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e5frog

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Posts posted by e5frog

  1. Posted · Edited by e5frog

    I noticed an error in the picture, it says 100 but is supposed to be 200

    as it marks the points for the first monster in a Power Pellet frenzy...

     

    Now corrected, I hope the boxes haven't been printed yet...

     

     

    gx1JWohJ.jpg

     

     

     

    Here's the current version of the manual (Thanks Godzilla for helping with the text):

     

    gx1JZQi9.jpg

     

    gx1JZSNi.jpg

     

    gx1JZXMA.jpg

     

    gx1JZ_gJ.jpg

     

     

    You can read it better in these two pictures, any comments are welcome (required):

     

    Edit: Changed the pictures a third time:

     

     

    gx1KrgdJ.jpg

     

    gx1KriIS.jpg

  3. Posted

    Yes, I too can vouch for the awesomeness of this game, very worth it imho. not like there are going to be many other new fairchild carts running around :) Will I be getting box/docs? or do I have to buy them seperately? Thanks again.

     

     

    I have gotten an example of text to put on the back side of the box, I'll try and get some of it done this weekend. All Fairchild Channel F Pac-Man cartridge owners will get the box and instructions. However I might ask for a small donation to cover postage, printing costs are on me.

     

    If anyone like to help writing the text for the instruction booklet it would be most appreciated.

  5. Posted

    I was given eproms and sram:s from a friend of mine which made it possible for me to charge $85 for some of the carts for those with patience enough to wait. People paying the $120 was first in line for the next cartridge made.

     

     

    Tell me why it's $120??

     

    a game dosen't cost that much

     

    If you can get a donor-cartridge, two logic circuits, an eprom, an sram circuit, the special necessary memory interface circuit, a couple of resistors and capacitors and circuitboard, box and instructions for less - including postage for everything back and forth and materials to assemble everything (photopaper, ink and plastic for labels, solder tin etc etc) and maybe even not having to work about 4-8 hours per cartridge entirely for free, please tell me how?

     

     

    I'm sorry, but if I could offer them for free I would, I'm sure I'd make double the amount of cartridges.

     

    When you count everything in it is a lot of money.

     

     

    People on the waiting list have been offered the best possible price, I have been making 3 or four at the time. Currently I have five professionally made PCB:s left which probably be Pac-Man carts 20-24 if anyone is interested, if not they will probably be Karate carts starting with #1 - when I have time to finish it - I plan to finish the Pac-Man box and instructions first.

     

    All in all - I haven't made any money, I've used all income from this project to pay for parts and made improvements where improvements were possible. I'm not even working for free, not breaking even - I have acrually paid money to be able to get these carts out, because it's fun and because I'm proud of what I and Tim have achieved.

     

    Maybe if I sell 50 of them at $100 I will break even, counting shipping prices and materials, and by then - no extra money for all the time programming the game and building the carts.

     

     

    Finally, I have two kids (and a wife...) and work full time, I do this at my spare time... anyone who is in the same situation will know how difficult it can be to find the time.

     

     

     

    PingvinBlueJeans: You can get #20 for $85, that's the last one I already have circuits for - more is ordered, I used all the money from my last sale to buy memory circuits for another 15 carts, however the other parts won't last for more than two or three carts, I'll buy more parts as money comes in from sales.

     

    PayPal: [email protected]

  8. Posted

    Where do people get their Channel F games? There don't seem to be too many on eBay although 4Jays and Atari2600.com has some.

     

    You can always ask around, many collectors have a few extras and some people that don't collect them have a few just to swap with. There has been quite a few on eBay lately - put a "Saved Search" on eBay and have e-mails sent to you when there are Channel F games available...

  9. Posted

    That makes more sense. He must have misremembered, because at one point he said it had 4 * 4K chips in it (i.e., 16K) and at another he said it was 16K total. So his mind's playing tricks is all.

     

    Chips are often measured in bits, and it's correct that it has 4 x 4 kbits ram circuits - it may have been just a misunderstanding between the two of them. ;-)

  10. Posted · Edited by e5frog

    He remembers wrong or he means 16 kbits of RAM - the Video RAM is 2048 bytes (4 x 512 byte circuits) and the CPU has 64 bytes of RAM.

    The Video RAM is "write only" (you can't read back what you wrote) and only about 72% of it's area is usable since that's all that is displayed on screen.

     

     

    One Pac-Man cartridge takes about 5-7 hours to make, as there's little interest it's not affordable to have the pcb:s made professionally, I'm expecting to sell at most 30 of them...

    I do the PCB:s myself, photoresist lighting, etching, drilling, cutting the shape, test circuits before soldering, all soldering, rinsing used cartridge shell from labels and markings, print labels, put plastic on them and cut them with a pair of scissors (and do it all over if I get a crease), personalized back label and extensive testing before I send it along to its new owner... I could probably not afford to buy one of them myself without saving up for it - I actually don't have one myself - yet, maybe I could afford one if I sell enough...

     

     

     

    The System I units have really poor sound when playing music - there's a continous background beep. In the game (Football, Pac-Man and others) however it's OK since very little sound effects are used, short bleeps and clicks mostly.

     

     

    I'd say get a cheap system (I or II), try some games, some people like it and the others lack the imagination needed to have fun with these old games. ;-)

     

     

     

    I'll start making Multi-Carts as well eventually, but the Pac-Man version included in the Multi-Cart will lack some features.

    This is perhaps more affordable as you get all Channel F games for something around $100-150.

    I'll perhaps try and patch "Hangman" as well as the original version of it lacks the ability to add your own words when it is placed into the Multi-Cart (it originally has extra RAM connected to a port that aren't available on the Multi-Cart).

  21. Posted

    I buy them from the US, I've only found one supplier (well, actually a friend of mine found them) with reasonable prices, and if I can sell the two carts and get pre-orders (paid ones) to a sum of $250 I can buy enough to get them at half the price - so double the amount of circuits for the $200 - well, the postage might be a little more.

     

    Without those there would be no carts at all for (probably) a long long time...

     

     

    Sean was working on a solution, it included one of the latest PIC32, no other circuits were fast enough or had enough I/O, of course it might have been feasable using an FPGA circuit of some sort, but that's not the way he wanted to go.

     

    It's a bit tricky making a VHDL (or Verilog) description of it since the documentation is poor on some ROMC-states, I don't know if Sean has done some extensive study on those - but he´s pretty good with these things, a technical wiz' if you like - he's on my list of admired people at least. ;-)

     

    I'm a little interested in how the built-in timer works, I'll explore that some time, it seems the Chess-cartridge might use the timer since the interrupt has been enabled on the SMI.

  22. Posted · Edited by e5frog

    I am interested as well, but only at a lower price point.

     

    If I may ask, what is the major expense? Do you need rare donor carts, or out of production ICs?

     

     

    I'd say the major expense is shipping costs, gathering all parts at very low amounts are costly not because the parts are very expensive but the shipping on them. That's why I hoped to get a long list of interested people - to be able to make one big buy, I don't dare order a bunch of parts that I can't sell at a later point.

     

    Starting costs for making PCB:s, boxes, instructions are also a great expense, I'll see if we can get there eventually.

     

     

    I know this is a system with very little interest, I also hope to increase that interest by releasing new games for all to enjoy on their real units. If you know anyone with a Channel F - tell them to get on the list for a Pac-Man cart - the more who wants to buy the better they'll get.

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