Rinco's 2500-in-1 / 1500-in-1 multicart cartridge

This multicart cartridge was placed in Rinco Thompsonic's second slot cartridge and shipped with it. It consists of 1 MB mask ROM, 32 kB EEPROM, PAL16L8, latches and some gates. It allows to run the following mappers: 16 kB NROM, 32 kB NROM, 128kB UNROM.

2500-in-1 top

2500-in-1 bottom

2500-in-1 title screen

2500-in-1 schematic

To be exact, it consists of the following games:

• 1. contra
• 2. tetris 2
• 3. tank
• 4. b-wings
• 5. super mario 1
• 6. 1942
• 7. ninja III
• 8. dig dug II
• 9. binary land
• 10. bomber man
• 11. ice climber
• 12. galaxian
• 13. road fighter
• 14. hogans alley
• 15. wild gunman
• 16. duck shoot
• 17. antarctic adventure
• 18. dig dug
• 19. urban champion
• 20. baloon fight
• 21. clu clu clan jss
• 22. sky destroyer
• 23. popeye
• 24. wrecking crew
• 25. raid on bay her
• 26. milk nuts
• 27. devil world
• 28. chack pop
• 29. macross
• 30. mario bros

CPU Banks

$8000-$BFFF: 16 kB PRG bank

$C000-$FFFF: 16 kB PRG bank

or

$8000-$FFFF: 32 kB PRG bank

If PRG bank = 0 or PRG bank = 7 (PRG-A16=1 and PRG-A15=1 and PRG-A14=1) then EEPROM is used, otherwise MaskRom is used.

PPU Banks

$0000-$1FFF: 8 kB CHR RAM (not banked), but in some modes it can be protected against writes.

Mirroring

H or V (set by software).

Subject to bus conflicts

Yes.

Registers

$8000-$FFFF: one global configuration register (bits of written address is latched, data is irrelevant)

15                0
---- ---- ---- ----
1xxx xxpP wPPP PPmM
       || |||| ||||
       || |||| |||+--- PRG Mode (0=16 kB, 1=32 kB)
       || |||| ||+---- mirroring (0=vertical, 1=horizontal)
       || +|||-||----- CHR-RAM write protection (0=disabled, 1=enabled)
       |+--+++-++----- prg bank value #1
       +-------------- prg bank value #2

            |         $8000-$bfff            |         $c000-$ffff            |
            +--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
M=0 and w=0 |             PPPPPP             | (PPPPPP and %111000) + (p * 7) |
M=0 and w=1 |             PPPPPP             |              PPPPPP            |
M=1 and w=0 |      (PPPPPP and %111110)      | (PPPPPP and %111000) + (p * 7) |
M=1 and w=1 |                 PPPPPP (lowest bit is ignored)                  |

Quirks

• In most cartridges where reset is needed, R-C-D circuit is present and connected to latch's clear input. This cartridge consists of only C-D and NOR gate used as negator.

• Total PRG capacity is not 1 MB + 32 kB but 1 MB due to the fact that 32 kB EEPROM is set to enabled when bank 0 or bank 7 is to be read from mask ROM. It is believed that those banks contains menu data (list of games) and authors of the cartridge were unhappy with the original menu from mask ROM and they wanted to change it.

• There are at least two variants of this cartridge with different markings on mask ROM and EEPROM (other logic, including PAL is the same):
  • 1500-in-1 (mask ROM: CT-121H, EEPROM: 91150)
  • 2500-in-1 (mask ROM: CT-120H, EEPROM: 91250)