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FS: Fairchild System (Channel F) Multi-Cart, pre-order now.


e5frog

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13 hours ago, Nick Prince said:

The games worked great! Thanks again!

 

Cart 16 is in mint condition for comparison.

 

 

20200826_195717.jpg


The new RAM-test. 
Not that I have ever had a RAM with errors (test all RAM in a modern apparatus before building carts). 

 

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14 hours ago, sTo0z said:

Guess I submitted an order... :D

 

I hope all the info/payment came through correctly!

I wouldn't know, as people rarely put their alias in with their order.   ;-)

 

EDIT: Yes, it's in judging from the e-mail address. 

Edited by e5frog
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18 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Man, do I regret selling my $5 garage sale find CIB Channel F (and four or five games) for $60 or something on RGVC back in 1999 or 2000. But that was a substantial amount of money to me then...

 

Not enough to buy a new one quite yet, but it's awesome to see a multicart for it!

the multicart is definitely good stuff, especially compared to 2 grand for checkers

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2 hours ago, masschamber said:

the multicart is definitely good stuff, especially compared to 2 grand for checkers

Thankfully I didn't sell that (because I didn't have it). Gee, look at all the stuff I had... https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.sega/c/yQv4xf_SI9Q/m/JkEg_TFuauwJ

 

(The Virtual Boy games are still available if anybody wants them! :D)

Edited by jgkspsx
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On 11/8/2020 at 2:36 AM, e5frog said:

I'm still alive. 
Trying to sort out the box print dilemma as described in the Tetris (Videocart 28) thread.

Is there a more expensive box printing option you might have to opt into?

I remember the intellivision LTO Flash! box being pretty good. I wonder who he used.

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Most print shops can't print thick enough cardboard (it's already too thin IMO) and the cardboard printing people either just work with companies, have a hefty smallest order value, not four colour prints, not thin enough cardboard, wants me to pay for a tool to make the prefolds - or one that is combined with a cutting tool (wayy over my budget). Some charge a bunch just for the preparation for the print and some stop replying when I tell them how many prints I need (it's been 50pcs at the time lately). 

I have considered getting cardboard and glue thin printed paper (as you see on many older game boxes) but after some testing I wasn't able to make it look even OK, having a company do it would be even more expensive than normal print. There are white boxes you can buy as well, haven't found one to my liking though (too large usually) - and I'd not be happy with a "white box release" - not sure anyone else would appreciate that either.
I have previously printed single boxes (for size/test purposes or single release) on the thickest photo paper I could find for my printer, but they're way too thin and I'd probably make a loss on just the ink, having chosen black boxes like the original.   ;-)
It's possible I'm too picky but I can't bare to release stuff I'm not happy with.


Should I find another print place that still leaves me with some payment for all the time and money spent on materials I also need to have test prints made to adjust colors etc as I don't have knowledge about such things or professional equipment to handle it. There's a lot of communications and testing before the end result. Not just sending a file and get stuff back the next week.

Some earlier prints have turned out awful compared to what I expected and the prints that came out fine looked like crap after CMYK-conversion... no wonder people have this as a job. So buying 50-100 box prints and them coming out looking like crap... would be a huge loss. 
But I'm actually fine with running even up at this time, it's been a long time.

Looking abroad (outside Sweden) there's the same problems as above plus the shipping costs. I haven't asked around yet. If anyone has tips about a European/Northern Europe print place that makes cardboard prints - I'm interested. 

The place I have used since I started making Multi-Carts fulfill all needs I have in this matter, price, quality, services, size of edition and ease of contact. Only detail I don't like is the thickness of the cardboard but I have learned to live with that instead of having to pay multiple times as much. Still annoys me when I think about it. It's already expensive for a buyer, if it gets too much sales will get lower and the per-unit price will be even higher. It's a viscous circle. 

Anyway, regarding Tetris I expected some more interested people, it's a project with loss at the moment, just counting parts costs (including test- and prototyping-materials). 


So, I'm hoping that my usual printer guy comes back out from the darkness, if they have back orders I'm guessing my small job is not prioritized. ;-)
I'm also hoping they're not out of the game entirely because of the virus as far as I can see the company is still active, just not active.
 

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I would be fine with the cart only if it comes to that. Also fine waiting while you confirm things about your print shop.

