Getting a ROM Reader
"Get your gunn, get your gunn..." - "Get your gunn," Marilyn Manson
Before you can embark on the exciting lifestyle of a ROM dumper, you will need access to a ROM reader unit, preferably your own. These units are expensive, but they are well worth the cost if you are serious about ROM dumping as a hobby.
If you can't afford one, then there is the alternative of trying to borrow the ROM reader at a local university. Most universities are nice and will allow you to bring in a ROM chip or two and have their reader read the data off for you. Some may require a student ID, so bring a buddy who goes to that university if that's the case. Still, borrowing a unit has some problems. For one thing, you won't have nearly as much as access to it. For another, most of the university technicians who are in charge of the ROM readers will INSIST on personally doing the dumping. Most of them will NOT allow you to read a ROM in as an equivalent (check the "Selecting the Proper ROM" section of this guide for more about equivalents) without verifying for themselves that the two ROMs are indeed equivalents. This can lead to complications. Their readers may not support the exact ROM you need to read, and they will usually not have enough time to do the verification for themselves. Therefore they may just take the easier route of telling you, "No, you may NOT use the ROM reader here."
Preferably, you will be able to get a ROM reader of your own. Selecting the correct reader will save you alot of frustration and money. So here are some tips:
1. Decide what system(s) you want to dump ROMs for. Do some research and figure out what are the commonly used ROM chips for those types of games. Then just find the cheapest ROM reader that will support these ROM chips.
2. Even if a ROM reader doesn't support the type of ROM that you need to read, it may support an equivalent. Or it may be possible to read it using a manual banking trick (check the "Selecting the Proper ROM" section of this guide for an example of a manual banking trick).
3. ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS make sure that the ROM reader you are getting will support the correct number of pins of the ROM that you will be working with. Manual banking tricks work great, but if you need to plug in a 48 pin ROM and your reader can't handle that many pins, it's gonna be a really bad situation (at best, you will have to make your own adapters, which is a major pain; and at worst, it's just not gonna work).
BTW, for anyone who might be wondering, the ROM reader that I use is an Advantech Labtool-48.
Here are some links:
Needham's Electronics
Advantech
BK Precision
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Tools that you will need
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