BigO

Interesting idea. If I had sufficient ambition to make something like this, I would consider EEPROM instead of flash. While doing development work, it might be a cool feature to be able to just poke a new value in a single "ROM" location in a straightforward manner. Also, it seems like the EEPROM would be more directly analogous to the original ROM chip (of which I know very little) so might simplify the interface to the console. Being simple myself, I gravitate toward simple. Often, that makes things more complicated.

Bummer. I had an unpleasant experience with that condition. Discectomy with fusion:C4-C5-C6 fixed me right up. Nerve pain and dysfunction were gone when I woke up from surgery. My unsolicited advice is as soon as you need the surgery, get the surgery.

I wonder if the forums polling feature would be a reasonably manageable way to gather such "interest check/quantity" information. It would be less painful than reading every post and tabulating. Probably kinda too late for this topic.

Sorry, but I haven't heard of him yet. Just in case I did need to reference him some time before now, here's a link I can use back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor

Oops.

If you have any fabrication skills, off the shelf parts could be used to build yourself a controller: https://www.amazon.com/Tegg-Tactile-Phone-Style-Arduino-Raspberry/dp/B07RY85MGF/ref=sr_1_2 https://www.adafruit.com/product/480 It should be possible, though potentially somewhat tedious, for someone to guide you through the wiring remotely. If you should undertake that, it would be best to start a new thread. I'm sure I've polluted this one enough as it is.

Not sure it's an exact match, but pretty sure that this one I have in my parts bin would fit. Those tabs might be in the way. It looks like the original connector has the tabs completely outside of the pins, where the ones I have overlap the outer two pin holes a bit. Some whittling might be called for. So, yeah, it's probably common enough not to consider the connector a limiting factor. I bought the same connector (with more positions) for a controller project a few years ago. In looking again, I noticed that the schematic doesn't supply any pin numbers for the controller connections. So, somebody building a controller would need to trace the connector pins back to the PIA or figure out the pins via trial and error. Most likely, the Rows would be grouped together and the Columns would be grouped together on the connector which would make the guesswork less random. Either way, one would need a console at hand to come up with a working controller. Also, if it's the "main" controller that's broken and preventing you from playing games, I see no electrical reason that you couldn't just swap the connectors where they plug into the main board. The label on the controller would be wrong, but surely you could manage to compensate for that in some manner. I don't think it would do any damage to plug the connector in backward anyway so strict keying shouldn't be necessary.

Heh, that narrows it down to about 99% of the connectors in the world. Actually, I was thinking of a picture. Surely you must carry pictures of the innards of all of your consoles with you wherever you go.

Oh, well, since yours has a broken controller it's totally worthless. I'll take it off your hands for a few bucks. But I promise to let you know if the home brew controller works. 😁 If you were local to me, I might give it a shot at some point. But I've built enough custom controllers and such to know that I always mess up something the first time around. I wouldn't want to try without a test platform at hand. At that, one that I own just in case I do some damage. Out of curiosity, what does the connector that connects the controller to the board look like? If it's a readily available part it might be worthwhile for somebody to figure out a controller. Seeing how the joystick directions are all common to one scan row, it might be possible to adapt an Atari 2600 or other dirt common controller for the joystick portion. Lots of 4x3 matrix keypads exist.

Buyer will probably try to get the refund and keep the product to compensate for their inconvenience.

If I read the schematic correctly, the controllers themselves just contain a 4x4 matrix of switches. One row is the 4 joystick directions. The 4 scanning row signals are common to the two controllers. So from a certain technical perspective the hardware really implements a 4x8 matrix. Physically, it just so happens that 16 switches are physically separate from the other 16. If I had a console, I'm 90+% confident that I could build a working controller. My first proof of concept would be to simply wire up a 4x4 matrix keypad in place of a controller. So, if you have a spare console you're looking to let go at a reasonable price...🙂

Based on a brief look at the schematic, it doesn't look like it would be too terribly difficult to build a system from scratch. A controller could easily be put together from common, off-the-shelf parts. Not sure I'd ever get so desperate as to actually build my own, but since we had one with I was a kid, I would like to have an M/MP1000. Well, at least for a week or two until I figured out how terrible it actually was.

I used it to create some pretty solid commercial applications. It was essentially a rapid application development tool. I liked it. As things changed, there were lots of complaints about it not being fully OOP. I didn't really care about that at the time because it did the job that we needed it to do. With the transition to the .NET paradigm, I found that the new version of the VB language didn't offer enough familiarity to be of any value to me. I switched to C#. I kept the VB 4 stuff all this time because it was the last version that could do 16 bit apps. I had thoughts of maybe wanting to write an app for Win 3.x running on an old, low powered machine. I'm mostly over those thoughts. Probably should toss the old Win 3.1, 3.11 on MSDN CD's.😄

Sold eightbit a Genesis 3. Smooth as silk.

Landfill.

I'm guessing that this is going to turn into a game of Goodwill or Landfill soon, along with some other books that I no longer use...

"1. INTRODUCTION As state of the art technology has increased the number of transistors possible on a single integrated circuit, these devices have attained new, higher levels of both performance and functionality. Riding this crest are the Intel 80186 and 80286 microprocessors. While the 80286 has added memory protection and management to the basic 8086 architecture, the 80186 has integrated six separate functional blocks into a single device." PM me if you want to read more of this riveting tale. 🙂

No longer available. Well, they're technically probably still in existence in the landfill along with the installer CD, but hardly worth digging for. It's not like these are E.T. cartridges. $0.00 + shipping. Continental US only. Microsoft Press Microsoft Visual Basic: Programmer's Guide Language Reference Professional Features Ventana: Visual Basic 4.0 Power Toolkit

Earlier this evening I was working on cleaning out some stuff I never use. In amongst the reference books is an Intel "Microsystem Components Handbook: Volume I" ca. 1984. Many moons ago, I first heard of the '186 from that book. It's looking for a new home. PM me soon if you're interested in adopting it.

Sorry, too late. I sold off my 32x a few years ago. I think I may have kept the really odd cable I found that worked with the 32x. It's several feet long, gray, molded 90 degree connectors on each end. Now that I'm thinking of it, I don't recall it being in the box of Genesis stuff. I did find my custom hacked A/V cable. But, now you've got me wondering where I put that goofy cable...maybe I did send it with the 32x...

The cartridges are not just a game rom. Each one has a processor. There were two different processors used so a multicart to play all original games would have to deal with that. I built the beginnings of a game using an 8 bit PIC microcontroller so it doesn't take a ton of horsepower. So it may be possible to put is something that can emulate the original processors. Or the games could be ported to a single processor.