FlashRom carts for MD/SNES/Nintendo etc etc...

[4ppleseed]

I suppose I've always had this idea of having a flashcart-thingy and putting a few hundred games on it, the best of the best so to speak, and having that cart permanently in my N64, SNES, MD, Nintendo 8-bit.

Emulation is great, but its very much a blow-up doll... it just doesn't quite feel like the real thing.

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but surely the technology is there for me to transfer a few hundred Megadrive roms on to a flash cart and put it in and choose from the list and play.

I'm I barking up the wrong tree?

[Ivo]

I suppose I've always had this idea of having a flashcart-thingy and putting a few hundred games on it, the best of the best so to speak, and having that cart permanently in my N64, SNES, MD, Nintendo 8-bit.

Emulation is great, but its very much a blow-up doll... it just doesn't quite feel like the real thing.

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but surely the technology is there for me to transfer a few hundred Megadrive roms on to a flash cart and put it in and choose from the list and play.

I'm I barking up the wrong tree?

I would think the demand for such a thing to be quite low for most of the consoles, so I'm not sure they are "mass produced" (I vaguely recall something like that for the NES, though, which from your list is probably the only one with sufficient nostalgia value appealing to enough customers to justify it).

I would guess that either manufacturing one yourself or "hiring" someone with the required expertise for the custom job is the way to go? It is definitively possible, although in some cases I would worry about protection schemes which may exist and and the cracks are probably not easily available (after all, developers needed to license the carts with Sega and Nintendo, right? Although I'm sure pirated carts existed as well).

Your doll comparison just reminds me of Heck's "Emulation is like masturbation" line. You guys could start comparing Colas or something else for your "not quite the real thing" jokes, no?
(hint: don't go for apple pie comparisons either)

Ivo.

[retrogamer]

A flash cart for the NES is in the works here: http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs. ... /3/22/3291 and you can also find them for other systems from this place:

http://www.tototek.com/
http://www.gbax.com/tototekmd.html
http://www.gbax.com/new/retrohack.html

[4ppleseed]

Hello,
That's some pretty interesting information, thanks.

I can't see why its only 64MB? Hasn't flash memory come a long way? That's only a dozen or so SNES games. I was hoping for a 2GB card lol...

[arion]

a snes flashcart would be fun

[metaleggman]

a snes flashcart would be fun

Yep, and it plays almost all the games as well.

The problem with a NES cart is that all the mappers required for many games would mean all you could play was only a section of games. So either All the Donkey Kong-esque Mapper 0 titles, or mapper 2 titles like Zelda...

[XtaZy]

Would this be a fesible scenario?

You have a flashcart that has a builtin microcontroller. This microcontroller can read SD cards or USB keys or whatever form of mass-storage. When booting your nes/snes/n64, the cart boots into a menu. This menu lets you browse all files on the mass-storage device. All this happens, of cource, via communication with the microcontroller. When you chose a game, the microcontroller flashes the game to the flashcart, sets a switch or something that tells the cart that "next time you boot, boot from the game-flash, not the menu-flash". Then issues a hard-reset on the console. During the bootupsequence (booting from the game-flash) the microcontroller tells the cart to boot from the menu-flash next time.

This way, the cart won't have to communicate with anything but a normal "gamecart".

Would this be feasable?

-XtaZy-

[Jubal]

Would this be a fesible scenario?

You have a flashcart that has a builtin microcontroller. This microcontroller can read SD cards or USB keys or whatever form of mass-storage. When booting your nes/snes/n64, the cart boots into a menu. This menu lets you browse all files on the mass-storage device. All this happens, of cource, via communication with the microcontroller. When you chose a game, the microcontroller flashes the game to the flashcart, sets a switch or something that tells the cart that "next time you boot, boot from the game-flash, not the menu-flash". Then issues a hard-reset on the console. During the bootupsequence (booting from the game-flash) the microcontroller tells the cart to boot from the menu-flash next time.

This way, the cart won't have to communicate with anything but a normal "gamecart".

Would this be feasable?

-XtaZy-

sounds like a dream come true,
tho it would take someone willing to donate the time to prototype it, write all the firmware, troubleshoot it, revise, then mass produce in large enough numbers so it can get out to you and me.

I think that is the real issue with feasibility is the skilled labor time, and interest level of people qualified to pull it off. also there are other solutions that are simpler and do solve the same issue (playing roms on orig hardware)

if one was available would I buy it? if it was priced reasonably.
but im not holding my breath for it to show up =)

-Jubal-