PlusCart (an inexpensive DIY WiFi multicart)

[Arenafoot]

18 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

Such a shame... but all of these... into the rubbish bin they go.

 

too bad they have the "Plus" logo in the purple shells - i could have used those for the Mardi Gras homebrew game ?

[Fierodoug5]

19 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

Such a shame... but all of these... into the rubbish bin they go.

 

I haven't printed this version of the shell yet, but some hot glue should hold that logo in just fine I would think. Don't let people get to you, your shell designs are amazing. 

[+D Train]

1 hour ago, Arenafoot said:

i could have used those for the Mardi Gras homebrew game

or for an LSU football game...

[+Andrew Davie]

2 hours ago, Fierodoug5 said:

I haven't printed this version of the shell yet, but some hot glue should hold that logo in just fine I would think. 

Please don't!  I have a refined version now that completely corrects all of the weaknesses identified in earlier versions.

Weaknesses;

 

* Fit was tight, and obviously didn't fit some machines.

* masking 'lip' printed with 2 lines wide and was too fragile

* logo insert was not strong enough to survive mishandling

* label difficult to insert on assembly

* pins VERY difficult to insert on assembly

 

 

Fixes...

* the shell is 0.5mm wider to accomodate variance in cartridge slot fit.

* the logo is once again printed "in situ" rather than as a post-print glue-in. This requires a filament swap during print, but in the long run it's not much more pain than welding/gluing in the logo... and it looks way better anyway.

* The tensioner "ramps" at the bottom of the cart are removed - again, allowing for cartridge slot variance

* the "rail", or "lip" as I call it, is now exactly 1.6 mm wide, allowing a 0.4 mm slice to fit in 4 rows. This makes them super strong.  The lip both masks the join but also acts as a first-stage shell seal.  That is, you can have the shell (weakly) snap shut using the lip alone, without using any of the pins

* The lip is extended in length so it covers more of the join on the side.

* the walls are increased in thickness to 3.2mm, giving a good 50:50 ratio on the lip overlap. It sounds thick, but looks great on the printed thing.

* I'm printing at 0.2 mm layer height (the failed batch were at 0.3 mm layer height).  This makes a huge difference in strength. Also print speed blows out by 50%, but that can't really be helped in this case.

* The slot for inserting the label is now deeper, so label insert is way easier when assembling.

* The pin mounts/holes are 0.1 mm wider/longer which doesn't sound like much, but it makes the pins super-easy to insert now, but still tight

* I print with "pads" which are just adhesion-aids to keep the corners on the bed. These pads just peel off post-print. In the video I haven't yet cleaned the print (it's exactly as it came off the bed, but with pads peeled off)... so there's a bit of residue on the corners where the pads were. The pads significantly increase print yield for me from about 40% to maybe 90% or more.

 

So anyway, because of all these changes and because the new design is so much better... I recommend holding off on any printing with earlier versions. Here's a video-look at the new design, assembled. It probably doesn't look much/any different to previous versions - but it's really quite lovely. This particular print is probably one of the nicest/cleanest I've ever done. And I've done, literally, hundreds.

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Andrew Davie

[+Andrew Davie]

The updated design/STL files for the shell are now up at...

 

https://github.com/andrew-davie/PlusCart.git

 

I have just regenerated the STLs for this push, so I have not tested the print, but they SHOULD be identical to what's shown in the video, above.

 

If you don't know how to do the two-colour prints on a one-colour printer, PM me for instructions.

 

1. FRONT/LOGO are the two parts of the two-colour print for shell

2. LABEL/LETTERS are the two parts of the two-colour print for the label

3. I advise putting a skirt of size 10 around the PINS (with separation of 0.6 mm) before slicing.

4. Everything is designed for slicing and printing with an 0.4 mm nozzle at layer height 0.2 mm or below. 

 

The pads are designed to improve your yield rate when printing, by keeping the prone-to-curling-up corners firmly on the bed. The pads should peel off very easily post-print. Just flex them back and forth along each axis, and then peel off.

 

1. FRONT/PADS should be sliced as one unit and printed together.

2. BACK/PADS should also be sliced as one unit and printed together.

3. For both of these, just set X/Y/Z to the same values in your slicer, so the pads are positioned correctly.

 

If you print one, please please post a picture of your print here. It's the very least you can do for me as a thank-you.

Suggestions for improvements in the design are welcome.

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Andrew Davie

[+Andrew Davie]

One addition to the instructions -- change the layer "fill" direction from the diagonals to orthogonal to the cartridge.  That is, instead of building each layer diagonally, make sure it's at right-angles. These are slicer settings, of course. It's important for the strength of the lip and other parts.

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

Yesterday I received a batch of 25 PlusCarts from my soldering service:

 

I have already put them in the PlusCart online shop:

https://pluscart.onlineweb.shop/

 

Currently I am out of STM32 boards, and it looks like they are not available for a reasonable price.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+Andrew Davie]

On 9/12/2021 at 2:02 AM, Al_Nafuur said:

Yesterday I received a batch of 25 PlusCarts from my soldering service:

 

I have already put them in the PlusCart online shop:

https://pluscart.onlineweb.shop/

 

Currently I am out of STM32 boards, and it looks like they are not available for a reasonable price.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have already printed 24 new PlusCart shells using the super-sturdy design.

Ready to ship, if wanted.

[+Al_Nafuur]

Hellway by @Octavio Pinho Bokel has been added to the PlusROM High Score Club:

 

 

All future announcements for new HSC games will only be in the PlusROM HSC thread, so be sure to follow this thread if you don't want to miss new HSC games.

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

@Al_Nafuur I forgot to mention it, but last night I did have the option to download my offline roms and now can access them directly from the cart. So that is working now and thank you for the excellent piece of Tech!

