SpritesMind.Net

Hi,

Totally hypothetical at the moment since I don't really have a finished game and won't be anytime soon, but...

What are the options available for producing a run of Sega Genesis carts? With labels, box, instructions?

Who does this? What kind of prices? How many carts minimum for a run?

Thanks!
DJCC

Fonzie once left a message saying people wishing to have carts made could contact WaterMellon about it. I would suggest you do so. I am not aware of anyone else who could do this.

viewtopic.php?p=14849&highlight=#14849

For a few ones, I plan to use some used carts...
I just have to find how to print good quality label stickers

since there is a thread about 3D print, perhaps if someone has a 3D model of a cart it would be possible to print them

3D printing could be nice, if it wasn't so expensive... but it is getting cheaper and cheaper.

You could look at this http://raphnet.net/electronique/genesis ... art_en.php
Basically as far as I am aware what is going on here is that there are two NOR flash chips one for the high and low byte (the genesis is 16bit)
The two chips are connected to the same address lines when the sega genesis places a 1 on the address lines both chips will readout their byte at location 1 (each flash IC stores half of the data) on their flash memory since once flash chip is connected the D15-D8 and the other is located at D7-D0 this will form a word that the sega genesis needs. To make the cartridge you will need a flash programer I think this :
http://www.ezoflash.com/ezoflash.htm would do the trick however you do need an LPT port. Also to make the sega genesis pcb you will need to use a method that allows for easy double sided pcb I have header that the laser/toner method may not allow for easy double sided pcb because when you use the iron is slightly moves the pcb printout. So photo-resist or something that is good for double sided pcb.
Now I was just explaining how it worked up on the page above now one thing is that they used jumpers to make it a multi-cart you obviously do not have to do that there are many other possible ways to design a cartridge and also you do not even need two chips you could use the new surface mount 3.3v 16 bit NOR flash it is cheaper (less than 2 dollars for 32megabits which is 4megabytes) but keep in mind that you will need to find some way to get the voltage down to 3.3v from 5v logic I believe you could just use a resistor but that may introduce noise and possibly mess with rise time depending on how fast the genesis is (I have not looked into resistors for 5v to 3.3v logic yet I used a hex buffer but that for an SD card for use with the arduino).Also another idea is if your game does not go over 2megabytes you could have a SRAM IC mapped to the "above" 2 megabytes and a CR2032 battery for a game save but I have not looked into how that would work either but it is possible.If your game is 4megabytes and you wish to have SRAM and the game is 4 megabytes then you will need to come up with some way to bankswitch to and from the chip.

Unfortunately that stuff is way over my head.

Likely you will find this won't be economical until you start ordering in the 100s of units. A cart consists of three components, the PCB, the case and the chips (not to mention labels)

For the PCBs, I've used pad2pad in the past. They provide a pretty easy to use CAD program. Should be able to get the PCB cost < $1 per cart.

emachineshop.com might be okay for the cases. The provided CAD software is supposed to give instant price quotes. Not sure how competitive this is, but seems neat.

Digikey or mouser should have the ROM chips require, haven't checked prices there.

PCB and parts are the easy part...
but I'm still looking for a cheap way to make cart

something like emachineshop.com could be valid but I'm unable to make a "design" of a cart
I also found Ponoko days ago

It's why I have almost 70 cart waiting for

By case I meant the shell of the cart.

Emachineshop.com provides software to design what you want. It's fairly simplified for a CAD program but still provides a lot of options. So far what I've ended up with is far too expensive to be practical, but there seems to be a lot of details I could tweak. Looks like I could even have them manufacturer a wooden cartridge -- Lol.

Ponoko looks really cool. I love the idea of not setup-fee, which is really important for prototyping. Curious how much this would add up to per-cart.

You could also contact Tomy from www.tototek.com.