Hopefully your Tetris sales get a bump if you offered it a little cheaper without box idk.

 

Also side thing but out of curiosity what would it take to make a MultiCart into something that loaded ROMs off an SD card?

I feel like those have the most value and I would be very interested in such a device if one was ever made.

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It would be really cool having a "Channel  SD" cart. There are people with finished solutions, that they aren't keen on sharing (I understand why), selling something like 20 carts a year is perhaps not a market that is tempting to spend time on. Unless you're into the system yourself. ;)

 

I have been meaning to make  a simple dev cart for years that is able to load data via USB and not having to use an eprom programmer and socketed memory... hasn't happened yet even though CAD drawings have been done for several versions. It's mainly a "money for prototyping" problem, which has been tight for the last six years with the wife in school (for adult people). 

 

There's a system for Vectrex identifying a 39SFxxx flashrom as a USB memory which seems interesting.

Instead of the programmer as a separate part it could be built into the cartridge and you'd have a USB connector in the cart.

Borrowed one of them from a friend but haven't had time to spend on it yet. 

SD would be really cool though but seems to have a larger threshold. 

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7 hours ago, e5frog said:

It would be really cool having a "Channel  SD" cart. There are people with finished solutions, that they aren't keen on sharing (I understand why), selling something like 20 carts a year is perhaps not a market that is tempting to spend time on. Unless you're into the system yourself. ;)

 

I have been meaning to make  a simple dev cart for years that is able to load data via USB and not having to use an eprom programmer and socketed memory... hasn't happened yet even though CAD drawings have been done for several versions. It's mainly a "money for prototyping" problem, which has been tight for the last six years with the wife in school (for adult people). 

 

There's a system for Vectrex identifying a 39SFxxx flashrom as a USB memory which seems interesting.

Instead of the programmer as a separate part it could be built into the cartridge and you'd have a USB connector in the cart.

Borrowed one of them from a friend but haven't had time to spend on it yet. 

SD would be really cool though but seems to have a larger threshold. 

Interesting... well ya I brought it up having a development cart in mind. So your idea of just loading stuff from a PC into SRAM or something over USB would be awesome (if I got that right?).

Personally don't actually care about the SD part while it is cool & ideal.

 

To me dev carts are what keep a system open to future possibilities for homebrew thats far cooler than emulation etc.

Or even just the general ability to add new cool future homebrew for general entusists.

Edited by zezba9000
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On 11/29/2020 at 8:13 AM, e5frog said:

It would be really cool having a "Channel  SD" cart. There are people with finished solutions, that they aren't keen on sharing (I understand why), selling something like 20 carts a year is perhaps not a market that is tempting to spend time on. Unless you're into the system yourself. ;)

 

I have been meaning to make  a simple dev cart for years that is able to load data via USB and not having to use an eprom programmer and socketed memory... hasn't happened yet even though CAD drawings have been done for several versions. It's mainly a "money for prototyping" problem, which has been tight for the last six years with the wife in school (for adult people). 

 

There's a system for Vectrex identifying a 39SFxxx flashrom as a USB memory which seems interesting.

Instead of the programmer as a separate part it could be built into the cartridge and you'd have a USB connector in the cart.

Borrowed one of them from a friend but haven't had time to spend on it yet. 

SD would be really cool though but seems to have a larger threshold. 

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. :)

 

Edited by BigO
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  • 1 month later...

Made a tool to be able to use a previous batch of box prints (I hardly throw anything away, still have the trimerous box prints with sloppy prefolds).

They were cut wrong and because of that I got a new batch at the time and stored these away. I had some time to "waste" on it and I managed to get it just as perfect as the proper ones.

Imagine what treasures you find in the back of the cupboards while looking for stuff to sell.


Now that this box detail is temporarily solved I'll be able to finish up the batch of Multi-Carts I currently have, three more left to be sold.

Boards are done and tested, just the rest to do...

Cleaning carts of every little remnant of labels is probably the most boring thing but it's an important detail IMHO, smooth and new-looking is what I'm going for. 

 

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As I have gotten questions and I'm not making any more Multi-Carts this year since I'll be busy making Videocart-28, I'll sell the last two boards as well. Boards are already assembled and tested, just need to to finish shell and box. 

So if you wanted one for Christmas, you have two chances.

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