classics Posted September 14, 2003 Share Posted September 14, 2003 Pre-ordering starts today for my 8Mbit Flash Multi-Cart/Disk-Cart/Homebrewing Cartridge, with shipment of all orders by 09/22. The cartridge is professionally produced, with open-source software and extensive documentation. Limited edition pricing is $39.99 per cartridge, with a shipping discount for buying five. After 9/22 the price will increase to $44.99. For complete product information and the order form go to: http://www.atarimax.com/ or directly to the MaxFlash cartridge page at: http://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/documentation/ Highlights: TRUE 8Mbit ( 1M Byte X 8 ) Flash design. Entire 8Mbit flash space reprogrammable in-system. Hobbyist oriented design, no surface mounted parts, reasonable price. Highest quality color labels. Easily create and share your cartridge projects with anyone. Supported by the same open-source perl/6502 development kit as the 1Mbit cartridge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oesii Posted September 15, 2003 Share Posted September 15, 2003 Looks nice, I have my first order in Too many multicarts to plan now, check out this possible one from the site: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krawhitham Posted September 15, 2003 Share Posted September 15, 2003 any eta on Maximum capacity 1GB (per device), typically 5% overhead for file system. Footprints TBD. (MMC/CF Cartridge) bought the 1Mbit cart, do not really want to buy the 8Mbit cart if the 1 GB MMC version will be out anytime soon. any idea on the cost for it. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted September 15, 2003 Author Share Posted September 15, 2003 any eta on Maximum capacity 1GB (per device), typically 5% overhead for file system. Footprints TBD. (MMC/CF Cartridge) bought the 1Mbit cart, do not really want to buy the 8Mbit cart if the 1 GB MMC version will be out anytime soon. any idea on the cost for it. I'd prefer not to say anything about the time frame, but the MMC cartridge will certains cost more, a lot more in fact since it will be all surface mount parts. Making more than say five is not something I would ever want to do by hand and the services of professional assembly houses are not cheap. Cuttle II is a pretty good example of what it costs to make and sell something like that. But again I wont commit to any numbers until saleable units are in hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted September 15, 2003 Share Posted September 15, 2003 I just ordered a 1Mb MaxFlash cartridge and I've been reading over the documentation and the source code (cool, we can actually look at the source!) and this thing is VERY COOL. You can make your own multi-carts for less money than some other people are selling them for. You can make a MULE cartridge. You can put a disk game on the cartridge, and with the 8-Mb cartridge you could probably put four disk games on cartridge too. There's a forum established for people to share ideas and cartridge images. Maybe some enterprising individual will put Ultima IV on a cartridge and patch it to save to disk just the player information! That would be cool and is probably not out of the realm of possibility. I held off on the multi-carts offered earlier at Atariage, but when I saw this thing I had to have one! The setup is very easy and I think almost anyone can create cartridges with the supplied software-no programming knowledge required. Buy one now (while their cheap!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted September 16, 2003 Author Share Posted September 16, 2003 I've also reduced the 5-pack price so they are essentially buy 4 get one free, with free shipping. I forgot to upload the new page earlier Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted September 16, 2003 Share Posted September 16, 2003 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted September 17, 2003 Share Posted September 17, 2003 Yeah well my well has been dipped in twice. I bought the 1-mbit version thinking it may be a while before the 8-mbit version came out. Have not even had a chance to try out the 1-mbit. But I figured these things are limited supply so I went ahead and got the 8-mbit version. Need to load it up with some stuff and let me son play around with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted September 17, 2003 Share Posted September 17, 2003 Yeah well my well has been dipped in twice. I bought the 1-mbit version thinking it may be a while before the 8-mbit version came out. Have not even had a chance to try out the 1-mbit. But I figured these things are limited supply so I went ahead and got the 8-mbit version. Need to load it up with some stuff and let me son play around with it. Just ordered my 8MB version also. I didn't had the time to play with the 1MB only tested it on UNCONVENTIONAL 2003 at it did work great, except for some issues with the Black-box but need some time to dig into it to see what causes there little problems. TXG/MNX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted September 19, 2003 Author Share Posted September 19, 2003 Just ordered my 8MB version also. I didn't had the time to play with the 1MB only tested it on UNCONVENTIONAL 2003 at it did work great, except for some issues with the Black-box but need some time to dig into it to see what causes there little problems. TXG/MNX Is that the thing you mentioned with Spartados 3.3a or something different? