The first NES flash cart! It is about time!

[Jagasian]

http://img173.imageshack.us/img173/7741/device5hv.jpg

It is still under development, but the designer claims he has MMC3 games running, but there are problems with the graphics being garbled.

[portnoyd]

How does it handle mappers? Is it just MMC3 or every one of them?

[Jagasian]

How does it handle mappers? Is it just MMC3 or every one of them?

It uses a CPLD, so it can support most of the popular mappers. It won't be able to support the really complicated ones though, such as MMC5. So yes, it will support multiple mappers, and therefore will be a nice way to patch the holes in your NES cart collection... but there will be games that it will be incompatible with because it doesn't support every mapper.

[JJNova]

link?

[Jagasian]

It is still in development. A guy was posting pics and info over at the nesdev forums:
http://nesdev.parodius.com/

[Jive3D]

That really would be a quality product. Snatch up one of those and the new NEX gen system and you'd be in a land of golden gaming.

Chances are that most of us on this board own most of the NES games that we already wanted, still this is pretty sweet!!

[Jagasian]

That really would be a quality product. Snatch up one of those and the new NEX gen system and you'd be in a land of golden gaming.

Chances are that most of us on this board own most of the NES games that we already wanted, still this is pretty sweet!!

What about NES games that never got released like Earthbound, California Raisons, a NWC Competition Cart, a NES Test Cart, and all of the unofficial English language translations, etc? Do you already own all of those?

[Bratwurst]

What about NES games that never got released like Earthbound, California Raisons, a NWC Competition Cart, a NES Test Cart, and all of the unofficial English language translations, etc? Do you already own all of those?

I will be very surprised if that flash cart ever handles the NWC cart.

As for the rest, it's less labor intensive and costly to burn eproms / rewire PCBs for individual carts than it is developing and debugging a single flash cart that could feasibly handle every single thing you threw at it.

Incidentally, that is one big honkin capacitor. Battery save?

[Raedon]

Would be nice to play those NES hacks on a NES.

[Damion]

I with you on being suprised this hasn't happened earler. I was thinking why something like this hasn't been made for the gen or snes.

It would make storing all my games alot easier as in the could be packed up and stored somewhere out of the way.

[Graham Mitchell]

I haven't bought any kind of flash carts yet, but if this one turns out to be a decent product, it'll be the first one I get. Like some of the other posters, I've been waiting for something like this for the NES for quite a while, and I can't believe it has taken this long. I wonder if it's possible to for someone to make one of these that could handle the special sound chips from the various Japanese Konami games, like Castlevania III and Gradius II...just a thought.

[TheRedEye]

I was thinking why something like this hasn't been made for the gen or snes.

? http://www.tototek.com/pio/main1/SUBMENU/PARTS/LINKS/OS/mdpro64.htm

[Damion]

I was thinking why something like this hasn't been made for the gen or snes.

? http://www.tototek.com/pio/main1/SUBMENU/PARTS/LINKS/OS/mdpro64.htm

Cool :)

only 64 megs though :(

they should make these things with SD card slots or something lol

[Jagasian]

I with you on being suprised this hasn't happened earler. I was thinking why something like this hasn't been made for the gen or snes.

It would make storing all my games alot easier as in the could be packed up and stored somewhere out of the way.

It has already been done for the Genesis and the SNES:
http://www.gbax.com/new/retrohack.html

You can buy a SNES flash kit, for example, which comes with two circuit boards. One goes inside a SNES cart, replacing the original cart's circuit board. The other plugs into your computer, so that you can "burn" games to the flash cart. And yes you can re-burn games over previously burned games. The Genesis cart works the same way. Note that you can also get these carts from http://www.tototek.com/pio/main1/index_b.php but their site has been down for a while now.

[Jagasian]

I was thinking why something like this hasn't been made for the gen or snes.

? http://www.tototek.com/pio/main1/SUBMENU/PARTS/LINKS/OS/mdpro64.htm

Cool :)

only 64 megs though :(

they should make these things with SD card slots or something lol

Personally, I am a SNES guy, but the Genesis flash cart from tototek is supposed to be the best thing for playing Genesis and 32X games on a real system. It has 100% game compatibility, and you can fit multiple games on the cart at the same time. Though an SD card slot would be nicer, as you could fit gigabytes worth of games on one cart :)

[leonk]

I wonder how the MMC3 is emulated. As far as I know, there is no good (correct) MMC3 emulator out there. They're all hack jobs at best.

It's still a very interesting idea!

[Jagasian]

I wonder how the MMC3 is emulated. As far as I know, there is no good (correct) MMC3 emulator out there. They're all hack jobs at best.

It's still a very interesting idea!

They are using configurable circuitry, so the fact that MMC3 has been reverse engineered implies that the right VHDL code is all that is needed. As far as inaccurate software emulators, they are a dime a dozen, but there are a few that are highly accurate, such as Nintendulator. Too bad it is Windows only:
http://qmt.ath.cx/~nes/nintendulator/

[Jagasian]

The aforementioned NES flash cart has a bit of a news update. Check out this thread, which contains more pictures of the cart, this time in action, running Super Mario Bros 3. There are a few kinks that need to be worked out though, such as using faster RAM chips, as the screenshots show:
http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=463

The developer says that it will support all mappers with a complexity at the level of MMC3 and lower. That will cover 99% of the Famicom/NES game library. The remaining 1% will have to be obtained the old fashioned way: by using the actual carts.

[Jagasian]

Another update. Here is a picture of the latest prototype for the NES flash cart:
http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/2828/ffcart25th.jpg

The developer is working on adding a USB port, so that the cart can have games written to it by connecting it to a PC via USB.

[jajaja]

Looks really sweet :) Altho I will still prefer original games, but this might be handy to have.
What will the price be?

[chrisbid]

instead of a USB port, why not a slot for some kindof flash/mm media card

[jajaja]

instead of a USB port, why not a slot for some kindof flash/mm media card

Cheaper with USB and easier. Instead of having a flasher like you have on GBA.

[Leroy]

My God that is sexy.

[Leroy]

So are these going to be available to buy or something?

[Jagasian]

So are these going to be available to buy or something?

The guy developing it seems to be doing it more for the love of the NES than for the goal of making money. He says he plans on selling the an open source package consisting of printed circuit board, schematic, firmware, PC-side software, and source so that people can make their own Funky Flash Cart for the NES by buying the remaining parts themselves from places like digikey.com.

In the beginning, that would be a good idea, as it would let other developers improve the cart and its game compatibility by adding support for more mappers (each NES game uses a special coprocessor chip if you will). New mappers can be supported by creating new firmware data for the CPLD chip that is the big square chip at the top of the cart. The CPLD can basically take what amount to being circuit diagrams for a mapper chip, and the CPLD and morph into that circuit diagram. It will be hard work to get all of the circuit diagrams completed for the cart, so having other people working on the project will be a good thing.

However, most people will not have the skills or motivation to build their own flash cart from his kit, so I think that it would be a good idea for him to mass produce 100 flash carts. Sell them, and make another 100 once the first batch sells out. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Or maybe he can team up with Messiah? It would be a nice accessory to sell alongside their NEX system, right? Since it costs losts of money to manufacture these carts, even in batches of 100, teaming up with Messiah would solve the money issue. Also, Messiah could go the extra mile and also make a plastic shell for the cart, as well as a cart sleeve, manual, and cardboard box.

[Niku-Sama]

keep us updated, this would be great for home brew games (like that dude doing GTA for NES)

[rbudrick]

I'm definitely buying one of these when released. Yes, please...keep us updated.

-Rob