Longish post, skip to the last paragraph for the important part.
Several years ago I designed a cartridge reader called CopyCart, but as most projects it got abandoned. I did have PCB's made, but they're still sitting in the packaging - I never populated a single one with chips. I did however build a breadboard and wrote a lot of the software. It was based on a PIC processor, and used several 74160N shift registers to get lots of IO, which it used to talk to the cart via a 72 pin connector. It can dump carts, and it can also be used to reprogram many flash carts. It was abandoned for several reasons:
- I never found a source of 72 pin connectors. This has been re-hashed a lot, but it seems like there are acceptable parts now available.
- The PIC didn't have enough IO, and using the shift registers works - but it's slow and clunky
- I could only afford a 2 layer board. Try routing 72 pins around on two layers - it was crazy.
- The software involved was very low level. I doubt anyone would write plug-ins for me to help dump carts
Well, it turns out a lot of these issues are no longer an issue! The 72 pin connectors from digi-key apparently work, even if they're not quite right. Embedded programming is much more accessible to the High Level Programmer these days thanks to Arduino. And, Arduino has a board called the Mega2560 which has a lot of 5V IO. It has 54 pins, by my calculation 47 is enough to do a cart dumper - even if you use all the CIC and EXP pins.
In summary, a cart dumper/flash cart writer can be made now using nothing more than an Arduino, a digikey 72 pin connector, and some wire. It could be done as a pcb in Arduino "shield" fashion, but that would add significantly to the cost. It would be easy to program - Arduino is like the Lego of embedded software. Is anyone interested in this at all? I'm not talking about selling them, just trying to gauge if there is enough interest for me to invest the time in designing the thing. Total cost in parts for someone to build this thing should be around $70, that's $60 for the Arduino, and $10 for the 72 pin connector plus header and wire. Seems a little pricey, but since I sank several hundred dollars into the first iteration of CopyCart, I'm not worried about price.
Several years ago I designed a cartridge reader called CopyCart, but as most projects it got abandoned. I did have PCB's made, but they're still sitting in the packaging - I never populated a single one with chips. I did however build a breadboard and wrote a lot of the software. It was based on a PIC processor, and used several 74160N shift registers to get lots of IO, which it used to talk to the cart via a 72 pin connector. It can dump carts, and it can also be used to reprogram many flash carts. It was abandoned for several reasons:
- I never found a source of 72 pin connectors. This has been re-hashed a lot, but it seems like there are acceptable parts now available.
- The PIC didn't have enough IO, and using the shift registers works - but it's slow and clunky
- I could only afford a 2 layer board. Try routing 72 pins around on two layers - it was crazy.
- The software involved was very low level. I doubt anyone would write plug-ins for me to help dump carts
Well, it turns out a lot of these issues are no longer an issue! The 72 pin connectors from digi-key apparently work, even if they're not quite right. Embedded programming is much more accessible to the High Level Programmer these days thanks to Arduino. And, Arduino has a board called the Mega2560 which has a lot of 5V IO. It has 54 pins, by my calculation 47 is enough to do a cart dumper - even if you use all the CIC and EXP pins.
In summary, a cart dumper/flash cart writer can be made now using nothing more than an Arduino, a digikey 72 pin connector, and some wire. It could be done as a pcb in Arduino "shield" fashion, but that would add significantly to the cost. It would be easy to program - Arduino is like the Lego of embedded software. Is anyone interested in this at all? I'm not talking about selling them, just trying to gauge if there is enough interest for me to invest the time in designing the thing. Total cost in parts for someone to build this thing should be around $70, that's $60 for the Arduino, and $10 for the 72 pin connector plus header and wire. Seems a little pricey, but since I sank several hundred dollars into the first iteration of CopyCart, I'm not worried about price.