KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 Hello everybody, I just wanted to announce the completion of a new MultiCart-prototype for the Atari 2600. Before anyone begins to wonder or even complain, why someone has built just another MultiCart, let me explain my motives first. In my oppinion, playing Atari 2600 games inside an emulator does not compare to running them on the real thing. Although emulators for the Atari 2600 have become quite sophisticated, you can still tell the difference. When I first heard about a MultiCart a few years ago, I found that idea great - I almost immediately wanted to have one. At that time, I only knew about the Cuttle Cart which was no longer in production or available for sale. I contacted the creator of the Cuttle Cart and asked permission to build one myself, because he's obviously no longer interested in making money from them, but I got no reply. The same thing happened to me with a few other creators of MutliCarts as well, so I was really fed up. Since I had a lot of spare time recently, I decided to start building my own MultiCart and now, the first prototype is finished. My idea is to "open-source" this MultiCart, so that anyone interested in it, will be able to build his/her own. I will give away the schematics, the PCB layout, the VHDL sources as well as the assembler sources for the menu for free. The first prototype I've finished has quite some nice features. It does emulate F8/F6/F4/FA/3F bankswitching correctly and also supports 2K (without doubling) and 4K games. The games can be stored on a 4MBit flash rom. Unlike many other MultiCarts there's no need to store only games with the same bankswitching scheme on one cart! The design itself is very simplistic - I managed to pack all these features just inside a XC9572, which can be obtained quite cheaply. Besides that only a 4Mbit flash rom IC, a 32K SRAM IC, a 25MHz quartz oscillator and a couple of capacitors are needed. How does that design stack up against the competition ? :-) If anyone is interested in building such a MultiCart please let me know! I'm also interested in your feature requests, although I cannot guarantee that I'm able or willing to realize them. Cheers, KoenigUnhold Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthkur Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 That sounds pretty cool. Sadly, I do not possess the skill to assemble one myself. Do you plan on selling completed units? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 That sounds pretty cool. Sadly, I do not possess the skill to assemble one myself. Do you plan on selling completed units? Well, it really depends. If there's a lot of demand for such a MultiCart, I'll probably make a run of cartridges. My main interest is not making money from it. If there are a few people who'd like to have one, but don't have the ability to manufacture one themselves, I'll probably build a bunch for them. The question remains, how these people intend to program the flash rom? The MultiCart itself does not have a RS232 or USB interface. You will need a EEPROM/FLASH programmer for that and I doubt that those people have one ... You have to understand, that I can't ship preprogrammed flash roms - that would be illegal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I would love to see some pics\docs. PM me the details if you would. I'm a do it yourself kinda guy so I don't mind if its just parts and a bare PCB I have to work with. I'm most intrested in how the logic works for this more than anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 I would love to see some pics\docs. PM me the details if you would. I'm a do it yourself kinda guy so I don't mind if its just parts and a bare PCB I have to work with. I'm most intrested in how the logic works for this more than anything else. Here are two pictures from the first prototype I've built. This was the first PCB I've etched since a couple of years, so the result was less than ideal. Later PCBs look much better - the patterns are absolutely sharp on these. However, despite it's questionable quality, this one worked right from the start! Atari 2600 MultiCart prototype top side Atari 2600 MultiCart prototype bottom side Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 (edited) This sounds really interesting. I have a Kroko cart, and love it. the only drawback is only being able to have one type of game on there at a time. Can you use 8k and 16k games on the same cart? From your explaination, it wouldseem so, but I want to clarify to be sure Edited February 23, 2007 by Lord Helmet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 This sounds really interesting. I have a Kroko cart, and love it. the only drawback is only being able to have one type of game on there at a time. Can you use 8k and 16k games on the same cart? From your explaination, it wouldseem so, but I want to clarify to be sure Yes, you can do that. I currently have 46 ROMS on my cartridge, among these are F8 games with or without SuperChip (Jungle Hunt, Mario Bros, Dark Chambers), F6 games (e.g. Dig Dug), F4 games (well, there's only one - Fatal Run :-), 3F games (River Patrol, Miner 2049er), FA games (Tunnel Runner, Omega Race) and a couple of 2k and 4k games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I take it you can use a 4meg eprom too right? Also why is your tag blacked out in the pic of the pcb front? I take it the male pins at the top are either jumpers or an access point to program it or something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 The only thing I would suggest is to reshape the board so it fits in standard Atari Cases There's quite a bit of room above the screw hole that you could use... That being said, I would be interested in building one as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 I take it you can use a 4meg eprom too right? Yes, they should be pin compatible, haven't checked though! Also why is your tag blacked out in the pic of the pcb front? My name and revision information stood there - I just didn't feel comfortable with my name being publicly known. I take it the male pins at the top are either jumpers or an access point to program it or something? This is the JTAG port used to program the CPLD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 The only thing I would suggest is to reshape the board so it fits in standard Atari Cases There's quite a bit of room above the screw hole that you could use... That being said, I would be interested in building one as well Reshaping was my next intent. I don't have the mechanical specifications for doing that - can you probably help me? Otherwise I'll have to figure it out myself and probably produce a couple of scrap boards on the way :-( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 The only thing I would suggest is to reshape the board so it fits in standard Atari Cases There's quite a bit of room above the screw hole that you could use... That being said, I would be interested in building one as well Reshaping was my next intent. I don't have the mechanical specifications for doing that - can you probably help me? Otherwise I'll have to figure it out myself and probably produce a couple of scrap boards on the way :-( I'll buy the offset ones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 The only thing I would suggest is to reshape the board so it fits in standard Atari Cases There's quite a bit of room above the screw hole that you could use... That being said, I would be interested in building one as well Reshaping was my next intent. I don't have the mechanical specifications for doing that - can you probably help me? Otherwise I'll have to figure it out myself and probably produce a couple of scrap boards on the way :-( ... I hope so, it depends on what you need. If you just need some measurements, I can do that. Unfortunately I don't have any CAD or mechanical drawings, though... What are you looking for? