Homebrews on Uno-2600 cartridge

[Ian Smiler B]

On 7/27/2021 at 7:34 AM, batari said:

I have seen this sort of thing said before. Are people unaware that a standard Harmony cart is $39.99 + $3.99 shipping?

Would love it if the Harmony Cart was that cheap but I live in England & never seen it as cheap as that & if it was, would have to pay a stupid amount for postage. Does a NTSC harmony cart work OK on a PAL Atari 2600 Vader? 

[+batari]

On 7/30/2021 at 9:04 AM, Ian Smiler B said:

Would love it if the Harmony Cart was that cheap but I live in England & never seen it as cheap as that & if it was, would have to pay a stupid amount for postage. Does a NTSC harmony cart work OK on a PAL Atari 2600 Vader? 

Carts are neither NTSC or PAL, the TV format is coded into the individual games. Though, there are NTSC and PAL firmware versions and the cart can be flashed with either version, but this only affects the TV format of the menu. Even such, NTSC menu works on a PAL TV.

 

Yep, shipping is $16 outside the USA, and I actually lose a little bit of money out of the deal as shipping to England costs me slightly more than that. However, if you can find a friend who also wants one, I do not charge additional shipping for additional carts. Order two carts, you get both shipped for $16. Find three friends who also want one and I would ship all four for the $16.

[+Al_Nafuur]

On 7/28/2021 at 10:16 AM, batari said:

Advanced cart boards are nothing new, and neither is the chicken-and-egg problem, where homebrewers won't write a game for a board that doesn't already exist in sufficient numbers to release the game, and hardware guys seem reluctant to produce thousands of boards that have no homebrews to release on them. So we end up with a stalemate and nothing happens.

 

One way that could break the stalemate is for someone to make a big investment in cart boards and make them available at an affordable price either to homebrewers or to an experienced, trusted game publisher like AtariAge. That's what I did for Melody. Someone may do something similar here eventually.

No need for someone to make a big investment. The UnoCart/PlusCart is open source and every developer or distributor can use the PlusCart/UnoCart Zero (Board without WiFi or SD) and the Auto-boot setup to release a game on cartridge.

 

[+batari]

14 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

No need for someone to make a big investment. The UnoCart/PlusCart is open source and every developer or distributor can use the PlusCart/UnoCart Zero (Board without WiFi or SD) and the Auto-boot setup to release a game on cartridge.

The big investment is to get the unit price down to something manageable. Over the years there has been no shortage of similar cart boards in the $15-$20 range but in the past that has proved to be simply too much.

[orange808]

Any chance ACE will get "DPC audio" support (the ability to update the audio registers efficiently during blanking)?  ?

[+Al_Nafuur]

14 hours ago, batari said:

The big investment is to get the unit price down to something manageable. Over the years there has been no shortage of similar cart boards in the $15-$20 range but in the past that has proved to be simply too much.

The price for the STM32F407VGT6 board was $7.50 over the last years, due to the pandemic it is now up to $15. The price for a melody board ( with cartridge and label) is $30

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=949

 

So the price for a STM32 based board is manageable. The problem is that DPC+ is not fully supported and CDFJ is not supported yet and ACE games are rare.

 

As you already stated it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem and someone has to make the start.

 

 

[+batari]

3 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

The price for the STM32F407VGT6 board was $7.50 over the last years, due to the pandemic it is now up to $15. The price for a melody board ( with cartridge and label) is $30

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=949

 

So the price for a STM32 based board is manageable. The problem is that DPC+ is not fully supported and CDFJ is not supported yet and ACE games are rare.

 

As you already stated it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem and someone has to make the start.

Do you realize that you're comparing a finished product (Melody game, programmed, with cartridge, label, manual and royalties paid to the author) to just a single piece of a multiple-piece kit you need to assemble (STM board?)

 

In the past $15 was too much even for a turnkey cart board, but for this, $15 only gives you one part of a multiple-piece kit that requires additional soldering, modifications and assembly.

 

To me this suggests even more the need for a production run of ready-to-go STM chips on a 2600 cart board, before the platform is ready for homebrew releases.

 

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

On 8/7/2021 at 1:14 AM, batari said:

Do you realize that you're comparing a finished product (Melody game, programmed, with cartridge, label, manual and royalties paid to the author) to just a single piece of a multiple-piece kit you need to assemble (STM board?)

?

I can't find any manual or royalties on the AtariAge shop product I linked in my last post (Also no box, poster, patches or shipping is included for the $30) I think is it OK to compare it to a PlusCart/UnoCart Zero board which should be $1.20 cheaper than a normal PlusCart, because it does not include the ESP8266.

So for me these two products are comparable, except for the custom label.

 

On 8/7/2021 at 1:14 AM, batari said:

In the past $15 was too much even for a turnkey cart board, but for this, $15 only gives you one part of a multiple-piece kit that requires additional soldering, modifications and assembly.

The encased PlusCart includes all this for about $35 and an additional WiFi chip which would not be needed for a PlusCart/UnoCart Zero.

 

On 8/7/2021 at 1:14 AM, batari said:

To me this suggests even more the need for a production run of ready-to-go STM chips on a 2600 cart board, before the platform is ready for homebrew releases.

I recently increased the price for the encased version, because of the modifications needed to the standard case. So a ready made production board (based on @Andrew Davie's hybrid board or @DablioGames's board) for the Zero variants, which would only need additional soldering for the SD or WiFi module, would make things easier.

 

 

[1982VideoGames]

Does the Atari 2600 Uno cart work properly with the Colecovision 2600 expansion module?