nesdev.org

I've been reading into a lot of cart hardware documents but it's hard to wrap my head around, especially since i'm thinking with a focus on newly made games whereas most documents are aimed at reproductions.

So say you wanted to make a game cart with as little donor parts as possible and as much resources as possible, what would be an ideal setup?

Talk to RetroZone aka RetroUSB. If you mean that you designed and programmed a game yourself you wish to sell, they could help you bring it to market. If its something on a smaller scale, you can buy some PCBs and Cartridge Shells.

http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?cPath ... 8b34447cf0

Retro Zone has PCBs, shells, and CIC clone, all new parts. Looks like about $12-$17 USD for everything except the EPROM/SRAM chips.

pigpen wrote:So say you wanted to make a game cart with as little donor parts as possible and as much resources as possible, what would be an ideal setup?

SUROM is probably the most advanced mapper that can be replicated for sale without a donor cart. RetroZone has a board that can substitute for any common MMC1 board, including SUROM. But MMC1 doesn't have a scanline counter or a dedicated PRG bank slot for sampled sound playback, so you won't be able to do A. complex raster effects and sampled sound playback at once or B. lots of different samples (like a Sunsoft bass or Klax sound effects). These are generally considered MMC3 features; if you need them, and your game uses the same mapper configuration and ROM size as a game for which a reproduction guide exists, you can follow that guide.

Or if you have RetroZone partner with you to produce the game I would bet that MMC3 could be used. Other mappers besides MMC1 are used in reproductions they sell.

MottZilla wrote:Or if you have RetroZone partner with you to produce the game I would bet that MMC3 could be used. Other mappers besides MMC1 are used in reproductions they sell.

So they have MMC3, Just no board available? -has a sad moment-

The entire sunsoft DMC samples set for bass is only 5k in size, you'd just need less code in your fixed bank if you wanted to use those.

65024U wrote:

MottZilla wrote:Or if you have RetroZone partner with you to produce the game I would bet that MMC3 could be used. Other mappers besides MMC1 are used in reproductions they sell.

So they have MMC3, Just no board available? -has a sad moment-

There is no reason if you were going to produce a new game that you couldn't put a MMC3 clone mapper on a CPLD. Given that RetroZone created the PowerPAK, and reproductions that don't use standard mappers, I don't think MMC3 is an issue for them.

True.


And yes, It's easier to order boards from RetroUSB and make nice carts without rewiring and such, so you can use them to save time and learn, then use donors that are easy to find/cheap/easy to find to make some other stuff to play around with. For NROM, I use just SMB, DH, Hockey carts. Easy to find, not expensive, PLENTIFUL, so I don't feel bad and they're going twords a good cause. As for MMC1, It's harder to find the right and cheap donor, so sometimes RetroUSB would be easier to obtain boards. (Like SXROM, No USA released game uses it)


Hope this info helps.

What about circuit chips?
You can certainly get much bigger ones then were available for most NES games along with new ones like FlashMemory.

pigpen wrote:What about circuit chips?

What do you mean by this? Google "circuit chips" doesn't help.

You can certainly get much bigger ones then were available for most NES games along with new ones like FlashMemory.

Sure, there are bigger flash chips than the 29F040 used by SUROM, but they aren't always 5.0 V 8-bit parallel NOR flash like the 29F series. A lot of big flash chips are 3.3 V, or I2C serial, or block-organized NAND. To use serial or block memory effectively, you need a big PRG RAM. FDS (disk is serial) and PowerPak (CF is a block device) do this, but I have my doubts that a game can.

tepples wrote:Sure, there are bigger flash chips than the 29F040 used by SUROM, but they aren't always 5.0 V 8-bit parallel NOR flash like the 29F series. A lot of big flash chips are 3.3 V, or I2C serial, or block-organized NAND. To use serial or block memory effectively, you need a big PRG RAM. FDS (disk is serial) and PowerPak (CF is a block device) do this, but I have my doubts that a game can.

Which is why i was asking in the first place what would be an ideal setup for a new game.

pigpen wrote:

tepples wrote:Sure, there are bigger flash chips than the 29F040 used by SUROM, but they aren't always 5.0 V 8-bit parallel NOR flash like the 29F series. A lot of big flash chips are 3.3 V, or I2C serial, or block-organized NAND. To use serial or block memory effectively, you need a big PRG RAM. FDS (disk is serial) and PowerPak (CF is a block device) do this, but I have my doubts that a game can.

Which is why i was asking in the first place what would be an ideal setup for a new game.

I'd worry about NROM first, with 32K program and 8K graphics. If your 1st game is over that, you might be getting a -tad- froggy.


And as for it, yeah it can be done, but you have to make/hack the hardware in and write games. I know I am making a 1MB SN2ROM (My name for it) for messing with a project next up in the future. It can be done, but sometimes is just better to get to this a lot later.

It depends on what the requirements are. There's not much of a limit to what you can put on an NES cart, but you'll have to define what you meant about resources.

Having an ideal setup, would require an ideal game for an example.

I had completed 4 NES board designs (the 3 oldest ones are pictured here), I have a couple more planned, one of them sooner, it's a pretty decent and should be pretty cheap. Here's the (planned) specs:

-PRG (FlashROM) $8000 and $C000 are banked independently, 512kB max.
-CHR-RAM Is banked, also twice independently, at $0800-$0FFF and $1800-$1FFF. the rest is fixed. (16 * 2kB)
-registers at $5000-$5007
-(optional) WRAM is banked (4 * 8kB)

The other one I'll be doing later (complete Squeedo redesign) will be pretty extreme in it's capabilities.. and will be more expensive, for it.

65024U wrote:I'd worry about NROM first, with 32K program and 8K graphics. If your 1st game is over that, you might be getting a -tad- froggy. :o

I'm not sure what that means but im not asking about this stuff for my first game...im asking to keep my conceptual knowledge ahead of my technical knowledge so i know what direction to head in.