Empty cart shells

What systems have the biggest demand for empty cart shells and what would be a fair price for them to you?

I'd go in roughly the following order of preference
1. NES (obvious reasons)
2. Game Boy (don't forget the cutout portion!)
1b: Famicom?
3. SNES
4. GBA
5. (distantly) N64

This is so subjective... People will simply vote for the ones they'd like to have.

Isn't that the goal of this thread?

Right. I'm determining the demand. Me and a buddy are thinking about having some 3D printed.

Famicom shells! Preferebly Everdrive compatible, I think a Takahashi Meijin no Boukenjima shell was used as a template for the Everdrive (http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1501). NES shells is already available.

Gameboy shells

HuCard shells (though I've seen there are some people selling 3D printed PC Engine Everdrive shells already).

I was also asking, why not Famicom shells ? This solves the problem of a CIC. It's more cost (and time) effective to have only a single CIC in a FC->NES adapter rather than wasefully using a lockout chip in all cartridges you'd want to produce, increasing the time it takes to design the PCB, and the time to program the CIClones as well as soldering them and testing them.

Perhaps someone seeking to buy only one game doesn't want to have to pay for both the game and the adapter. Or perhaps you might want to sell the game on eBay, where adapters are expressly forbidden.

I think the problem is that nearly everybody who would want to buy a homebrew-made cartridge would have a NES (I don't think there's much of a demand from countries with Famicoms/Famiclones), and using an adapter also kinds of defeats the point (may as well just use a flashcart instead).

Ironically, Famicom shells should be easier to get since bootleg copies of games are made for Famiclones.

At Famicom world there are lots of people that are disappointed that no Famicom version of sold homebrew.

The problem with Famicom carts is that there's not one standard mold, companies made their own carts, which is why I suggest to make it Everdrive compatible as not to invent even more standards.

Many pirate shells have very bad quality plastic.

I'm also still hoping for a Famicom version of the INL-ROM repro boards.

Is there really no standard for Famicom shells? I swear every Famicom cartridge I ever saw looked the same, the only real difference is the color of the cartridge (but that doesn't matter for functionality).

I honestly would be happy with cartridges that looked like this:



(yes, I know that pic is a mock-up, point stands)

Carts with a bigger board, especially if they had a battery backed save, had to have a larger shell. Just Breed and Lagrange Point are two examples.

Yeah and there are tall cartridges that, much like many NES carts, doesn't even seem to use the extra space http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1738.
I guess all MMC5 games use the same cart standard (they are quite similar to NES carts as you can see on the Just Breed cart), so that would also be an idea to use as a standard for tall repro carts.

If you open Famicom carts you will see that the PCB holes are different for different companies' games, and won't fit in other shells.

New boards can be pretty small though... look at all the functionality the Everdrive N8 packs without needing a large board.

I expect one can blame Family Trainer 3 and its sound chip for the rest of the series having that larger case.

And even if one can cram a lot of functionality into a small space, making it manually reparable/configurable(/swappable) is contrary to that goal.

You know what'd be really nice? A cart with a door for socketed ROMs.

I'm of the opinion that you either want a ZIF, or in-place reprogrammable things here. Anything else will just mechanically fail after far too few cycles.

Personally, I just dremel a hole in the shell when I'm using a socketed board.

Famicom shells for me too. (Of course I also need a circuit board, but I could try to make that myself; I know how that much works at least.)

I would love to see a custom shell for SNES, with the esthetics of the Pal/SFC carts but allowing for a label that covers the front and top like the American SNES cart.

Most of these are already available, the exception being n64 which is arguably moot until the n64 CIC is cracked and replicated. 3d printed cases are cool but not practical especially in significant qty. It took me a few hundred lost hours of tinkering with a homemade 3d printer before I learned to accept this fact.. Even if the printer is awesome enough for sufficiently durable cases the cost is prohibitive especially when molds are already available for these. Not to mention the fact that 9 out of 10 people consuming cases prefer donors for some crazy reason..

I'm aware of 3 NES case molds actively in use plus the one retro zone retired.

There's one snes mold out there with the snaps and fake front screws I've used for awhile. Retro zone doesn't use their pal looking NTSC compatible snes mold much anymore apparently. But I found a new one recently and have my first batch from them.

There are a few versions of genesis and master system available on alibaba.

Famicom is far from standardized specifically on the pcb outline. Ever drive cases have been available although pricey and coming with ever drive branding and memory slots. I recently found a new source though and am working on a small trial batch of homebrew releases using them. They're the smaller form factor.

Someone in Canada (apesh*tmods IIRC) had a mold for game boy but wasn't interested in selling bare cases when I asked years ago. Perhaps that's changed now, I heard word of another mold being made available but haven't spent much time figuring out details. Perhaps it's the same mold..

I've been gravitating towards sega genesis dev lately. I've only downloaded one usable .stl file and haven't tried it out. I'd rather leave the cart manufacturing to someone else yet not pay for bundles of 800.

Did anything come of this, or the GB thing?

Taking me a bit longer than I hoped to overhaul all my board designs and migrate to from discontinued Xilinx CPLDs to Lattice CPLDs which are actually recommended for new designs. I made life a little challenging for the pcb layout by designing a board layout which is interchangable between NES and Famicom cases. So once the NES board design layed out, the only thing necessary to complete the famicom version is swap out the cart connector and board outline. This also simplifies pcb assembly as the same solder stencil can be used for both NES/FC and components are all in identical locations. Things are moving along though.. Should have the NES production line primarily converted to Lattice by the end of this summer. At that point the design will be finalized and I can start converting my designs to 60pin.

Gameboy is still on my project list along with most popular cartridge consoles/handhelds. Can't really give an accurate time estimate.. I made a successful gameboy cartridge prototype board 3years ago but haven't touched it since.. :/

There are some Gameboy cart shells on AliExpress now, something like $67 for 100 of them. I don't have the link but you can look up "Guangzhou Shunzhi Electronic Trading Company".

What kind of printer did you try? By material alone, I calculated it'd be 2-5$ per shell.

Those aren't gameboy cartridges! They're "Game" cartridges

Btw there's also a bunch of GBA cartridge shells on sale.