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NeoGeo Flash Cart Is it Possible????
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rodneyy



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Mon May 07, 2007 9:48 am    Post subject: NeoGeo Flash Cart Is it Possible???? Reply with quote

I love to play NeoGeo. Is it Possible to do Flash Cart for NeoGeo Console
and use concept idea as SNEx Flash Cart or Sega Geniese Cart

Thanks
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rbudrick



Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 373

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 1:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Probably...no one's done it yet, though. It's very tough...like NES tough, maybe more.

-Rob
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kyuusaku



Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 1:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Neo Geo is a very difficult system to make a playback device for, far more difficult than NES.

The issue stems from 2 obstacles:

1) The Neo Geo has five ROM buses which must be emulated which means a very tricky design. All other consoles except NES, which has two, have only one!

2) The Neo Geo has enormous ROMs! To emulate all but one Neo game (KOF2K3) you'd need 512M (32-bit bus made from 2x 16-bit flash chips) for character (graphics) memory, 64M (16-bit bus) program memory for the game code, 128M (16-bit bus) for audio samples and 4M (8-bit) of Z80 program memory. That adds up to 708M for the largest game -- that would require over $200 of NOR type flash memory and that's assuming that the font ROM memory is integrated into character memory!

Instead of using flash, one could use cheap old computer SIMMs (this is what my DIY Neo geo RAM cart is designed around) but this creates another issue--power! Computer SIMMs consume about 4 mA per megabit, which means a ~710 megabit RAM cart with the support circuits would consume nearly 3 AMPS (15W)! Compare this to any other copier which consumes around 5W at most! Powersupplys that hefty often cost $30-50 and would be bulky.

Neo Geo like NES also uses bankswitching, special character bus chips and encryption. These issues can easily be worked around but make the design more difficult because later games which have their own form of bankswitching must be hacked to use the "standard" bankswitching.

The Neo Geo console's graphics bus is different from MVS and requires a logic chip with many many pins, essentially any home "playback" (flash)cart will have to have a MVS->AES converter built into the design to emulate this additional component in AES carts. Think integrated Phantom-1/NEO Super Converter (normally valued at $250 alone!)

Encrypted games (everything after KOF98?) will need to be decrypted before being flashed since emulating encryption would be a dumb waste of resources but thanks to MAME sources this is pretty trivial (the only thing that's trivial about emulating Neo carts :D)

Another substantial issue is the two PCB needed for Neo Geo games, in small numbers I would imagine the boards being as costly as $50 for a set since they're huge!

Alltogether this project is so extreme, it's simply not cost effective for anyone to make.
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rodneyy



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 8:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

therefor I must use real cart Very Happy
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rbudrick



Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 373

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would counter that Neo owners don't give a crap about cost effective, and that even if this cart was $700, they'd still sell plenty of them. Laughing

-Rob
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kyuusaku



Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't think even $700 could pull it off :(

Right now I'm trying to put together the logic of something that can match the MGD2 Neo adapter in terms of ability which means the first 40 games. Unfortunately I'm working in poor conditions without proper tools. Last week I had to use my stove's broiler to desolder some stubborn Neo boards :P
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rbudrick



Joined: 26 Mar 2004
Posts: 373

PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2007 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hell, they'd buy it for $1000, then! lol

Broiler, huh? Damn, time for a new soldering iron....or desoldering pump/station.

Remind me not to eat at your house. Wink

-Rob
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rodneyy



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 6

PostPosted: Wed May 09, 2007 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes~ I am a NeoGeo Collector. I have both of MVS and AES. I have never spend money more than 80USD to buy AES even I like them a lot. Because I have some thing to do more than that.
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acem77



Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio

PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2007 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i would buy a good neo-geo flash cart for $1000-$1500.
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madman



Joined: 07 Jul 2006
Posts: 598

PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2007 1:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you want to play a lot of Neo games, get yourself a 1 slot MVS, consolize it (easily done) and buy the MVS carts for way less than AES carts.
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cdoty



Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 11
Location: Houston, TX

PostPosted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wonder if it be done with several GBA SD card carts? Obviously they're fast enough to keep up with an ARM chip, most of the time.
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Looking for a new game for the Genesis, SNES, Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, FM Towns, Philips CD-I, Atari Jaguar CD, TG-16/CD, X68000 or, CDTV/CD32?

Check out my Frog Feast game:
http://frogfeast.rastersoft.net/
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kyuusaku



Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us

PostPosted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AFAIK, GBA SD cards don't actually run games off the SD, they typically have 256M pseudo-SRAM (DRAM w/ built in refresh) which they use for storage. Directly using SD cards would be too slow since they use a serial interface and would need to do FAT-> cluster -> data word translation. I have read that N64's cart bus is slow enough to use compact flash though :) I'm not sure if that takes into account file system overhead or if the card is just being used for raw storage.
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CrackLtd



Joined: 05 Feb 2007
Posts: 239

PostPosted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The MGD2 has a NeoGeo-IO and i remember it just needed 12V/1A. This one is pretty rare now, it had 5 ram card slots so it could be maximal expanded with 4x32M dram and 8M sram. Back in the 90ies i had one of these things. I sold it in the meanwhile. I had like 20 games it could play back, but the adaptor had a nasty graphical error. First i thought it was just my unit that is faulty but i heard all units have this error. Maybe Tototek can manage it to redesign a new NeoGeo adaptor/emulator/backup card and take the MGD2 NeoGeo IO adaptor as somekind of a basis to start off! Hey, isn't it the challenges that makes the life interesting? Smile C'mon Kyuusaku!
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kyuusaku



Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us

PostPosted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 2:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not that it's possible for anybody right now but the Neo I/O isn't worth reverse engineering because it contains 9 custom chips, the original cartridges contain 3 at most and should be relatively easy to figure out with some decent equipment.

The reason why the Neo I/O had such low power requirements is because 136M of RAM isn't so much. A good unit will have over 700M.
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CrackLtd



Joined: 05 Feb 2007
Posts: 239

PostPosted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 11:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think providing RAM to a copier is the smallest problem of designing a NeoGeoBackupSystem considering 1 GB of SDRAM is like $15 or so (And RAMs usually work at 3.3V). It will be way harder to find some above avarage intelligent technician who will actually develop a working unit from scratch. Since the result will be kinda illegal he also can not expect to be payed well for his work. So, chances are slim for the NeoGeo Backup Unit. Sad but true.

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