NTRQ - Native NES Tracker by Neil Baldwin (Page 12 of 24)

The idea is that you can transfer files using the powerpak with a compact flash card. So you wouldn't need an emulator for that. Neil mentioned how it would work on page 11, there'll likely be a converter for your NTRQ song file. The cart as mocked-up by arfink + thretris unfortunately wouldn't be very useful, since you wouldn't be able to properly save / back up / transfer data on it. At least I think that's the current hurdle with the concept, someone feel free to correct me.

A dedicated NTRQ cart, while looking pretty cool, would suffer from a couple logistics. If it'd be capable of transferring data, why make it for NTRQ only? It's the same reason people flash LSDJ to a cart instead of there being dedicated LSDJ carts being produced still. I think one of the most viable options would be (if Neil wants to push for a cart, that's up to him), to release a 'Powerpak: NTRQ Edition'. Make it as stripped down as possible for the requirements of NTRQ, have it come with NTRQ, give it a sticky label similar to the one designed here, but otherwise have it so someone could run whatever they wished on there. Otherwise putting it on a dedicated cart would be more novel than useful imho. Don't get me wrong I'm a fan of all the repros and stuff like that, but NTRQ would be limited like that.

Haha, very nice. Nitro Queer strikes again!

One lil problem with NES flash carts, and the reason why the powerpak is so darned expensive, is that the NES' cartridge hardware is very complex, as opposed to the GB, which has only one, very simple cartridge design for probably 90% of all games. The second problem is that different programs are actually written for very different cartridge hardware- it's the way you get around RAM and ROM limitations with the NES. So a one size fits all kind of NES flash cart is something which is unfortunately quite difficult to do, and requires a quite complex multiple mapper system running with its own microprocessor etc. So yes, while on other systems the dedicated cartridge could possibly be seen as a mere novelty, on the NES it honestly comes down to sheer complexity and price.

However, I do agree that the ideal cartridge will have a way of exporting and possibly importing the SRAM data. For my first cartridge(s) I won't be including that, since I'd have to actually design something for that purpose. In fact, my solution to the problem would be to socket the SRAM and piggyback the battery onto the chip so the whole assembly can be popped out and into an EPROM programmer for reading.

I am doing BETA on a powerpak, and I plan to continuously use powerpak. I just think a $35 cart from mute (I can stick in a clear case I have) would be a cool collectors piece. That why I mainly made the label.

So yeah, PowerPak + NESmod is a must (even for straight gaming), I already have like 7 NTRQ .sav files..lol

now thats a dude I can hang with. Its always great to know that not all chipmucians are not 17 year old neon-hipsters who learned about 8-bit from myspace.

NSF is not really necessary for that as I'll be making a stand-alone player for the NTRQ files. One advantage to having the song data in battery RAM is that I've also got a compressor (PC/Mac command-line) and decompressor (on the NES) which means that you can compress the save files, store them in ROM and then decompress them into battery RAM when you need to play a new song file.

As an example of this, though it obviously depends on the complexity of what's in your song file, is the NTRQ Logo Sound that is built into the ROM. Normally all save files are 8192 bytes (8KB). Compressed, that file is only 400 bytes. That gives you a fair bit of scope for putting a LOT of NTRQ files into a ROM.