DracIsBack Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 I have a theory that Atari never really worked with the 7800 carts to see how large they could make them. After all, that would require development of games to fill the space, extra manufacturing costs and the Tramiels were cheap folk! Nintendo originally intended the NES carts to be 128K, but by the end of the NES's life, they were a megabyte. Sega originally intended Genesis carts to be 1 meg, but by the end of the Genny's life, they were four megs. How big do you think Atari could have made 7800 carts, had they invested in their further development? Programmers ...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBall Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 With bankswitching there's no practical limit to the size of the ROM. The 7800 will only be able to access 48K of it at a time though and there are some restrictions: $F000 -> $FFFF on startup has to map to a bank containing the digital signature and the initial RESET handler. The NMI/DLI (and BRK/IRQ) handler should be fixed in memory along with any graphics and tile data. What to put into the ROM is the other question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubersaurus Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 I heard something to the effect that the hardware designers had made schematics for boards up to a meg. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBall Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 1 megabyte ROMs (8 Mbit ROM in NESspeak) wouldn't be out of the question. The bankswitcher would be connected to the 4 most significant bits of the address bus, the data bus, and the read/write line. In write mode it stores the 8 bit data value into the lookup register for the address. In read mode the register is read and provided as the 8 most significant address bits to the ROM (plus the 12 least significant bits = 20 bit addressing). LDA #$DE ; ROM page STA $A000 ; set bankswitch register for page $A LDA $AD78 ; load byte from ROM address $DEAD78 Heck, use the full address and data buses so the bankswitch register is 20 bits wide and have a full 32 bit address! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 Nintendo originally intended the NES carts to be 128K, but by the end of the NES's life, they were a megabyte. Well, Nintendo vastly misjudged the market. They very swiftly found a need for other types of games than single-screen arcade games, which required more ROM space. So they fell upon the ever-popular bank-switching to increase the NES' capabilities(much as Atari had for the VCS), How big do you think Atari could have made 7800 carts, had they invested in their further development?Hypothetically, bank-switching circuits would put the physical limit at the cart size(since you need room for all the ROMs). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted August 18, 2003 Author Share Posted August 18, 2003 With bankswitching there's no practical limit to the size of the ROM. The 7800 will only be able to access 48K of it at a time though and there are some restrictions: $F000 -> $FFFF on startup has to map to a bank containing the digital signature and the initial RESET handler. The NMI/DLI (and BRK/IRQ) handler should be fixed in memory along with any graphics and tile data. What to put into the ROM is the other question. Isn't that the case with all the 8-bit consoles. I'd read somewhere that the NES itself can only access either 32K or 64K chunks at a time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted August 18, 2003 Author Share Posted August 18, 2003 "Well, Nintendo vastly misjudged the market. They very swiftly found a need for other types of games than single-screen arcade games, which required more ROM space. So they fell upon the ever-popular bank-switching to increase the NES' capabilities(much as Atari had for the VCS), " If Nintendo misjudged, they sure didn't do it as badly as Atari! 128K 7800 titles didn't even hit the market until 1988! By then, Nintendo was churning out 256K games! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mitch Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 I have a 512K 7800 board. So, it seems that larger games were at least planned. Mitch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted August 18, 2003 Author Share Posted August 18, 2003 A 512K (4 megabit board) exists? Wow! Maybe Jack did at least do some initial R&D into doing a 7800 game of decent size! Any homebrew programmers want to develop a decent sized game like that ...? :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted August 18, 2003 Share Posted August 18, 2003 Isn't that the case with all the 8-bit consoles. I'd read somewhere that the NES itself can only access either 32K or 64K chunks at a time. 8-bit consoles generally had 16bit address buses (or less) which meant that thier mnaximum "address space" was only 64K. Some of that space was used to RAM and IO thus usually only leaving 32K or less for ROM. Bankswitching allowed you to switch any number of ROM banks into that space and as other have pointed out the number of banks was effectively unlimited. The only real limitation you would run into is how much power the console can supply to power the cart. The more ROM in the cart the more power it would need to operate. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariman Posted September 1, 2003 Share Posted September 1, 2003 A 512K (4 megabit board) exists? Wow! Maybe Jack did at least do some initial R&D into doing a 7800 game of decent size! Naw, I'm sure it was an accident Jack: "What the Hell is that?" Employee: "It's a 512k cartridge. Isn't it cool? It will really revolutionize the gaming industry if we use it right!" Jack: "Now what did I say about innovation?" Employee: "Erm... that... it... um... eats up profits...?" Jack: "Exactly. R & D costs money, d*** it!" Employee: "But--" Jack: "No! I don't wanna hear it" Employee: "But don't you want to see the plans for the awesome side scroller that will save the 7800?" Jack: "Is this more innovation?" Employee: "um..." Jack: "You're fired." