Mapper recommandation chart

[Bregalad]

I don't have anything against bunny boy but depend exclusively on ONE guy is not a good decision if you want to produce carts. He's likely to take advantage of his monopole position and to charge the MMC1/3 CPLD clone carts much more expensive than it'll be to someone who have the appropriate tools and soldering skills.

But anyways someone making carts for a new NES game will probably not make that many, so this should be taken into consideration too.

[infiniteneslives]

I don't have anything against bunny boy but depend exclusively on ONE guy is not a good decision if you want to produce carts. He's likely to take advantage of his monopole position and to charge the MMC1/3 CPLD clone carts much more expensive than it'll be to someone who have the appropriate tools and soldering skills.

But anyways someone making carts for a new NES game will probably not make that many, so this should be taken into consideration too.

I don't think it's fair to say he has a monopoly. There simply hasn't been anyone else who's even tried really. And like your saying about quantity, he's making a large quantity and charging much less than it would cost an individual to make a few. A PCB for $4 and a PCB w/CPLD for $9 is pretty cheap, you're going to spend $30-50 for 3 PCBs unless you etch it yourself.

I'd like to whip up the MMC3 on a board myself, but it's just a matter of actually doing it. That and I realize how people would like the capabilities for producing a game with MMC3 but how many games would actually get produced that would use it? There's only a few games being developed that would make use of MMC3 to my knowledge right now.

[Karatorian]

Ok, links and question K fixed. Thanks, Dwedit for spotting that. I also exported the PNG at a larger DPI so one can actually read it. I hope I didn't make it too wide and make the thread require horizontal scrolling (I hate that).

Thanks Bregalad for the hardware perspective of why the MMC1 would be like that. From the little hardware dabbling I've done, I can appreciate the value of reducing the pin count. But from software (my strong side), it just seems weird.

[tokumaru]

I don't have anything against bunny boy but depend exclusively on ONE guy is not a good decision if you want to produce carts.

For me, the main problem with this is not the monopoly (others are free to offer the same service in case they want to), but the possibility of something happening to bunnyboy. If he decides to change business, dies, wins the lottery and gives up working, whatever, we're screwed, because he's the only one around who's able to make new carts without cannibalizing anything from old ones.

[bunnyboy]

Change business = post everything I have to a website somewhere
Dies = my wife knows who to send my hard disk to, they would do the above because they have their own jobs
Wins lottery = do this all for free! There are plenty of projects like the expansion port I could do when I am willing to lose lots of money

Anything else and theres a few people who could choose to do the same thing. kevtris/memblers/thefox/loopy should be able to do it immediately without any problems, others like marshallh/infiniteneslives could do it probably after learning a bit more.

But for the original topic the html version picked the same mapper I decided on for a few projects, so good job! It seemed like there were too many (overlapping?) questions about mem size. Maybe those are just needed to narrow it to a single mapper instead of a couple?

Some of the wording could probably be changed for more beginner developers too. Pages like the CHR ROM "page of tiles" might be confusing. Referring to background animations instead (or add game examples?) could help.

Might also want to add extended mappers, like the bigger B*ROM used by Action 53 and 512KB U*ROM used by BK2.

[infiniteneslives]

Anything else and theres a few people who could choose to do the same thing. kevtris/memblers/thefox/loopy should be able to do it immediately without any problems, others like marshallh/infiniteneslives could do it probably after learning a bit more.

Agreed and challenge accepted

[tokumaru]

the html version picked the same mapper I decided on for a few projects, so good job!

Heh, it was the exact opposite for me! XD I was trying to land on B*ROM (maybe it's not considering the extended version?) but it gave me friggin MMC1, which I absolutely hate!

[tepples]

But for the original topic the html version picked the same mapper I decided on for a few projects, so good job! It seemed like there were too many (overlapping?) questions about mem size. Maybe those are just needed to narrow it to a single mapper instead of a couple?

If you're in the "doesn't matter whether I use CHR ROM or CHR RAM" track, a lot of questions are needed to distinguish SUROM from SKROM/SLROM. Perhaps I could tweak the wording to make it more of a binary search than a linear search.

Some of the wording could probably be changed for more beginner developers too. Pages like the CHR ROM "page of tiles" might be confusing. Referring to background animations instead (or add game examples?) could help.

I agree. I just used Bregalad's wording for the early pages because it was late at night and I couldn't think of a better way to explain that one. It's just that I don't remember playing a lot of NES games that change a heck of a lot of tiles in each frame. Even Super Mario Bros. 3 uses only a few tiles from its animated bank ($0800-$0FFF) in each level, like the spinning coins and the spinning ? blocks, and those could probably be blasted to CHR RAM.

Might also want to add extended mappers, like the bigger B*ROM used by Action 53 and 512KB U*ROM used by BK2.

I've tested 512 KiB B*ROM on a PowerPak but not yet 512 KiB U*ROM. The latter would need a 74377 instead of a 74161. How big does the discrete ReproPak actually go in that configuration?

I was trying to land on B*ROM (maybe it's not considering the extended version?) but it gave me friggin MMC1, which I absolutely hate!

It's treating B*ROM as having three PRG bank bits like AOROM, or a total of 256 KiB of PRG ROM. If you choose no IRQs and either 257-512 KiB of total data or switchable mirroring, you end up with SUROM or SKROM/SLROM.

[tokumaru]

It's treating B*ROM as having three PRG bank bits like AOROM, or a total of 256 KiB of PRG ROM.

But AxROM actually uses the 4th bit for something (mirroring), unlike BxROM, so it doesn't make much sense to not use that bit to double the capacity of the mapper.

[slobu]

Off topic but related to the cart manufacturing replies so far..

Why hasn't anyone made something similar to the Melody cart by AtariAge?
http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=p ... age_melody

Wouldn't an open sourced piece of hardware similar to that solve many problems at once?

[tepples]

tokumaru: BxROM isn't even listed in the board's manual; it's a modification of the board's support for AxROM that bunnyboy and I discussed one day. The 161 is in the position for AxROM, but you solder the HORIZ or VERT pads instead of the ONE pads. I don't even think there's a trace for PRG A18.

slobu: Say someone made a reprogrammable NES cartridge. Which mapper would this board implement? There are a lot more mappers on the NES than on any other 8-bit platform because only the NES has CHR ROM. But as I understand it, the 8T-ROM is supposed to be something like the Melody board. And once it comes out and gets emulated, remind me and I'll update the wizard. Right now the closest thing, a board reprogrammable for multiple discrete mappers, might be a PowerPak Lite with its PRG RAM replaced with flash memory.

As for the CHR ROM vs. CHR RAM section, is the wording in this wiki article OK?