To the designer of the PowerPak...

Insofar as the case, I have a friend with one of those 3D plastic printers (3D modeling plastic layer-based sculptor), so if I render a case in Lightwave, he can knock them out for me a couple at a time.

I also know someone that can do plastic moulding (he does repro tail lamps for classic cars), so a production part later on is not a problem either. Paying $4,000 in tooling is outrageous...I hope you don’t go that route in the future, as although your red cases look cool, that's a huge upfront expense that nobody needs.

There is no reason it can’t be a tall cart: there were many production carts that were quite tall, even double-height, but are still genuine Famicom games. I will have to examine the board to see how to do a layout either in a tighter space or on a double-sided board.

How many layers is the PowerPak logic board at present?

As to the comment about having few Japanese customers, well, that's quite logical. Few people in Japan have an NES: they own Famicom consoles, and of those who own a Famicom, maybe 0.05% of them have an NES adapter.

Maybe I'll wind up going the route of building an adapter card and designing a different case, and if I do so, I might sell those as a combination product. I know it’s easy-peasy to make adapters, but it's time consuming to do so for large quantities, so if I decide to make a production design, I'd want it to be something special.

I'd probably make a base-colour cart and have them electroplated (like the U.S.A. 1st-release Zelda cartridge) to start out, as that would make them attractive without having to pay for the moulding of a custom case in the beginning. I have many industrial contacts, so none of that is difficult.

Assuming I do go for it, I will want to either buy the PowerPak assembled logic boards in batches of increasing quantity or but the FPGAs in quantity and build the boards especially for this product. Would you be amicable to either option, or am I going to have to buy them retail?

I would be happy to work out an agreement with you for resale, sales/distribution, or licensing. If you would rather sell my adapter & case with a finished board from you in your own store (RetroUSB.com I presume), I am also happy to form some sort of agreement in that direction.

Unfortunately, I don't see anywhere to buy finished adapter modules anymore, except in boxed systems from China. The Japanese dealers don't stock them *at all*. Kevin at Rising said they are rather uncommon in Nippon: Of course! They have little need of adapters, as the game library over there consists of 99.99% of the American library plus 1,500 games.

Does anybody know a source to buy them in (small) quantities, such as ten to twenty at a time?

One of the reasons this is of great interest to me is simply to get more play use out of my Famicom over the NES, and to tinker with games that use the EXP port on the FC. I'm sure I can come up with other uses, but it'd be cool to run one on my Twin in addition to the NES without it looking like a wart or cancerous growth.

The idea of the PowerPak is simply elegant, and seeing it flipped backwards, attached to a riser card that if you sneeze on (or if you pull too mightily on one of the controllers) will jar it enough to cause the system to crash (because a NES game attached to said riser card is mightily top-heavy) is an unpleasing sight.

I prefer to have a good balance between engineering logistics and physical aesthetics in all of my designs. It's hard to achieve, but the PowerPak does a lovely job of it.

It's probably the singular coolest piece of Retrogaming hardware to come out, ever...

-Xious