 

I do have one criticism and it does relate to the 3d printed shell. This may have been addressed already so if it has that is great.

 

There are specifically 2 issues with it:

 

First is that the corners of the cart from the bottom up, need to be tapered at about a 45° for about 2.5". I did this manually with a bar file and dremel because at first my cart would NOT fit into the 4 switcher I had on my bench at the time to test it. If I couldn't get it to fit into a 4switch cart slot, I knew it wasn't going to fit into a 7800 cart slot either so yeah... The DF cart has this done on it and it allows it to fit quite nicely into all variants of the 7800.

 

The second issue, is that the dust pegs are too long. Need to trim them up about a .5cm to a full cm back. Because they are static and do not retract, they could cause issues in 7800s. It is a similar issue to the Tigervision carts. 

 

Aside from that, the cart works quite well and I'm likely to keep it around my 7800 pretty close by.

 

[+Andrew Davie]

9 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I do have one criticism and it does relate to the 3d printed shell. This may have been addressed already so if it has that is great.

There are specifically 2 issues with it:

 

I'm the shell guy.

Please see ...

I'll address issues/comments there.

 

[Danjovic]

On 9/11/2021 at 1:02 PM, Al_Nafuur said:

 

Currently I am out of STM32 boards, and it looks like they are not available for a reasonable price.

Do you know if Black Pill provide enough resources to be used on a Plus Cart besides the ability to run at 100MHz and the 128kib SRAM ?

[+Al_Nafuur]

10 hours ago, Danjovic said:

Do you know if Black Pill provide enough resources to be used on a Plus Cart besides the ability to run at 100MHz and the 128kib SRAM ?

?
The Black Pill version with the STM32F411 MCU might work as a replacement. But it has no 64 KiB CCM-RAM like the STM32F407, so it would be necessary to rewrite the code. And I am afraid the PlusROM functions and the complex bankswitching schemes will only work with 100 MHz if they are optimized.

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

The PlusROM examples (ASM code and backend code) have been removed from the PlusCart Gitlab repository and moved to an separate github repository:

https://github.com/Al-Nafuur/PlusROM-Hacks

 

[Danjovic]

16 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

?
The Black Pill version with the STM32F411 MCU might work as a replacement. But it has no 64 KiB CCM-RAM like the STM32F407, so it would be necessary to rewrite the code. And I am afraid the PlusROM functions and the complex bankswitching schemes will only work with 100 MHz if they are optimized.

 

Thanks for the answer.

I always wondered if I could do the port of this multicart to one of these cheaper stm32 boards.

Do you know if it's possible to run the rom emulation from SRAM? that would skip some cpu wait cycles and gain some speed over the code that run from flash. And that would allow to load an specific bankswitch emulation (with less hotspots to check). 

I will take a look on the code to elaborate deeper questions.

[+Al_Nafuur]

2 hours ago, Danjovic said:

Thanks for the answer.

you are welcome.

 

2 hours ago, Danjovic said:

I always wondered if I could do the port of this multicart to one of these cheaper stm32 boards.

last year the STM32F407 was cheap enough, but the price has quadrupled within a year! I hope prices will come down again.

 

2 hours ago, Danjovic said:

Do you know if it's possible to run the rom emulation from SRAM? that would skip some cpu wait cycles and gain some speed over the code that run from flash. And that would allow to load an specific bankswitch emulation (with less hotspots to check).

? a very good idea. That should be possible. Currently only the firmware update is running from SRAM. CCM-RAM is even faster, but it can not be used to run code.

 

2 hours ago, Danjovic said:

 

I will take a look on the code to elaborate deeper questions.

?

[Prizrak]

@Al_Nafuur Under Public Roms/Hacks I've created a Nukey Shay Tribute folder with all of his work that I could track down.

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[+Andrew Davie]

20 minutes ago, Prizrak said:

@Al_Nafuur Under Public Roms/Hacks I've created a Nukey Shay Tribute folder with all of his work that I could track down.

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Great idea and a perfect use-case for PlusCart functionality!

 

[+Al_Nafuur]

21 minutes ago, Prizrak said:

@Al_Nafuur Under Public Roms/Hacks I've created a Nukey Shay Tribute folder with all of his work that I could track down.
 

Great Idea!

 

Last week I started to add PlusROM functions for the HSC to his awesome Missile Command Arcade hack. He had expanded it to F8, and there was enough space left to add the necessary code.

 

[+groundtrooper]

@Al_Nafuur Under Public Roms/Hacks I've created a Nukey Shay Tribute folder with all of his work that I could track down.

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Awesome. Thanks so much for doing this.

[+sramirez2008]

7 minutes ago, groundtrooper said:

Awesome. Thanks so much for doing this.

Hear, hear!

[+sramirez2008]

13 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

Last week I started to add PlusROM functions for the HSC to his awesome Missile Command Arcade hack. He had expanded it to F8, and there was enough space left to add the necessary code.

My favorite Nukey Shay hack?

[+Al_Nafuur]

I am looking for PlusCart users with a Track & Field controller, that like to test a new HSC ROM:

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

On 5/19/2021 at 2:46 AM, Al_Nafuur said:

mostly done by ROM-Admin @Prizrak

@PrizrakGreat work!

 

I checked the homebrews section and found some original games and some hacks, mostly in NTSC. E.g.

• Buble Bopper (hack)
• 2 Player Berzerk (hack)
• Crack'ed (original proto)
• Gauntlet (orginal, PAL too)
• Fatal Run (original)
• Holey Moley (original)
• Worm War (I) (original)
• Polo (original, proto)
• ...

Maybe you can check too and move them to their correct folder. Also some filenames should be changed to something more informative.

[Prizrak]

I'll see what I can do, thanks@Thomas Jentzsch

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