Would you rather have....

[OldMan]

From what I read on his 'blog', he has a working circuit for a Genesis cart that handles ide. He was using it to test FMV stuff.

Seems to me that would be very similar (well, not the drivers, but...) to what is needed for an external CD-ROM on the pce interface connector. We could move the SDRam to the HuCard, and (hopefully) read from the circuit into the on-card ram, much like a real system card does. Add in an eeprom and a decoder, and it -might- be possible to run a menu program from the eeprom to load rom images (<128k ?) from cd. Then we could disable the eeprom and re-set to run the image.

Just thinking out loud again.....

[Arkhan Asylum]

Does someone have a schematic for a hucard using flashable rom chips (surface mount ideally but dip or socketed would work too)  I have an idea....

uh.  didn't you see the HuCard CCAG video, lol.

[spenoza]

Here's a thought. You could go with a HuCard "carrier" design that costs a little more, and the games could be on SD cards or daughter boards/cards that simply attach to the HuCard carrier. The carrier is what slots into the unit and holds the mount for the data unit that contains the game code.

That's more or less ark's plan except with eeproms instead of flash cards: use a generic board w/ a eeprom socket, burn whatever you want to the eeprom, stick it in the socket and slap a corresponding label on the hump.

Or a snap-on plastic cover! Ooooooo.... Stylin'!

[OldRover]

OK... snooping around for usable chips, I came across this...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/360300274823

Looks like they have over 11 thousand of them and are selling them off in lots of 50. It comes out to about $5.52 apiece. The question is... is 100ns fast enough?

EDIT: I think they'll work just fine... the chip inside my GE game is a M27C4001-15F1, which is a 150ns chip... a 100ns chip should work wonderfully.

[OldRover]

It appears as if Atmel still manufactures chips that fit the bill...

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=2453

EDIT: I found a supplier out of Guangdong, China that may be able to get these, and at a pretty damn good price too.

[OldMan]

It comes out to about $5.52 apiece.....
a 100ns chip should work wonderfully.

Yes, 100ns will work. Up  to about 120ns is fine, btw.
But now everyone has independant collaboration - the chips are about $5 each, making the total for parts
alone about $15.

[OldRover]

I've gotten a quote from JiaYe Technology (HK) Co., LTD for the Atmel AT27C080-90PC... they quoted me $4.50 apiece for an order of 5, or $3.50 apiece for an order of 1000. The TSOP package apparently isn't being made anymore so I asked for PLCC, which is arguably just as good but I guess there's going to be a little more cost for the mount.

[OldMan]

TSOP's would just make a flatter board (*I think*) and be easier to solder. PLCC works, but you either need a socket or a steady hand to solder them on.

[OldRover]

You can get the boards made with the socket pre-installed... it doesn't seem to cost much more and makes it way easier to put together working cards.

[spenoza]

Well, if you intend to make any slightly larger games, won't you need to include some kind of memory mapper? How complicated will something like that be?

[OldRover]

Yes, if you go over 8 megabits, you need a mapper. I have no idea how to do something like that... I only understand the principle behind it, not the circuitry. Someone else would be better suited for that.

[OldMan]

Well, if you intend to make any slightly larger games, won't you need to include some kind of memory mapper? How complicated will something like that be?

Not just a mapper (which is available in chip form), but also a decoder for the address lines, so you don't 'accidentally' change the mapper registers. Which also implies you lose some space from the chip, though you could probably map the mapper into the i/o page fairly easily....

But seriously: 8M bit = 1M byte = one big game. Even bigger if you compress stuff, and decompress it when needed.
Your biggest problem with a 8M bit+ game is gonna be powering it all.....

[thesteve]

memory is not near as power hungry as it once was, so powering it is not an issue.
mapping can be done with a ram chip and a bus chip.
the trick is the software needs to know its their