(Long-winded introduction; actual question at bottom!)
I'm still hard at work on my Playchoice adapter project. My design uses two boards: one connects to the playchoice motherboard (inside the cage) and the other contains the NES/Fami cart slots and sits outside the cage. They're connected by standard 40-pin IDE cables.
The bad news is that while I've gotten the Playchoice to detect the games and even start them, they're unstable. Graphical glitches, jumpy sprites, and crashes are common. After checking both boards for cold joints (this's my first major soldering project) I'm starting to wonder if the cables themselves are the problem. I've tried lengths as long as 24" and as short as 9" (two adjacent connectors on an 18" cable, and yes, I know about reflection) and it seems like the shorter lengths are less glitchy, but I'm not sure.
Edit: Brief video of the adapter in action. Note the sprite errors. (Look carefully at Mario and you'll see stray pixels that aren't just MPEG artifacts. Additionally, look at the upper-left turtle immediately after it turns to the left; the sprite changes.)
Has anybody ever had occasion to separate a NES cart from the console and connect them with ribbon cables, and what was the maximum length that worked? Thanks.
I'm still hard at work on my Playchoice adapter project. My design uses two boards: one connects to the playchoice motherboard (inside the cage) and the other contains the NES/Fami cart slots and sits outside the cage. They're connected by standard 40-pin IDE cables.
The bad news is that while I've gotten the Playchoice to detect the games and even start them, they're unstable. Graphical glitches, jumpy sprites, and crashes are common. After checking both boards for cold joints (this's my first major soldering project) I'm starting to wonder if the cables themselves are the problem. I've tried lengths as long as 24" and as short as 9" (two adjacent connectors on an 18" cable, and yes, I know about reflection) and it seems like the shorter lengths are less glitchy, but I'm not sure.
Edit: Brief video of the adapter in action. Note the sprite errors. (Look carefully at Mario and you'll see stray pixels that aren't just MPEG artifacts. Additionally, look at the upper-left turtle immediately after it turns to the left; the sprite changes.)
Has anybody ever had occasion to separate a NES cart from the console and connect them with ribbon cables, and what was the maximum length that worked? Thanks.