fultonbot Posted July 29, 2020 Share Posted July 29, 2020 Just bouncing this to the top to see if anyone has any news? I'm desperate to nay kind of SD cart for the 7800 so I can test homebrew creations on real hardware. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommodoreDecker Posted July 29, 2020 Share Posted July 29, 2020 (edited) 11 hours ago, fultonbot said: Just bouncing this to the top to see if anyone has any news? I'm desperate to nay kind of SD cart for the 7800 so I can test homebrew creations on real hardware. The last I'd read it's a bit of a challenge but I'd be there on day one as well. The real cartridges will likely last decades, if the friction between the cartridge edge pins don't get worn down from excessive insertions/removals. And, of course, the lifespan of homebrews on cartridge - are those on flash RAM like what's in USB drives (e.g. 4 to 5 year lifespan?) or are they hard microchips that will last decades? (not to mention real hardware; emulation won't be 100% and there's that lovely lag factor that does impede some games. "Fatal Run" is just more responsive on the real machine, though the joypad I bought may not be the highest of build quality - but I wouldn't do a wireless controller! Those have too much lag... Edited July 29, 2020 by CommodoreDecker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg2600 Posted July 29, 2020 Share Posted July 29, 2020 13 hours ago, fultonbot said: Just bouncing this to the top to see if anyone has any news? I'm desperate to nay kind of SD cart for the 7800 so I can test homebrew creations on real hardware. SainT has had regular work delay him, but he's close to building LynxGD qty to his liking, then will start building up JagGD inventory. My guess is this is a 2021 project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fultonbot Posted July 30, 2020 Share Posted July 30, 2020 7 hours ago, Greg2600 said: SainT has had regular work delay him, but he's close to building LynxGD qty to his liking, then will start building up JagGD inventory. My guess is this is a 2021 project. I guess it's just haunt ebay for cuttle cart 2! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 On 7/29/2020 at 8:13 PM, fultonbot said: I guess it's just haunt ebay for cuttle cart 2! Get ready to open your wallet up wide! Those things are super pricey when they do come up for sale. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+groundtrooper Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 Yes, save your money. Since I got in the game in 2016 I have never seen one sell for less than $400. And I have only seen maybe 5 or 6 come up in 4 years. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 14 hours ago, groundtrooper said: Yes, save your money. Since I got in the game in 2016 I have never seen one sell for less than $400. And I have only seen maybe 5 or 6 come up in 4 years. I've held 3 different ones in my hands over the past year...does that count? LOL! They were repairs being made on them, but still it was quite cool to have never seen one in person to seeing 3 of them in the span of a few months. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 4 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said: I've held 3 different ones in my hands over the past year...does that count? LOL! They were repairs being made on them, but still it was quite cool to have never seen one in person to seeing 3 of them in the span of a few months. If Chad was willing to give up the design for the original cc2 I'm sure someone could adapt it for the few parts that are now no longer available. That or scour the interwebs to find some dead stock that would make it possible to use the original BOM again. You have to remember, the last time Chad did a run of them he ended up sitting on a bunch and had to sell the last of them at a discount just to get them sold. Not exactly a motivating set of circumstances when you watch them before and afterward sell on the aftermarket for double to quadruple the original sale price. EDIT: On topic, I'd love to purchase on of these SD carts from Staint as soon as they are for sale. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg2600 Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 Isn't the CC2 too out of date though? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 1 hour ago, Greg2600 said: Isn't the CC2 too out of date though? How so? Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 4 hours ago, Shawn said: EDIT: On topic, I'd love to purchase on of these SD carts from Staint as soon as they are for sale. This? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 8 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said: I've held 3 different ones in my hands over the past year...does that count? LOL! They were repairs being made on them, but still it was quite cool to have never seen one in person to seeing 3 of them in the span of a few months. I’ve yet to see one in person. I’d love to have one, but won’t drop the $$ they want, not as long as my Mateos continues to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted August 4, 2020 Share Posted August 4, 2020 14 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said: I’ve yet to see one in person. I’d love to have one, but won’t drop the $$ they want, not as long as my Mateos continues to work. Exactly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 The concerto works good enough as is. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 18 hours ago, Mitch said: How so? Mitch The CC2 was way ahead of its time for 2004, but in 2020, I wouldn't release a new flashcart that doesn't let you just plug in an SD card and go. A modern flashcart should auto-detect bankswitching or work with .a78 files that specify the bankswitching type. