Who says internet is just for porn? 
great work!
/me also does happy dance
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WOW MAN!
Ha ha, great work gents, absolutely first class.
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Yeah, it was kind of funny for arfink to just put the cartridge in and connect the NES to his laptop, but then not do anything more with it, while I was remotely sending multiple programs to it and reporting the results to him. I guess I'll be doing this all week while I wait for the hardware in the main from him.
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Minneapolis
blargg wrote:
Yeah, it was kind of funny for arfink to just put the cartridge in and connect the NES to his laptop, but then not do anything more with it, while I was remotely sending multiple programs to it and reporting the results to him. I guess I'll be doing this all week while I wait for the hardware in the main from him.
Yes, and Blargg made the comment that it felt like working on a satellite in space- no touching the hardware unless you can get the astronaut to do it.
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Minneapolis
Yet another exciting update. This time we got the cart to load some ROMs! We loaded up Sweet Home and Zelda, and both seemed to work just fine. I only got pics of Zelda working, but hey, it's the game everyone wants to see.
See more and bigger pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/arf.at.sjv/RandomImages#
Last edited by arfink (Aug 18, 2010 2:42 am)
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Minneapolis
And another rather big-ish progress update: the hardware development side of the project is essentially done. Coding can now begin in earnest. Also, NTRQ and LIghtwall were successfully tested on the finished hardware.
This is the original cartridge board, having gone through 4 major revisions and many smaller ones. It is now a mess, but it works.
This is a freshly-built cartridge board done to rev-4 specs, and as such is very clean and tidy. 
Here is lightwall running (on a PSOne screen because my projector bulb burned out at the exact time I wanted to take a picture)
And NTRQ, running on Blargg's NES via video capture:
See more pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/arf.at.sjv/RandomImages
Last edited by arfink (Aug 19, 2010 2:59 pm)
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WOW MAN!
Fuckin' A!
I shall expect a PM from you forthwith.
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Tokyo, Japan
If you guys need famicom stuff for testing drop me a pm
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Minneapolis
Lazerbeat wrote:
If you guys need famicom stuff for testing drop me a pm
Um, YES YES YES! You have PM.
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killadelphia
epic mod there arfink. can you configure one of those retrousb repropak boards to do this? would you want to go in with a couple people and order solid color cart casings (different colors) - does anyone have the CAD design for the cases?
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Minneapolis
Well, the problem is that the retrousb repropak boards auto-config, making doing this potentially a huge mess. Sorry man! If I was I'd be happy to go in on solid color cases though, but custom PCBs won't be coming till a ways down the road, if they happen at all. We'll just have to see how successful the project will be.
EDIT: I should also add, hand-building these is not an issue for me since I'm not anticipating a humongous overwhelming demand. If I happen to get humongous overwhelming demand I'll consider doing PCBs then and I'll be sure to let you know ASAP.
OH YEAH, one last thing. The repropak boards cost a good deal to get fully populated. Two RAM chips, one of them 32kb, and a Flash chip, CIClone, cart casings, any necessary mods, and a USB to NES cable. I'd quickly go over my price target. I can get everything I need minus the flash chips and USB cable stuff in one place (donor cart) for much less money.
Last edited by arfink (Aug 19, 2010 5:02 pm)
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Minneapolis
waffle_bomb wrote:
awesome, now make one for snes
Huh? The NES one isn't even done yet. And, this approach won't work exactly the same for SNES anyway, because the processor doesn't keep timing properly. The whole reason this approach works at this projected price is because the NES is basically doing all the work of being a UART and controlling reads and writes etc. I think I can safely speak for myself and for Blargg, don't expect a SNES version. Sorry.
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A SNES version is very likely possible, actually
But like arfink says, NES version + software first.