Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

For anything related to cart (SRAM, SF2 mapper, audio, CD mode 1, ...)

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Chilly Willy
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by Chilly Willy » Thu Apr 09, 2020 1:51 pm

At least one of them was working. We had an Amiga board we made back in the day where the company hired to make the PCB needed a mounting hole and picked a spot without consulting us. The hole would wind up being through-hole plated... and it wound up connecting power to ground. When we got the first batch of 500 boards and went to test it, we got all kinds of cool smoke from the board. We figured out what they did pretty quick and sent them a note on safe places to put their mounting hole.

MrD
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by MrD » Thu Apr 09, 2020 2:46 pm

Oh hell that sounds like a good way to have months wasted by something out of your control...

cero
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by cero » Thu Apr 09, 2020 5:13 pm

Mr. Shakycam needs a tripod ;)

Chilly Willy
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by Chilly Willy » Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:14 am

MrD wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 2:46 pm
Oh hell that sounds like a good way to have months wasted by something out of your control...
Fortunately, we got lots of cool smoke to let us know there was a problem, and even more fortunately, we noticed the HUGE EFFING HOLES drilled through the board that weren't part of the specs we sent. :wink: :lol:

MrD
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by MrD » Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:55 am

cero wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 5:13 pm
Mr. Shakycam needs a tripod ;)
:D It's exciting stuff! And I was recording on my phone since it's the best camera I've got.

MrD
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by MrD » Thu Apr 23, 2020 2:30 pm

Game Raccoon Revision 0 + 1: Overdrive by Titan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlSrLwtQxP4

Game Raccoon Revision 1: MD-NICCC by Titan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac3Zcbfl3o8

MrD
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by MrD » Sat May 23, 2020 9:35 am

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/499643631376924673/713663724220710962/IMG_6950_2000wide.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/499643631376924673/713663783024721960/IMG_6998_cropnotrot.jpg
https://imgur.com/a/B4CI8t2

I'm making tons of progress with the new Revision 1 boards, these Aliexpress shells, and the asmx assembler! :D

The Revision 0 boards were somewhat flaky with resets and booting: the only reliable way to start them was to power on while holding Reset.
Revision 1 starts flawlessly every time. Also the weird distorted text is gone, probably because I stopped trying to save a silly-small amount of cycles by writing words to VDP control instead of longs based on something I read. My woods are tangley, my possums are awesome, and I can play new stuff like Phantom Gear and Curse of Illmore Bay great!

I just need to get down to it and write the menu... and get a mascot!

I can't unconditionally recommend these Ali shells, they seem to fit a bit too tight in my Pal Model 1 MD, either that or I'm inserting them wrong somehow? I'm not used to there being a left notch on my carts. I'm certain I've screwed the halves together tight, and the ill-fitting was there before I'd even used the screws: the clips around the outside edge are definitely strong enough by themselves.

MrD
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Re: Designing MD sdcard flashcart for fun, advice?

Post by MrD » Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:27 pm

There are two pages I need to write for my website for Revision 1: I've got the blog page which is a mess of events and thoughts as they happened roughly reorganised into topics, and the Technical Report which only includes the final description of the cart, the approaches, the manufacturing files, the firmwares and the compatibility tables.

Are there any topics that you would like to see covered in these pages?

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