clone systems to do so either unless they are specifically designed with this issue in mind - and like NewSchoolBoxer says, it's likely the Mini NT was, so I'd do as suggested and just open a support ticket. No one's more reliable on that subject than the people who built it.
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by neorichieb1971 »

Surely its the cart that will overheat and stop working? From the little I have read the cart will overheat in time if you leave it on for a long duration. There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement that anyones system has malfunctioned. I believe very few people bought the carts to actually play though and the amount of time any of these carts is actually in a system is miniscule.

I don't actually own a Mini NT yet. It is on the shopping list.
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Sumez
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by Sumez »

No, the whole circuit will suffer if nothing is built in to handle the excess voltage. A lot of modern cart releases have that built in (because it's a lot easier to source 3.3v components nowadays), but not the ones that usually get called into question.
There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement that anyones system has malfunctioned.
Lots of NES'es have malfunctioned. Can we tell if it was due to 3.3v carts being used? No, there's no real way to gauge that to my knowledge.
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bobrocks95
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by bobrocks95 »

I wouldn't do it with any hardware I valued. I potentially broke an MVS trying out one of the multi cartridges for a few minutes. CPU was fried a few days later. Was it the 3.3V? Couldn't say for sure, but it was over $100 down the drain and a lot of time spent installing a new board, debugging the damage it had, etc.

That said I'm very surprised nobody has made any cartridge adapters that just do voltage translation. 5V from the console, 3.3V from a cartridge socket on top. Then you can play as many bootlegs, Chinese multicarts, indie releases with improper voltage, and whatever else you want. Couldn't be all that expensive or difficult to make?
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NewSchoolBoxer
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by NewSchoolBoxer »

Sumez wrote:No, the whole circuit will suffer if nothing is built in to handle the excess voltage. A lot of modern cart releases have that built in (because it's a lot easier to source 3.3v components nowadays), but not the ones that usually get called into question.
I thought the Chinese manufacturers were too dumb to know SNES uses 5V logic, but sourcing 3.3V components, I'm sure that's the real answer. Thanks.

Is a problem of how much life our consoles have left. I don't know if my second hand SNES and SFC were stored in a humid attic or came with 5-10k hours of wear and tear. It's like you said, we can't really measure the damage, or lack of damage, that undervolting is doing without controlling for a bunch of variables or having a statistically significant sample size.
bobrocks95 wrote:I wouldn't do it with any hardware I valued. I potentially broke an MVS trying out one of the multi cartridges for a few minutes. CPU was fried a few days later. Was it the 3.3V? Couldn't say for sure, but it was over $100 down the drain and a lot of time spent installing a new board, debugging the damage it had, etc.

That said I'm very surprised nobody has made any cartridge adapters that just do voltage translation. 5V from the console, 3.3V from a cartridge socket on top. Then you can play as many bootlegs, Chinese multicarts, indie releases with improper voltage, and whatever else you want. Couldn't be all that expensive or difficult to make?
Check this out. I'm getting back into microcontrollers. The PICs I used and most beginner-friendly Arudinos are 5V logic but the modern professional chips are 3.3V logic. Just so happens there is a $1.10 4 channel and $2.70 8 channel bi-directional logic translator sold for this purpose. For SNES, I don't know if all you need to translate is the 8 data pins or also the address and SRAM pins, but should be easy to put an arbitrary number of translators on the same PCB.

The 8 channel translator uses TXB0108 that costs about $1.55 apiece at quantity of 10. Passthrough adapter for 3.3V <-> 5V can definitely exist. As for why no one made one, I guess average person sees console runs 3.3V cart and doesn't understand why there is a problem.
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Syntax
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by Syntax »

Sending 3.3v TTL to a chip that can accept over 5v TTL is more likely to ruin the cart not the console.

You'd have to be pretty damn unlucky for that 3.3v chip to get an internal dead short that sends the 5v signal elsewhere damaging the console.
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bobrocks95
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by bobrocks95 »

Syntax wrote:Sending 3.3v TTL to a chip that can accept over 5v TTL is more likely to ruin the cart not the console.

You'd have to be pretty damn unlucky for that 3.3v chip to get an internal dead short that sends the 5v signal elsewhere damaging the console.
What about the console pins driving a significantly higher current than they're rated for?
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Re: Circle Columbus carts that use 3.3v in a 5v system

Post by NewSchoolBoxer »

It's a more complicated situation than that. Sorry for long reply but I wanted all the info in one place.

The most expert opinion saying bootleg Chinese carts can't hurt the console was BennVenn from Australia who sells flash carts and related products. He did say, however, that a flash cart can damage the console if it is made incorrectly. He wasn't sure how other people's flash carts were made but his are fine. Disclosure: I bought one of his products.

The leading voice in dissing 3.3V carts and how they can damage the console was René from db Electronics. He shutdown his shop and therefore the hosted blog. I don't think the blog disappearing or video proof going private is to mean he changed his views. Edit: He brought up the 3.3V issue at 10 minute mark of this podcast.

In the video, René said a cheap bootleg going into an MVS (Neo Geo) will lock up half the games due to excessive current flowing into the 3.3V bootleg while damaging the console. I'm guessing what happened to bobrocks95's MVS. Also said he's heard of 3 or 4 NES destroyed by the red X in 1 NES cart from AliExpress.

The rather entertaining part is pics of carts at the end with his judgement on their design and impact. The red cart:
NES 150 in 1 (Famicom version)
Verdict = never use again!

Now this design is complete garbage. Whoever made this design should be ashamed of themselves. The Flash used here is a MXIC 29GL256E which are clearly rated for 3.6V maximum. The most frightening thing about this board however are the two diodes above the MXIC Flash chip. I REALLY hope they don’t use those to lower the 5V rail down to power the Flash. This is the type of PCB which has reportedly caused some NES consoles to die within a few months of use. Presumably the NES version is the same shitty design. Stay away!
Taking both opinions together, they should agree that carts aren't made to last if they supply 5V directly to their 3.3V flash. In theory, this bad design is safe for 5V consoles since the cart runs on 5V too. The bootlegs actually running on 3.3V or 5V - 2x diode drop (~3.75V) with their shoddy logic translation are what René hated on and BennVenn didn't address.

René gave most EverDrive flash carts a "use sparingly" rec. I think worst design is Master System, less bad is Genesis, best (no issue) is "Turbo" revision TurboGrafx and presumably all that came after. SD2SNES (renamed FX PAK PRO I imagine due to trademark dispute) got an excellent rec. Krikzz fixed his mistakes, eventually.

GBA and Nintendo 64 are exempt from this issue since they use a 3.3V bus.
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