Low cost Flash Hucard

[gameofyou]

Wow, this looks fantastic - I just ordered one for myself.

I have a question about the addressability of the flash memory from within a program...

Years ago, I had used Jerry DaSilva's TurboROM board in conjunction with AMD 29F040B DIP flash memory.
At the time, I had written a flash version of the "Ten no Koe" bank card, to copy the backup memory contents into the flash memory itself for longer-term archiving.

It worked fine, on a TurboGrafx-16, but it didn't work so well on the TurboDuo - I concluded that it was because of the power available from the cartridge bus being sufficient to read the flash, but insufficient to write into it.  (Those boards didn't do download, thus the only power draw was the flash chip itself, which must have required a lot of juice.)

Since your version uses a TSOP chip (probably a more recent shrink), and there was a comment about lower current drain, I was curious as to whether this approach may work for your board.

So, I have a couple of questions:
1) Do you inhibit /WR from the PC Engine bus to the flash memory ?  (ie. this would prevent it from being writable while in-circuit)
2) Roughly what vintage are the flash chips - 0.5um ?  0.35um ?  (Not sure if they made this easy to determine).  5V-native chips are probably pretty old... also wondering the rated rewrite cycles ?  I believe they were insanely huge numbers back then.
3) Is it possible to read from the flash memory via the USB ?  If so, does your software already do this ?

This information is in the first page of posts, but I'll repost it here:
 
 I am using a MX29F800C flash chip (cheap & available at Digikey).  You can see the datasheet here:
http://www.gamingenterprisesinc.com/temp/MX29F800C.pdf
 
And here is the circuit schematic for the HuCard/Flash interface:
http://www.gamingenterprisesinc.com/temp/HuCard_Schematic_V01.pdf

The connection between the edge connector and flash chip for the /WR is present (as you can see in the interface schematic).  The datasheet will tell you everything you want to know about the flash chip that is used.  I did not add any capability into the software to read data out over usb.

[ConHuevos]

Received my replacement, works great!  Thank you very much for your great service!

[T2KFreeker]

Hmm, I think I know what I am getting myself on the first. This is frickin' cool man. Hopefully you still have some available by then.

[gameofyou]

Received my replacement, works great!  Thank you very much for your great service!

Good to hear!  Also, I have received your non-working card, & will take a look at it when I get a chance.  Since I had already reflowed the solder, my guess is that it is a problem with the pcb itself.

[gameofyou]

Hmm, I think I know what I am getting myself on the first. This is frickin' cool man. Hopefully you still have some available by then.

My plan is to keep these in stock for a very long time.  The orders have slowed down enough, that I should be able to keep up with assembling them for the foreseeable future.

[vxbinaca]

Hmm, I think I know what I am getting myself on the first. This is frickin' cool man. Hopefully you still have some available by then.

My plan is to keep these in stock for a very long time.  The orders have slowed down enough, that I should be able to keep up with assembling them for the foreseeable future.

Watch those orders pick up in December, I know I'll be getting one around then. ASAP really.

[tggodfrey]

Ordered one.  Thank you so much for doing this.

[psychobear]

So how are these things holding up

[roflmao]

I got one early on and when it first arrived I used it a bunch.  But after a little while the wow factor wore off and I really don't use it very often anymore.  I've never had any problems with it, though.  It is a very slight bit thicker than a standard HuCard and maybe I don't use it as often as I might if that didn't worry me just a little bit about wearing out the connector inside my consoles.  Overall, I'm very happy with it and feel it was money well spent.

It does only hold one game at a time, so when a game goes on, it tends to stay on for awhile.  It's not meant for ripping through the entire library in an afternoon.

[psychobear]

I got one early on and when it first arrived I used it a bunch.  But after a little while the wow factor wore off and I really don't use it very often anymore.  I've never had any problems with it, though.  It is a very slight bit thicker than a standard HuCard and maybe I don't use it as often as I might if that didn't worry me just a little bit about wearing out the connector inside my consoles.  Overall, I'm very happy with it and feel it was money well spent.

It does only hold one game at a time, so when a game goes on, it tends to stay on for awhile.  It's not meant for ripping through the entire library in an afternoon.

Thanks for the input, I picked one up just to try other games out, I came to the conclusion that I almost got every game I wanted as a kid and I wanted to try other games so I won't miss out, I figured the price was better then the other one that was made with the sd card, I see no point in the other one since in reality you only play one game at a time.

[thesteve]

another note
this card does not suffer from the compatibility issues the neo does

[tpivette]

Are these cards still in stock? If not, what's the turnaround time if ordered?

Seriously thinking about picking one of these up

[tggodfrey]

http://www.gamingenterprisesinc.com/Flash_HuCard/

[tpivette]

I was on the website last night, but I dont remember it stating if he had any pre-made and ready to ship.

Oh well, doesn't really matter anyway. I'm ordering one regardless

[tggodfrey]

Oh I understand.  I just ordered mine a couple months back and it was #74 if that helps at all.

Terry