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 ... I hope so, it depends on what you need. If you just need some measurements, I can do that. Unfortunately I don't have any CAD or mechanical drawings, though... What are you looking for? No, I'm not expecting you to do the measurements for me. I just thought you might have already made a Atari 2600 PCB yourself and thus already know the exact dimensions of the board outline such that it fits into a shell. I'd also like to know the position and diameter of the drill hole for the shell screw, but I guess I'll have to figure that out myself, since noone seems to be willing to share this kind of information :-( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 The first prototype I've finished has quite some nice features. It does emulate F8/F6/F4/FA/3F bankswitching correctly and also supports 2K (without doubling) and 4K games. It would be great if you could add more bankswitching methods. And it would be great if it had some kind of USB interface or other way to upload ROM images to it. Note that my own interest would be from a developer's point of view, or creating new game programs. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 The first prototype I've finished has quite some nice features. It does emulate F8/F6/F4/FA/3F bankswitching correctly and also supports 2K (without doubling) and 4K games. It would be great if you could add more bankswitching methods. And it would be great if it had some kind of USB interface or other way to upload ROM images to it. Note that my own interest would be from a developer's point of view, or creating new game programs. Michael With the current CPLD it isn't possible to add more capabilities. I'm really proud to have crammed that many features in such a small device. Upgrading to a larger CPLD (in terms of macro cells and pins) isn't that easy - they are more difficult to obtain and soldering them will probably be too difficult for most people out there. I tried to develop something that is as simple as possible. Anyway, maybe I'm using a larger CPLD for the next revision. What bankswitching schemes would you like to see support for? Are the already supported bankswitching schemes not powerful enough? I'm considering adding some kind of interface to the MultiCart, that will allow uploading ROMs through a commonly available interface (serial port, parallel port, USB, ...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 add in 64k support. it needs to be in there as many have tried\are trying to get up to 64k in current projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph74 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I'm interested either way it goes, pre produced or build it yourself. Although, I'd love for the programming to be easier-- either USB like the Colecovision mulitcart from Atarimax, or even flash memory supported like some of the newer multi carts-- the Nintendo DS one comes to mind with the SD cards. I know most MMC type cards are gonna be overkill size wise, but still may be the most practical approach for the ham and egger to use. After all, if you can make it Sd card compatible where you can load the card drag and drop style, you've gotta sure winner IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Video Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 (edited) How does that design stack up against the competition ? :-) If anyone is interested in building such a MultiCart please let me know! I'm also interested in your feature requests, although I cannot guarantee that I'm able or willing to realize them. Cheers, KoenigUnhold AWESOME DUDE!! I was always interested in such a device for the 2600 (cuttle cart woulda been cool, but they've always been out of my price range) I would definately be interested in building a cart, so I'd like to look at iny info you have on this. IF you have plans to make some pre built ones, I'd definately be interested in that too. I have an issue with frying chips and other problems due to not being knowledgable in electronics, pluss not haveing the proper tools. Thanks1!! Edited February 23, 2007 by Video Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Wonder007 Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 I would be interested in one!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigO Posted February 23, 2007 Share Posted February 23, 2007 ... I hope so, it depends on what you need. If you just need some measurements, I can do that. Unfortunately I don't have any CAD or mechanical drawings, though... What are you looking for? No, I'm not expecting you to do the measurements for me. I just thought you might have already made a Atari 2600 PCB yourself and thus already know the exact dimensions of the board outline such that it fits into a shell. I'd also like to know the position and diameter of the drill hole for the shell screw, but I guess I'll have to figure that out myself, since noone seems to be willing to share this kind of information :-( So...somebody could just gut a $0.00 - $0.50 Combat cart and send you the empty shell so you can measure for your specs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 Seems a bit like my 4A50 cart, except that I use a 14.3818MHz crystal and a Xilinx XC9536XL CPLD. I couldn't read the lettering on yours to see what you're using. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bah Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 Maybe the attached pics could help. For my vote, I would love to try building myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 24, 2007 Author Share Posted February 24, 2007 add in 64k support. it needs to be in there as many have tried\are trying to get up to 64k in current projects. I could possibly fit in 64k support with 3F bankswitching - would that be okay? If not, we'll have to defer that until the next design revision (which will probably look much different). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KoenigUnhold Posted February 24, 2007 Author Share Posted February 24, 2007 I'm interested either way it goes, pre produced or build it yourself. Although, I'd love for the programming to be easier-- either USB like the Colecovision mulitcart from Atarimax, or even flash memory supported like some of the newer multi carts-- the Nintendo DS one comes to mind with the SD cards. I know most MMC type cards are gonna be overkill size wise, but still may be the most practical approach for the ham and egger to use. After all, if you can make it Sd card compatible where you can load the card drag and drop style, you've gotta sure winner IMO. I'd like to release my first revision of the MultiCart in a couple of days, so I won't be able to incorporate your requests. They are noted for the revisions to come after that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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