At 11:50 PM 2/28/2001 +1100, you wrote:
>I plan to officially release a cart at a classic gaming convention ;) The
>code already has a serial number capability - for the first 100 carts only -
>the score in demo mode starts with the cart's serial number. The buyer's
>name won't be there (though i considered that). If I have any spare bytes,
>that is what it will go towards, OK (that is, hidden/embedded in the cart
>binary) :) I'm still looking at options for producing cartridges - I wanted
>to do them myself, but may not have time/skill.
Andrew-
I was planning on doing the same (releasing 100 carts at that small expo in
August in Las Vegas ;) but you are way ahead of me as far as game completion.
Regarding making the carts, Hozer does a great job, but for myself, I was
thinking of churning out some custom PCBs for the inside of cart cases
(probably to fit Combats). This would make things easy, since the assembly
would then be limited to just soldering in the EPROM (2716 2kB or 2732 4kB
depending on your game) and the 7404 hex inverter for whatever line in the
cart was reversed (I forget offhand, but I think it was the chip select).
Making a custom PCB would prevent you from having to hand wire an inverter
onto every cart, which I dread doing. I'd much rather pay a few extra bucks
for the PCB panel than go through manual labor.. :)
So, I'd have the custom PCB, slap it in a Combat cart case, and do up some
kind of nice looking label.. Shouldn't be too bad for 100 of them..
The cost to produce a few more panels of boards shouldn't be too much. If
you want to go in with me on them, that would be great. I haven't produced
boards in the last year, but I am thinking it will be US $200-$300 for some
prototype board sets (e.g. no soldermask or silkscreen). If Kevin Horton is
reading, maybe he can verify the pricing for us. :) The boards will take a
week or so to come back.
Joe
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