System card dreams....

[TheOldMan]

I haz a dream:  Someday Arkhan will tell me all of the Alantean boards are done, sold and shipped.

I haz a dream: Arkhan will total everything up, and we will have actually made a small profit...
  And it's enough money to develope the new system card....
  And he's willing to do that.

I haz a dream: We order prototype boards and all the pieces...
  And I put them together without screwing things up...
  And they work...
  And the bios is reprogrammable, for future changes.

I haz a dream: Bonknuts has time off from school, and decides to work on translations....
 And he finishes one using the new system card....
 And expands on MegaMan-CD as well.

I haz a dream: With the extra flash space, we start adding useful routines for translations and developement....
 And speed up the cd reading routines....
 And fix some of the problems in the bios....
 And it is still backwards-compatible.

I haz a dream: Other developers look at this, and start other fan translations....
 And actually finish them...
 And decide to produce pressed cds.

I haz a dream, that tobias sees everything going on, and decides to get 500 copies
of each new translation pressed. He opens up orders and starts taking money....
And then finds out he needs the new system card for them to work ...
And has to refund everything....
And goes broke

Of course, I also have a dream where everyone from the turbo game shows appear at my door to use the bathroom,
piss all over the shower, and my wife says "They're your friends. *You* clean it up....."

 

[NightWolve]

That's quite a dream.

[Arkhan]

The part where Tobias gets f*cked is the best part.

[Necromancer]

Heh, I like your dreams. 

[poponon]

the dream is real

[TailChao]

If you're actually serious about this, what kind of features are you looking for in a new system card?
Several years ago I made a custom order cartridge with 512KB of RAM in banks $40-$7F. Aside from the lack of firmware rewritability this was a pretty big improvement over the Super System Card. Ideally you just want enough RAM so you can soft-patch firmware issues anyway.

[HailingTheThings]

the dream is real

Slap on a pair of Air Zonk shades and that would be an amazing shirt.

[elmer]

Errr ... shouldn't this wait just a little bit to see what Krikzz comes up with in a couple of months with TED2?

He's already said that it's based on RAM instead of flash.

[toymachine78]

Dreams happen with action and intention. Get off your ass and make it happen

[elmer]

Dreams happen with action and intention. Get off your ass and make it happen

Sure ... and if you want to make that dream come true, then IMHO ...
[uldecimal][li]Make the dozen-or-less line modification to Mednafen to emulate 512KB ROM/RAM.[/li][li]Gather together your crew that's going to work on the first translation that uses it.[/li][li]Start development with the modified Mednafen and make sure that you can use the RAM effectively.[/li][li]That's all.[/li][/ul]By that time you've already used up 2-3 months, and you'll know if TED2 will do everything that you need.

If it doesn't, then you've already got a project started, and you've got real motivation to find someone like TailChao that can actually put together a simple ROM/RAM cart ... or perhaps the guys that are doing the AbCard.

It's not that much of a technical challenge ... it's a matter of will.

Jeez ... I'll make the damned mods to Mednafen if they're not already there ... I want them for my own development, and have to screw around inside Medafen anyway to enhance the PC-FX debugging.

[poponon]

Slap on a pair of Air Zonk shades and that would be an amazing shirt.

Jah feel?

http://printallover.me/products/0000000p-i-have-a-duo?social=true

[SamIAm]

If you're actually serious about this, what kind of features are you looking for in a new system card?
Several years ago I made a custom order cartridge with 512KB of RAM in banks $40-$7F. Aside from the lack of firmware rewritability this was a pretty big improvement over the Super System Card. Ideally you just want enough RAM so you can soft-patch firmware issues anyway.

Your card is exactly what inspired Bonknuts (aka Tom) to want to have this for translation projects.

If you would be willing to share more details about what you did to make that card, that would be wonderful. In another thread, I was talking about putting up money to build some prototypes, and that could be arranged with you if you are interested.

I hope Bonknuts can get in touch with whomever is most interested in making a card and work out the technical details. I'll start bugging him to weight in here.

Errr ... shouldn't this wait just a little bit to see what Krikzz comes up with in a couple of months with TED2?

He's already said that it's based on RAM instead of flash.

If the TED2 does the job, that's wonderful. However, it will be $80 to ship that thing. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if we could ship a custom card for less than $30. I think that would make a big difference in the number of people willing to pay to play our translations.

You're right that any hacker who really wants to can just go ahead and start planning on using extra RAM, though.