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted September 1, 2003 Share Posted September 1, 2003 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homerwannabee Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 what the heck if the system was successful today it would probably go up to 100 megs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 what the heck if the system was successful today it would probably go up to 100 megs Hey, it's not a NeoGeo here...The carts are physically smaller. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 what the heck if the system was successful today it would probably go up to 100 megs Hey, it's not a NeoGeo here...The carts are physically smaller. Yes, but so are modern parts. With a standard sized cart, it's not inconceivable to have almost a gigaBYTE of ROM data. Maybe 2 GB. Depends on what lines are available in the cart port. It's pushing it, and it would certainly be an expensive cart, but it could be done. But what would one do with all that instantly available space? Hmmmm...... -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariman Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 2GB of space?? lol. I can almost see it now -- "The Multimedia Encyclopedia -- 7800 edition" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 Jack: "Now what did I say about innovation?" Actually, in Tramiel language innovation = new case design. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 what the heck if the system was successful today it would probably go up to 100 megs Hey, it's not a NeoGeo here...The carts are physically smaller. Yes, but so are modern parts. With a standard sized cart, it's not inconceivable to have almost a gigaBYTE of ROM data. Maybe 2 GB. Depends on what lines are available in the cart port. It's pushing it, and it would certainly be an expensive cart, but it could be done. But what would one do with all that instantly available space? Hmmmm...... -Chris I was actually having some lighthearted fun.I've never been one to pass up a chance to make fun of the NeoGeo. It's a great system and all, but honestly, ther ecomes a time when you need to just upgrade the hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 what the heck if the system was successful today it would probably go up to 100 megs Hey, it's not a NeoGeo here...The carts are physically smaller. Yes, but so are modern parts. With a standard sized cart, it's not inconceivable to have almost a gigaBYTE of ROM data. Maybe 2 GB. Depends on what lines are available in the cart port. It's pushing it, and it would certainly be an expensive cart, but it could be done. But what would one do with all that instantly available space? Hmmmm...... -Chris I was actually having some lighthearted fun.I've never been one to pass up a chance to make fun of the NeoGeo. It's a great system and all, but honestly, ther ecomes a time when you need to just upgrade the hardware. Though everything I said was true, I was also having some fun. I mean common! 2GB? What *would* you do with that much space? -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JB Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 what the heck if the system was successful today it would probably go up to 100 megs Hey, it's not a NeoGeo here...The carts are physically smaller. Yes, but so are modern parts. With a standard sized cart, it's not inconceivable to have almost a gigaBYTE of ROM data. Maybe 2 GB. Depends on what lines are available in the cart port. It's pushing it, and it would certainly be an expensive cart, but it could be done. But what would one do with all that instantly available space? Hmmmm...... -Chris I was actually having some lighthearted fun.I've never been one to pass up a chance to make fun of the NeoGeo. It's a great system and all, but honestly, ther ecomes a time when you need to just upgrade the hardware. Though everything I said was true, I was also having some fun. I mean common! 2GB? What *would* you do with :)that much space? -Chris FMV? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 [What *would* you do with that much space? FMV? Yep. And an MP3 server. Hmmm...pretty decent web server. That gives me an idea. -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Classic Pac Posted September 24, 2003 Share Posted September 24, 2003 I had some dealing with Atari back in the 80s; And despite anyone thinks they had plans for a true 1 meg cart even ones with battery saves for an RPG that was in the works. But like the add ons for it Atari killed the project Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwilkson Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 A 7800 RPG? KILLED??? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted September 25, 2003 Author Share Posted September 25, 2003 I had some dealing with Atari back in the 80s; And despite anyone thinks they had plans for a true 1 meg cart even ones with battery saves for an RPG that was in the works. But like the add ons for it Atari killed the project Details please .... I once had an Atari guy (probably a sales guy) say that 7800 carts could be 1 megabyte as well, but never heard of an RPG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Classic Pac Posted September 25, 2003 Share Posted September 25, 2003 The RPG was strickly in house, a pet project of some of the programmers like Alien Brigade. Did anyone notice the bug in that game where in you don't aways get a recharge on your most power weapon in the last level in that game. That was done on purpose, to piss off there bosses. You Atari History buffs may know this but Atari invented the password system that most games used until today. Ever wonder why it wasn't on the 7800 execpt for that dumb level code for Fatal Run. The reason is that it used a certain amount of ROM and the bosses there wasn't about to give it. Ever wonder why despite the power of a Jaguar why most of the games are soo bad same reason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.