by Ziggy587 Wed Aug 01, 2018 4:37 pm
The carts I posted are not flash carts like the Everdrives by Krikzz that load games from SD cards. They have an EEPROM that you flash once. Although I made them for myself for a very specific reason, they can be used in a few different ways which is why I wanted to share them.
The "Multi Cart" in the name I gave to my carts is in reference to those X-In-1 (ie: 150-In-1) bootleg carts, which are often referred to as "multicarts" because they have multiple games on a single cart. The carts that I made are able to store more than one game at once, although you can certainly put just one game on it if you wish. So you can make your own 2-In-1 or 4-In-1 multicart (an 8-In-1 is even possible, but you'd have to modify the PCB a little). When just one game is on the cart, it functions as a normal cart would. When you put multiple games on the cart, you switch games by pressing the reset button on the console. So say you have 4 games on the cart, when you first power on the cart it loads the first game. Press reset and it switches to the second game. Press reset again to switch to the third game, and again to switch to the fourth game. Pressing reset while on the fourth game switches back to the first game.
My carts aren't designed to use very large EEPROMs, however. Without getting overly technical (not that I have much knowledge beyond this LOL) the SNES and Genesis supply 5 volts to their cartridges, and so all the parts need to be 5 volt tolerant. The only flash memory that I know of that is 5 volt tolerant and is still being produced is the MX29F800, which is only 8 Mb (1 Megabyte). There's also a 4Mb and 2Mb version in production, but yeah. It is possible to use newer 3.3 volt flash chips, which are plentiful, but this requires extra circuitry (the Everdrives use 3.3v flash memory). The point is to take advantage of the 5 volt memory since it is available.
But at any rate, there's a few things you can do with these carts. You could use it for a single game like a homebrew game, or a hack or fan translation. Or you can make your own multi cart. The original reason I made these carts was for a neat idea that I wanted to do for the Charity Auction. I haven't been able to get it done the past two years, but maybe I will this year. I was keeping that idea a secret so it could be a surprise for the auction. That and I think it's pretty neat. The past year I had thought about possibly making something to sell. And I would love to. But for right now, it's just on a hobby level.
