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N64 Backup unit ala Z64
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kyuusaku



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

PostPosted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's that expensive to produce any electronic products, what drives things to be completed is a boss giving deadlines but also paying out money. That's probably not how it is for flash cart engineers because the whole "industry" is pretty laid back and there isn't much financial stability.

It would take a few hundred engineer man-hours to design the hardware and logic assuming they don't have to reverse engineer much. (The bus protocol is already documented online so they'd only need to figure out saves, or not even if they're using the boot cart's save memory.)

Adding USB or SD card loading could literally bring the development time into thousands of man-hours depending on how much they have to start with. Assuming from scratch it's really a pain to implement: USB microcontroller framework, USB drivers, (optional GUI Windows software,) and FAT16/32 code.

The equipment necessary to reverse engineer and troubleshoot is expensive. Prototypes need PCB and programmable parts too. For all that at least a thousand dollars.

Plastic cases need to be designed and fabricated, so dozens of hours and a few thousand dollars for the mold. A few thousand more possibly for production.

Final logic can be integrated into custom ASIC lowering the part cost in the long run by more than half, but ASIC are expensive to get designed and ready for production, starting at tens of thousands of dollars.

Final PCB need to be produced, the cost for thousands of boards goes down but they still are a few dollars per PCB so that's a few more thousand depending on how many are expected to sell.


So in total someone needs to front a lot of money without a guaranteed return, only big manufacturers with prior products (backing them financially and so they can reuse code/designs) can afford that.
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MottZilla



Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 765

PostPosted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 5:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's pretty much common sense. If things were that easy, don't you think someone would have already done it? I never knew that Bung produced what I heard as hundreds of thousands of backup units but I don't doubt it. But that certainly made their units profitable when they made them in such massive numbers. Just a general rule of producing anything, the more you make and can sell the cheaper it costs to produce each unit.
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DiĦħel



Joined: 29 Apr 2004
Posts: 10
Location: West Yorop

PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is one now!!

NEO N64 Myth cart:
http://www.neoflash.com/forum/index.php/topic,5889.0.html


Too bad the price is insane, hopefully they'll drop it down a bit.
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Chilly Willy



Joined: 08 Feb 2009
Posts: 174

PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

DiĦħel wrote:
Too bad the price is insane, hopefully they'll drop it down a bit.


There's definitely room for competition. Laughing
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DiĦħel



Joined: 29 Apr 2004
Posts: 10
Location: West Yorop

PostPosted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Chilly Willy wrote:
DiĦħel wrote:
Too bad the price is insane, hopefully they'll drop it down a bit.


There's definitely room for competition. Laughing


Yes for sure, hopefully one that uses SD cards Smile Edit apparently it has with an adapter.
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