electrotrains Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Hi All, I thought I'd post to announce my new hardware project - I'm building an SD-card based Multicart. https://youtu.be/PjkCTXqirv8 Although its far from being finished, it already shows the available ROMs/CARs on the SD card on an Atari menu, and will then reboot to the selected cartridge. At the moment it only supports 8k ROMS and 8-mbit Atarimax ROMs, with bankswitching etc, but I plan to support all cartridge types soon. Adding a new ROM is simply a case of copying a new file to the SD card - no more flashing ATRs etc. Not sure if there's any other available hardware that currently does this? I don't have an SIDE or MyIDE. The hardware is a Altera Max 10 eval board, with my 3.3v cartridge breakout board attaching it to the atari. There's an external 1 megabyte SRAM which cartridges are copied to. Initially the atari boots to a small 8k boot ROM which is stored in dual port memory on the FPGA. The FPGA is also running a soft-cpu to copy files from SD card to SRAM. I'm planning to make a PCB for this next, with the aim of fitting inside a standard cartridge case. Never done an FPGA board before, so that may take me some time. The boot ROM is also far from finished - I'm having to learn 6502 from scratch. There are some other possibilities for this too - the same cartridge could be re-programmed e.g. as an atari co-processor/accelerator board. I'm planning to leave a JTAG/USB Blaster header on the board to make this easy. Robin 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jvas Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Really a great idea! You can count me on when the production begins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 This is something I am extremely interested in!!! Perhaps to the extent of buying the separate parts and building it via breadboard!!! Absolutely fantastic work! An SD solution for this problem is exactly what we need. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperboy Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Love it, Count me in! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joey Z Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 (edited) Just the other day I was thinking we really need an SD based multicart for the 8 bit, and I was going to put it in my long list of things I should do, but if you end up producing something for a reasonable price, that works too. I am a believer in open source hardware and software in a hobby like this. We can't have proprietary software and hardware, forcing people to constantly reinvent the wheel when something goes out of production. Will you be releasing schematics and source code by any chance? EDIT: also, if you need any help on this, hardware or software, let me know. I'm a college student on summer break with plenty of time on my hands currently. I have pretty good experience with 6502 assembly and I am studying to be an electrical engineer. In addition to that, I have plenty of previous experience with designing hardware. You can PM me if you want to talk, or post here if you prefer that, it doesn't matter to me. Edited June 11, 2015 by Joey Z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
electrotrains Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 Joey, I'm planning for this to be completely open-source (once I've finished the design). Having said that, its going to be pretty difficult to build one yourself at home (very fine surface mount parts). Thanks for the offer of help - will send you a PM. I'm not sure about getting the finished board produced in any quantity - if there's demand for more than about 10 of them (which seems possible), I'm unlikely to want to produce them myself at home. I'm doing this for fun and learning, rather than profit. Any ideas welcome, Robin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 canvas opinion on how many would be genuinely interested open a "poll" in the thread not interested interested would buy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joey Z Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 (edited) Joey, I'm planning for this to be completely open-source (once I've finished the design). Having said that, its going to be pretty difficult to build one yourself at home (very fine surface mount parts). Thanks for the offer of help - will send you a PM. I'm not sure about getting the finished board produced in any quantity - if there's demand for more than about 10 of them (which seems possible), I'm unlikely to want to produce them myself at home. I'm doing this for fun and learning, rather than profit. Any ideas welcome, Robin Right, of course the reason I say it should be open source is not so much so people can produce them at home, but so that people can produce them more professionally, in a larger quantity. Then they can sell them individually to people. It's not too difficult to get some boards made, but professional board assembly is a bit more difficult. Depending on how many parts there are, it probably wouldn't be unreasonable to get a set of boards made and hand solder the components. I'd be willing to produce a run of them and solder them as time allows, if there were interest in them. Another issue is cart shells, getting some manufactured again adds to difficulty, making your own is probably even more difficult. Being a cart that needs an SD slot, it'd be difficult to adapt anything. Edited June 11, 2015 by Joey Z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djmat56 Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 would deffo buy one. I have two multicarts currently but its a pain having to keep flashing via the Atari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thegamezmaster Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 As part of the minority, I would love to see a affordable priced cart like this. And I realize the maker deserves to be compensated for their work but some of us most high prized items are out of reach. Good luck with your work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 canvas opinion on how many would be genuinely interested open a "poll" in the thread not interested interested would buy Would buy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+playsoft Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Hi Robin, I would buy (really I would like two if you ever did more than a small run). I use the Atarimax Ultimate SD cart on the 5200 console and being able to copy to the SD card and run without any flashing is so much quicker. It also makes a cart API available to the 6502, so for example I can load level data in from a separate file instead of having all the level data contained in the cart image itself - so that may be something to consider. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
electrotrains Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 (edited) Paul, I hadn't heard of the Atarimax Ultimate SD cart for the 5200. I've been to the Atarimax website a few times, but tend to blank out the non Atari 8-bit stuff. I wonder why a version for the 400/800/XL/XE was never released? The 5200 looks like it was very similar hardware, so it shouldn't have been a big step. Also - damn! I was going to call mine the Ultimate Cart, might have to reconsider that. Thanks for the suggestion on an API for saving data to file on the SD card. Though that would require games to be specially written for the cartridge... Robin Edited June 11, 2015 by electrotrains Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 (edited) what about Multimate Cart ? Edited June 11, 2015 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+playsoft Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Hi Robin, Yes the 5200 is more or less a 400 - I build for both from the same source with some conditional code. Any API would require games to be specifically written for it, but that does happen - there are a number of games written for the Atarimax Maxflash carts, some of which save to the cart. As well as saving you could load in level data from another file, effectively making a game bigger than a 8mb cart and also playing video clips etc. I guess it depends on the number of carts made/sold as to the likelihood of the API being used and of course it being something that you'd find interesting to do. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 canvas opinion on how many would be genuinely interested open a "poll" in the thread not interested interested would buy The poll options should be: Yes Heck Yes Take my money already! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Sounds good. Suggestions: . many Roms out there have no headers, so maybe allow the user to select banking type in a similar way that emulators do it. . if it's versatile enough to support new banking schemes through reflash or dynamically then great. . if it's got the ability to do coprocessing like the 5200 Ultimate SD cart then it'd be even better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 I'd definitely be interested in this if it can fit into a standard cart shell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I will definitely buy this if you bring it to market. This is exactly the product that I have been hoping to see eventually made available for the A8bit line. Fantastic! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
accousticguitar Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 If the price were in the $60 to $80 range I imagine you could sell at least 100 of these, possibly a lot more. The thing holding a lot of people back would be that they already have a solution involving modern technology. I, for example, have SIO2PC already, but if the price were right I would certainly be interested in a SD multicart. The SD multicart would be easier to update. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 (edited) Oh, I've got a USB SIO2PC cable. It works pretty good; the software that I use (Aspeqt) is a little sensitive about .car files though. I would much, much rather have a SD Multi-Cart that runs ANY cartridge image! Edited June 12, 2015 by SS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MacRorie Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 canvas opinion on how many would be genuinely interested open a "poll" in the thread not interested interested would buy I am going with the already suggested: "Take my money already!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+orpheuswaking Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Interested based on final price and ease of use. Ultimately I want to be able to dump a bunch of games on an SD card and be able to just play them from a menu. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
venom4728a Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 I am interested and would like to buy one, Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FULS Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 I'll buy 2 or 3 if the "Bounty Bob Strikes Back" Rom is directly supported. That's the only complaint I have on "The!Cart" cartridge. It supports all other Rom types. Doug Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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