Hello there. I've been crawling through google and some of the wiki but I'm either blind or some info is just not there . (It's not exactly the most common asked questions so yeah..).
I will, hopefully, at some point in the future create my own small NES game and a corresponding cartridge. In the spirit of nintendo cartridges I obviously want to augment it with additional features so here are some questions:
Anyway:
1) What is the common thought about the maximum power draw on a cartridge? I would like to add some additional components and don't want to fry any systems in the process...
2) When writing to/reading from PRG RAM, how fast has the RAM to be in order for a successful read? (Or is the NES waiting for some latch to process further?).
3) On a component level, when writing to PRG RAM how can I intercept/read it on the physical cartridge? What pins does it correspond to? (or is it as easy as just the usual address lines?)
4) Would a mapper complicate this process? I could I just intercept my PRG RAM calls before any mapper is involved?
I will create a board completely from scratch, flash my own flash chips, flash and solder an AVRCIC and add my additional components.
In case anyone is interested in the actual project: I'm trying to implement an NRF52832 (bluetooth chip) on the board and have it act as PRG RAM. So if for example I progress in the game (take metroid for example) I can read the states on the bluetooth chip and sync it with an android app over BLE. That's just an easy example but I guess much more is possible.
Thanks in advance, feel free to ask any questions.
I will, hopefully, at some point in the future create my own small NES game and a corresponding cartridge. In the spirit of nintendo cartridges I obviously want to augment it with additional features so here are some questions:
Anyway:
1) What is the common thought about the maximum power draw on a cartridge? I would like to add some additional components and don't want to fry any systems in the process...
2) When writing to/reading from PRG RAM, how fast has the RAM to be in order for a successful read? (Or is the NES waiting for some latch to process further?).
3) On a component level, when writing to PRG RAM how can I intercept/read it on the physical cartridge? What pins does it correspond to? (or is it as easy as just the usual address lines?)
4) Would a mapper complicate this process? I could I just intercept my PRG RAM calls before any mapper is involved?
I will create a board completely from scratch, flash my own flash chips, flash and solder an AVRCIC and add my additional components.
In case anyone is interested in the actual project: I'm trying to implement an NRF52832 (bluetooth chip) on the board and have it act as PRG RAM. So if for example I progress in the game (take metroid for example) I can read the states on the bluetooth chip and sync it with an android app over BLE. That's just an easy example but I guess much more is possible.
Thanks in advance, feel free to ask any questions.