Found a hand-soldered EPROM Super Mario Bros cart. Any ideas?

[DefaultGen | 5,413]

I've been buying lots of SMB carts to document and hunt variants. I came across this one yesterday. It's a 'first print' cart and has no back imprint code (not even the half a 0 that almost looks like no imprint code). The chips are hand soldered EPROMs. It's got a UPC sticker on the back, but that could just be from some store. Anyone know what this is form?

It's from a reseller in the northeast who had no other video games as much as I wish the return address said c/o Minoru Arakawa, Redmond, WA.

 

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

[DefaultGen | 5,413]

5 minutes ago, ThePhleo said:

it belongs on my shelf next to my other 100 SMBs with a nice little post it designating it as the fancy one.

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

2 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

it belongs on my shelf next to my other 100 SMBs with a nice little post it designating it as the fancy one.

Funny way to say “ThePhleo’s shelf” next to his 100 othellos but sure.

[guitarzombie | 924]

CIC chip says 8542, hmmm.  Would like to know what the date codes were on the EPROMs themselves

[DefaultGen | 5,413]

I didn't see printed date codes on them like normal carts have. Here's a closeup of the info on each though.

[a3quit4s | 4,103]

I doesn’t seem like it’d be worth it but if it came from a game store maybe someone repaired it?

[phart010 | 1,707]

Could they be refurbs from Nintendo? I remember a thread a while back about a Donkey Kong with Nintendo Arcade cabinet EPROMs. I believe we concluded that they were repaired by Nintendo Service dept after they ran out of replacement mask rom chips, so they just flashed some spare Arcade EPROMs. Maybe after they ran out of Arcade EPROMs they just got whatever was available and wrote on it by hand

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

23 hours ago, phart010 said:

Could they be refurbs from Nintendo? I remember a thread a while back about a Donkey Kong with Nintendo Arcade cabinet EPROMs. I believe we concluded that they were repaired by Nintendo Service dept after they ran out of replacement mask rom chips, so they just flashed some spare Arcade EPROMs. Maybe after they ran out of Arcade EPROMs they just got whatever was available and wrote on it by hand

They can, but what's interesting is the timeline on the CIC chip.

The cart @DefaultGen has here is from a matte sticker SMB, but it's from the second fabrication of CIC chips. The first run is only 4 weeks before this.

[phart010 | 1,707]

1 hour ago, ThePhleo said:

They can, but what's interesting is the timeline on the CIC chip.

The cart @DefaultGen has here is from a matte sticker SMB, but it's from the second fabrication of CIC chips. The first run is only 4 weeks before this.

The warranty period on NES games was limited to a short period after purchase. But even outside of the warranty period, you could always send stuff back to Nintendo service for repairs as long as your willing to pay the price and assuming they still had parts availability. One possibility is the owner of the game bought it early on, then sent it in for a repair much further down the line

[nesmaster14 | 436]

Hmm, kinda interesting, but to me it looks like a cart someone used to practice making reproductions.  It being a non-security 5-screw also makes it a bit easier for the average-joe to open. The soldering job looks pretty amateur and there's a bunch of exposed traces and flux everywhere. I'd question if a repair shop or a developer would let that fly. 

 I mean it could be a one-of-a-kind priceless prototype, perhaps if one could check the age of the EPROM stickers or something.  It's interesting that the earliest Dr. Mario prototype however used Intel EPROMs as well.  However, that one is a much cleaner job (rear of proto) than the SMB mentioned.

[Hiccup | 3]

I assume the ROM data matches retail? I.e. PRG and CHR combined has the following properties?:

size in bytes: 40960
sha256: fcb6a0ef3a20c19b356005fbb21dc8009563b1cb5a9aaebc8e9386b4a8c5912e?

 

[DefaultGen | 5,413]

On 9/4/2022 at 2:28 PM, Hiccup said:

I assume the ROM data matches retail? I.e. PRG and CHR combined has the following properties?:

size in bytes: 40960
sha256: fcb6a0ef3a20c19b356005fbb21dc8009563b1cb5a9aaebc8e9386b4a8c5912e?

 

Yes, I dumped this and another early SMB cart and it’s 100% identical. 

[fcgamer | 4,729]

There's been a lot of original SMB protos being found recently

[Hiccup | 3]

35 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Yes, I dumped this and another early SMB cart and it’s 100% identical. 

interesting...

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

1 hour ago, fcgamer said:

There's been a lot of original SMB protos being found recently

Any reclusive, yet big time collectors or developers pass away any time in the relatively recent past?  Could be an easy explanation which doesn't involve a conspiracy of people digging hard to get date-accurate chips to flash, etc.  Seems like an awful lot of effort to go to for one of the most common games in existence.