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 4 hours ago, batari said: The CC2 was way ahead of its time for 2004, but in 2020, I wouldn't release a new flashcart that doesn't let you just plug in an SD card and go. A modern flashcart should auto-detect bankswitching or work with .a78 files that specify the bankswitching type. I thought that would be the best way to go if it was possible as well. If auto detect isn't possible, reading a header would be the next best thing as most are used to that header being a thing already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaggy the Atarian Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 23 hours ago, Mitch said: How so? Mitch Probably referring to the use of MMC cards. I haven't seen anything use those since the CC2 was released (I'm sure there's something out there, but finding SDs is certainly easier) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted August 5, 2020 Share Posted August 5, 2020 The CC2 has had a long good run, and the rom format updates released by Mitch have undeniably extended t's usefulness. It is looking a little long in the tooth, though. I'll agree with these points that others have raised... The menu app is a pain, especially if you're not running Windows. To be fair, the Mateos filesystem rituals sound worse. The MMC card is problematic to replace. Related to that, card readers that support MMC aren't universal. I have the Canadian equivalent of a Micro Center nearby, and when I asked if they had a card-reader that said it supported MMC, I then had to explain to the salesperson what an MMC card was. ? And I'll add a point... The plastic holder for the MMC has a tendency to shear off, and has done so for a number of members. (guessing that this is the nature of the repairs that -^CrossBow^- was doing) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 8 hours ago, batari said: The CC2 was way ahead of its time for 2004, but in 2020, I wouldn't release a new flashcart that doesn't let you just plug in an SD card and go. A modern flashcart should auto-detect bankswitching or work with .a78 files that specify the bankswitching type. [META] Good to see @batari thinking about 7800 flashcarts. Fingers still crossed for "Concertino"/Concerto ...[/META] What he said. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 Lots of good points here. I do find it interesting that, despite its age, it sounds like the CC2 will still have a higher game compatibility than the new flash carts. Mitch 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 The repairs I did was to replace one of the buffer chips on PMPs CC2 using a breakout board to better solder connections to. The other 2 were conversions from MMC to SD slots and card readers. Turns out you just need to get an SD slot that will fit and the pins from the MMC slot pads on the CC2 will match up where needed for the SD slot to be used instead. You do have to widen the opening on the CC2 case to allow for the wider SD card and slot, and you need to scrape away some solder mask on the CC2 to solder the SD slot to for additional support and ground. But no real issues to simple swap them over to SD cards. So the issue with the MMC cards being a pain is legit, but also fixable by installing SD slot readers in their place. However, in my testing on this, there was a limit in that I could only get 2gb SDcards to work. Anything larger didn't register and it had to be FAT16 formatted as I recall. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FujiSkunk Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 An SD card larger than 2GB is technically not an SD card, but an SDHC card, which is physically compatible with SD but uses different communication protocols. So that part isn't surprising. Fortunately 2GB is plenty of space even for the larger games of the 7800. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 14 hours ago, FujiSkunk said: Fortunately 2GB is plenty of space even for the larger games of the 7800. Assuming you can find cards that small these days ... That’s part of the problems with the use of CF card hard drive interfaces for 8- and 16-bit computer hard disks. Some hardware (such as the SIDE2 cartridge) don’t do well with larger, latter-era CF cards, and earlier, smaller ones are either old and of dubious reliability, or increasingly expensive new/old stock. Or worse, counterfeits on eBay. So ... one thing I desperately hope any modern 7800 flash cart developer does is include support for cheap larger cards, even if they have to be partitioned and use only part of the available space. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted August 7, 2020 Share Posted August 7, 2020 6 hours ago, DrVenkman said: Assuming you can find cards that small these days ... That’s part of the problems with the use of CF card hard drive interfaces for 8- and 16-bit computer hard disks. Some hardware (such as the SIDE2 cartridge) don’t do well with larger, latter-era CF cards, and earlier, smaller ones are either old and of dubious reliability, or increasingly expensive new/old stock. Or worse, counterfeits on eBay. So ... one thing I desperately hope any modern 7800 flash cart developer does is include support for cheap larger cards, even if they have to be partitioned and use only part of the available space. In my experince, the 64GB and larger SDXC cards can be formatted to FAT32 and used on flashcarts (and many other devices!) that normally only support up to 32GB SDHC cards, and you can use the entire space. You may need third party utilities to do this though, as Windows itself won't let you overwrite ExFat for some reason. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted August 8, 2020 Share Posted August 8, 2020 5 hours ago, batari said: In my experince, the 64GB and larger SDXC cards can be formatted to FAT32 and used on flashcarts (and many other devices!) that normally only support up to 32GB SDHC cards, and you can use the entire space. You may need third party utilities to do this though, as Windows itself won't let you overwrite ExFat for some reason. Do you have any idea why some SD card devices only work with cards up to 2GB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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