It's not that much of a technical challenge ... it's a matter of will.

Yep. We can make it happen. We will make it happen.

[TheOldMan]

If you're actually serious about this, what kind of features are you looking for in a new system card?

I'm not looking for any particular features; someone else was talking about needing a few extra pages of RAM for modified/new routines for a translation (Xak II, iirc). I just tried to move the discussion of the modified system card out of the main topic.

shouldn't this wait just a little bit to see what Krikzz comes up with in a couple of months with TED2?

Depends on how he's planning to use the RAM. I think it would be a lot harder to code for than a simple extension to the page mechanism already in place, but I could be wrong.

Dreams happen with action and intention. Get off your ass and make it happen

I'm in no hurry; this is my hobby, not my job.

But for what its worth, I have the board designed already. Just need to get parts to make sure the pad footprints / traces are right, and have the boards made. All that has to go through Arkhan - I don't shop online. And he's waiting to see if we have enough $$ from atlantean to do it.

...or perhaps the guys that are doing the AbCard.

Yep. That would be us

I'll make the damned mods to Mednafen if they're not already there....

Do it, and post the changes (and how to re-build everything). Maybe that will inspire people to get some of the translations done.
If you do, would you please let me know where to look in the mednafen source for the cd handling routines? If I can see how it's emulated, maybe I can figure out what is going on with the scsi bus in bios.

BTW, I'm not sure you would actually have to modify mednafen much. You can already write to ROM, and have it change. We were going to add a message based on that to atlantean
("Emulator in use")

...........................................................

I wouldn't be surprised if we could ship a custom card for less than $30.

Assuming just 10 cards are made: It's $220+ to make them. The chips and such are about $10.
That would make each card about $35.

But we know from experience, large quantities are the way to go. If you make 50 cards, it's only a bit more expensive - but the cost per card drops dramatically (to around $5, iirc). The majority of the card cost is setup expenses. So yeah, I could see $20 for a card.

You are right, though. We need bonknuts to get some time off school so he can work on this. I honestly think if he were to fix/re-write/extend the bios, this could be a big thing....

[poponon]

Yep. We can make it happen. We will make it happen.

damn sam your dedication is really inspiring. I'd really like to help out in some way - I know translators are a dime a dozen but I may be able to help out with spot translations.

[toymachine78]

If you're actually serious about this, what kind of features are you looking for in a new system card?

I'm not looking for any particular features; someone else was talking about needing a few extra pages of RAM for modified/new routines for a translation (Xak II, iirc). I just tried to move the discussion of the modified system card out of the main topic.

shouldn't this wait just a little bit to see what Krikzz comes up with in a couple of months with TED2?

Depends on how he's planning to use the RAM. I think it would be a lot harder to code for than a simple extension to the page mechanism already in place, but I could be wrong.

Dreams happen with action and intention. Get off your ass and make it happen

I'm in no hurry; this is my hobby, not my job.

But for what its worth, I have the board designed already. Just need to get parts to make sure the pad footprints / traces are right, and have the boards made. All that has to go through Arkhan - I don't shop online. And he's waiting to see if we have enough $$ from atlantean to do it.

...or perhaps the guys that are doing the AbCard.

Yep. That would be us

I'll make the damned mods to Mednafen if they're not already there....

Do it, and post the changes (and how to re-build everything). Maybe that will inspire people to get some of the translations done.
If you do, would you please let me know where to look in the mednafen source for the cd handling routines? If I can see how it's emulated, maybe I can figure out what is going on with the scsi bus in bios.

BTW, I'm not sure you would actually have to modify mednafen much. You can already write to ROM, and have it change. We were going to add a message based on that to atlantean
("Emulator in use")

...........................................................

I wouldn't be surprised if we could ship a custom card for less than $30.

Assuming just 10 cards are made: It's $220+ to make them. The chips and such are about $10.
That would make each card about $35.

But we know from experience, large quantities are the way to go. If you make 50 cards, it's only a bit more expensive - but the cost per card drops dramatically (to around $5, iirc). The majority of the card cost is setup expenses. So yeah, I could see $20 for a card.

You are right, though. We need bonknuts to get some time off school so he can work on this. I honestly think if he were to fix/re-write/extend the bios, this could be a big thing....

You guys really impress me. Where do you learn to design boards? Are you guys computer engineers? Electrical engineers? I'm a software engineer in the business/mainframe world. But you guys really blow my mind.