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted September 26, 2003 Share Posted September 26, 2003 Just ordered my 8MB version also. I didn't had the time to play with the 1MB only tested it on UNCONVENTIONAL 2003 at it did work great, except for some issues with the Black-box but need some time to dig into it to see what causes there little problems. TXG/MNX Is that the thing you mentioned with Spartados 3.3a or something different? Yes that was the problem I had. But I use spartados 3.3b (supports high-speed) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted September 29, 2003 Share Posted September 29, 2003 Ok so let me see if I understand how this thingy works. You can put any number (assuming you have room) of 8-bit cartridge or disk images onto this cartridge and make a multi-cart out of it? Does it work with the larger XE games? If so thing sounds sweet! Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted September 30, 2003 Share Posted September 30, 2003 Not cartridge images, just EXE files (multiple) or disk (ATR) images. Cartridge images would have to be reworked (if possible?) because of the different bank switching schemes. I received my 1MB version last week and it's pretty cool! I've only played with it a little bit so far though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted September 30, 2003 Share Posted September 30, 2003 So what exactly is an EXE file then? I assumed they were hacked cartridge files. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted September 30, 2003 Share Posted September 30, 2003 So what exactly is an EXE file then? I assumed they were hacked cartridge files. An EXE is an executable file (one that you can load from the AtariDOS L. command). Usually they have the extension of EXE, COM, BIN, XEX (for the emulator), etc... They CAN be a hacked cartridge, or a hacked disk game (hacked into one file), or something that was designed as a single file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted September 30, 2003 Share Posted September 30, 2003 They CAN be a hacked cartridge So you techinically can run cartridges from this thing right? Now my next question is how do you hack a cartridge into an EXE file? Is this a pretty uncommon thing? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy_bernstein Posted September 30, 2003 Share Posted September 30, 2003 Tempest, 1) You should ask Nir for that, he's very good with cartridge transfers 2) The trick is to modify the cartridge image / data so that it doesn't write over itself. As you know, a Cartridge is ROM and can rewrite over itself as many times as it wants to (just because it's unerasable). That's why CSS released the SUPER PILL in the mid-eighties, to provide 16K of ROM as a generic cartridge so that you could run your prototype cartridge images like Superman III and other recent B&C / Best Electronics protos without having to modify the code. Chanah Tovah ! Happy new year to All... AB (Atari Collector / User since 1983) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted September 30, 2003 Share Posted September 30, 2003 1) You should ask Nir for that, he's very good with cartridge transfers He seems to be the man! 2) The trick is to modify the cartridge image / data so that it doesn't write over itself. As you know, a Cartridge is ROM and can rewrite over itself as many times as it wants to (just because it's unerasable). That's why CSS released the SUPER PILL in the mid-eighties, to provide 16K of ROM as a generic cartridge so that you could run your prototype cartridge images like Superman III and other recent B&C / Best Electronics protos without having to modify the code. With an 8k or 16k cartridge it may be as easy as dumping the $8000-BFFF area to a file, and removing any cartridge checks (trying to overwrite the cartridge area) and then slapping on an EXE header to the front of the file which loads the data into $8000 (or A000, whichever). I'm betting most of those small cartridges have been done. With larger cartridges that bank switch, well you have to hack up the code a little more so that it either does not bank switch (which I guess means you would have to move some of the code to lower memory and then fix all the jumps) or as someone else said, change the bank switching of the cartridge into expanded memory bank switching. Either way, a large cartridge image is much harder to hack into a disk loadable executable file. Luckily, most have been done and are available on the net. These are the files you would need to download to get a "cartridge" game on the AtariMax flash cart. For cartridge images, the Hollex cartridge does that doesn't it? Don't know much about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted October 9, 2003 Share Posted October 9, 2003 I and TXG/MNX got our carts today VERY VERY HAPPY ----- mux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted October 10, 2003 Share Posted October 10, 2003 Got my cart today.. :thumbsup: Was actually surprised to see it cause last time an email was sent before it was shipped. Not sure when I'll be able to get around to trying it. Just caught up in so many other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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