DogP
12-20-2006, 06:09 PM
Hey,
It's been a while since I've posted, but just wondering if anyone would be interested in a VB flash cart. I dunno if anyone saw it when I posted it on some of the VB message boards, but I made some PCBs, so building the flash carts isn't that tough, and it's not a fragile wad of wires anymore :) . There's some pics here: http://www.virtual-boy.org/projectvb/dev/CartPCB.htm .
Anyway, just trying to find out if there's any interest. I'm not really sure about price, but I was thinking about $40 for the parts (unassembled), $50 for it assembled with the chips soldered to the board, or $65 assembled with sockets and a hole cut in the case. I could burn any file sent to me to the chips also.
Of course I'd REALLY like to see more people get into the programming/development of homebrew stuff instead of just pirating games, so I was thinking of offering a discount for anyone who compiles and emails me their own original program w/ source (no matter how simple it is), which I'd post on a page on my site. I'd program it onto the flash chips and they could see it run on their own VB. Really, the cart is more suited for the programmer than the gamer anyway.
Problems with the cart:
There's no SRAM... games using SRAM will still work, but so you can't save games or high scores (although most don't use SRAM anyway).
To reprogram them you need an EPROM programmer (like the Willem), which costs about another $40.
The cart is only 1MB (8mbit), so you won't be able to play Wario Land, Golf, Waterworld, or Nester's Funky Bowling. None of them are particularly hard to find, so it shouldn't be a big deal.
Burning the chips using the EPROM programmer is a little complicated... not hard for a technical person, but for a non-technical person it could be a little bit of a pain.
If you solder the chips directly to the board, the EPROM programmer won't help any, since they'll either have to be flashed by the Virtual Boy (over a homebrew PC->link cable), or it'll be a permanent game (for someone who wants a copy of a homebrew game, or I guess a retail game).
Anyway, I don't have many of these... probably about 15... if enough people wanted them, I could get another run made, but I'd guess that there won't be that many people wanting them... and instead of making more, I'm going to start working on my next design, which will hopefully solve some of the problems with this current design.
Any feedback? Price reasonable? Would anyone want one if it had SRAM and could load files from standard media (of course the price would be higher)?
BTW, not sure if this should go in Classic Gaming or Technical (or somewhere else), so feel free to move it. Thanks,
DogP
It's been a while since I've posted, but just wondering if anyone would be interested in a VB flash cart. I dunno if anyone saw it when I posted it on some of the VB message boards, but I made some PCBs, so building the flash carts isn't that tough, and it's not a fragile wad of wires anymore :) . There's some pics here: http://www.virtual-boy.org/projectvb/dev/CartPCB.htm .
Anyway, just trying to find out if there's any interest. I'm not really sure about price, but I was thinking about $40 for the parts (unassembled), $50 for it assembled with the chips soldered to the board, or $65 assembled with sockets and a hole cut in the case. I could burn any file sent to me to the chips also.
Of course I'd REALLY like to see more people get into the programming/development of homebrew stuff instead of just pirating games, so I was thinking of offering a discount for anyone who compiles and emails me their own original program w/ source (no matter how simple it is), which I'd post on a page on my site. I'd program it onto the flash chips and they could see it run on their own VB. Really, the cart is more suited for the programmer than the gamer anyway.
Problems with the cart:
There's no SRAM... games using SRAM will still work, but so you can't save games or high scores (although most don't use SRAM anyway).
To reprogram them you need an EPROM programmer (like the Willem), which costs about another $40.
The cart is only 1MB (8mbit), so you won't be able to play Wario Land, Golf, Waterworld, or Nester's Funky Bowling. None of them are particularly hard to find, so it shouldn't be a big deal.
Burning the chips using the EPROM programmer is a little complicated... not hard for a technical person, but for a non-technical person it could be a little bit of a pain.
If you solder the chips directly to the board, the EPROM programmer won't help any, since they'll either have to be flashed by the Virtual Boy (over a homebrew PC->link cable), or it'll be a permanent game (for someone who wants a copy of a homebrew game, or I guess a retail game).
Anyway, I don't have many of these... probably about 15... if enough people wanted them, I could get another run made, but I'd guess that there won't be that many people wanting them... and instead of making more, I'm going to start working on my next design, which will hopefully solve some of the problems with this current design.
Any feedback? Price reasonable? Would anyone want one if it had SRAM and could load files from standard media (of course the price would be higher)?
BTW, not sure if this should go in Classic Gaming or Technical (or somewhere else), so feel free to move it. Thanks,
DogP