A blank Altera Max II CPLD by itself is like $15 in these quantities, then add the SLC flash, FeRAM, PCB, and the time to design and revise PCB layouts, VHDL/Verilog code for the CPLD, and the programming and upkeep of OS's on the host machines native instruction set architecture, and hand soldering everything... I'm amazed one person can even keep up as it is on so many diff systems, and doubly amazed that they cost as little as they do.
I'm not convinced it's a "non issue". I don't have either card so I'm going by estimates here but that Totektek card looks far too unweildly, although it does have a programmer attached so thats to be expected I guess. The Neoflash is more like it, but theres no guarantee a more sophisticated device would be the same size. And while sticking out of the bay won't affect function, it's hardly attractive or desirable. Really it's a moot point, if krikzz needs a new project (something which he probably doesn't have time for at the moment), a Nes everdrive would make more sense in a lot of ways.
Why 2MB? Isn't the largest game 1MB except for Street Fighter 2? But I agree with you that sufficient RAM plus SD interface and memory mapping hardware would be all you really need. PC-Engine HuCards aren't really that complicated. I think a few games have some built in Save Memory and then there is a mapper in SF2CE but that is all there is to worry about.
Yeah, it should be easy. My laptop with parallel port received some damage (keyboard does not working correctly) so I have now serious problems using Tototek cart. I hope to see Krikzz cart as soon as possible.
I might be able to assist with the SW part (i.e. the menu) if that would help bringing this product out faster. I'm quite familiar both with diskio/pff porting and the PCE from earlier projects.
I´ll try to explain. This next cart, imagine that i have a PC Engine, Could this cart run all region games and back up of CD-Roms? Thank you krikzz!
I don't think it's necessary to be able back up a CD Game, because PC Engine's CDROM was lack of copy nor region protection.
I think what he was asking was if it was possible to run CD-ROM2 games off the Turbo Everdrive, which I don't think it can (?).
It depends. Games all use a CD-ROM BIOS which means it's possible with a hacked BIOS that you could actually run CD-ROM games off media connected to the HuCard port. And I think the HuCard port has an Audio mixing pin, but I'm not sure if it's stereo audio mixing. If it is then you could have CD audio and CD data loading all through a HuCard device. You might still need the CDROM hardware for it to work, I think it provides some kind of voice sound channel.
AFAIK, PC Engine had many variation of CDROM, and it needed special HuCard which sometimes contained RAM instead merely new BIOS. Maybe someone could hacked the BIOS to read ISO from HuCard, however it still lacked of RAM to perform the operation.
The CD added a CDROM (duh), a CPU to control the CD, and an ADPCM sound chip. So there's quite a bit more to emulating the CDROM than merely changing the BIOS to load from SD. Now all that can be done, but it would require a larger FPGA and hence be much more expensive.
You know this sounds great I would love to see this , maybe the cart could use a C.f card or a micro sd .
I'd LOVE to see this emulate an Arcade Card Pro. You can take a CD-ROM or Super CD-ROM .pce file and a flash cart and use them already(I have the Neo Flash one and have tried it). But, the Arcade Card was NEVER dumped because all it was was the Super CD-ROM card with extra RAM. Since you can't dump empty RAM, it was never dumped. I'd love to see KRIKzz add this functionality to the Turbo Everdrive.....
I guess the main reason to support emulating the Arcade Card Pro I could think of would be for US Turbo DUO and TG16+CD systems which cannot use the Arcade Cards without an adapter as they are japanese only.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=478668&postcount=13 You can use the AC Pro on both the PCE/CD or TG16/CD combo and in the Duo. If you just have a Duo, you can just get the AC Duo. You can pick one up for a reasonable price online.
