zett, it is totally possible to create new games and fit them in carts. The easiest way is to open one of the existing games, desolder current ROM IC, replace it with the cradle for EEPROM of the same form-factor as original rom, use EEPROM flasher to flash new rame in EEPROM chip and put it in the cradle and put the cart back together

It's a shame to open up those old carts though... It would be nice if someone could come up with a new cart system with mapper. It can't be too hard to make a mapper. I guess that darn piece of plastic that goes around it will be more of a problem though...

Quote:

It would be nice if someone could come up with a new cart system with mapper.

Leonardo Padial makes a ASCII/Konami mapped FlashROM cartridge which does not cannibalize from existing MSX games.

Totaly, and it's a great cart for the price (60 euro). But... It is only a PC board, designed to be used in Evolution 4 slot expander without the casing or in a Konami cartidge casing (I had to kill King-Kong 2 for this). Plus it is very annoyng that I have to change 4(!) switches each time I want to flash it...

The best option I think is a flash cart with Konami mapper and SCC from Manuel Pazos. It does not have any switches and works great.

He also makes ASCII 8KB version, both 512KB and 1024KB wariants.

But I think this is not what zett is asking for. I think he mean that it would be great if someone will code a good game in ROM format and produce PC boards and cases to build actual cartridges and sell them to MSX customers... With some nice printed materials and may be a nice label for save disk. And make a special Limited Edition, each numbered and signed by authors (only 50 LEs) so that collectors will get crazy in 10 years from production date

I must say I like the idea

Yeah... That's what I'm talking about too... There's already been a cart on the market for ages that plays all those ripped Konami's as if they were ROMs, but that doesn't really interest me. I was thinking along the same lines as zett was (I guess?).

I'd really like to see new games coming out on ROM carts. I know it's a little more expensive, but it really adds to the charm. Furthermore I think that SRAM prices have dropped so far these days that even sram carts would be possible. And apart from looking cool, it would have a lot of other advantages...

1) No more long loading times.
2) With today's technology very large games are possible.
3) Oh, what the heck, let's mention the cool factor again

Ofcourse one of the disadvantages would be that there wouldn't be any harddisk support unless people make a point of making a harddisk version. The cost of the whole thing would prolly increase too. Especially in small numbers the plastic boxes will prolly cost a few more bucks too... Maybe we can find a chinese platics company that would be willing to press a few cart boxes from a wooden mold though...

What other disatvantages am I missing here?

Besides MegaROM cartridges not having loading times, they enable more elaborate effects, bigger levels, you name it...
Compared to the advantages any possible disadvantage means nothing.

And it's quite easy to program a loader that loads the ROM into RAM for people that don't like cartridges.

Quote:

And it's quite easy to program a loader that loads the ROM into RAM for people that don't like cartridges.

That's one way to beat the hackers to it.

What about a non MSX-standard sound chip inside of the cartridge. Like ESS1688... And a non-standard page switching, let's say 16 windows each 4kb with non-linear page switching. And scrambled code, so it will be easier to buy original then f*ck around trying to make meaningful dump of the rom

Quote:

>>its possible but in order to let them work you need a special mapper or there's also a mod for the konami cardridges but it would be nice if some body would create a kind of usb game rom do u get the picture? PC puts the rom in the cardridge with sram via usb and then play it on msx its possible but the complicated things are how does the mapper work? each type of game had its unique kind of mapper confuguration inside the cardridge << BitWize are buzzy whit that kind of stuff

I'm sorry, I have to deny this information Bitwise is currently busy developing a fully functional prototype of the USB Disk Interface. That thing can be used as an external disk drive to a windows (at the moment, only windows ) pc. The Disk Interface can be plugged in a cartridge slot of any MSX, were it from MSX1 up to MSX Turbo R. It's connected to a pc via the USB port (hence 'USB Disk Interface' ). With the proper software installed on the pc, you can read directly diskimages from the pc's HDD. USB Disk Interface is seen as a genuine FDD on the MSX side, so you don't have to have additional software for MSX. It just works directly.

It is good to know that this hardware will be MSX1 compatible. It is the only problem of the Sunrise IDE thinggy, that it needs MSX2 or higher to run, because it uses necesarily DOS2, and that requires a mapped memory and at least 128 KB of RAM. Or am I wrong?

Is there any option to run the Sunrise CF IDE in MSX1? Even with DOS1 it will be fine!

Sure there is... The whole MSX-DOS 2 thing is highly overblown

You just have to use something to IDA Pro on existing bios and read tonns of documents on atapi standard. Once you understand everything clear, you can write MSX-DOS1 friendly firmware with built-in tetris

Quote:

I also have a brazillian device a DDX MegaRAM, it has no SRAM but can load a ROM image from disk. The only problem is that it is 256k, does anyone know if this can be upgraded to 512k or more ?

There was DDX cartridges with 256 KB , 512 KB or 768 KB RAM.
Sure that this was not the only manufactories of MEGARAM, there was several other that replied the original items.

Quote:

Sure there is... The whole MSX-DOS 2 thing is highly overblown

If you have a MSX 2 and Memory Mapper plus a disk drive.
A available MEGARAM could be used to load the MSX-DOS 2 and freed some bytes on the MSX-BASIC.

Or someone could buy the MSX-DOS 2 cartridge (version with 256KB Memory Mapper).

There was MEGARAM DISK too (usually 512 KB or 768 KB). Cartridges that could be MEGARAM and also worked as RAMDISK .This feature only works in MSX1 and MSX2, not work in MSX 2+.
In MSX 2+ only worked as normal MEGARAM.
Sure that this could be done in 256 KB too.
Only normal MSX-DOS.

Are there any other presistent memory cartridges than ESE-RAM, and the Padial LPE Flash Cartridge? I tried to use the ESE with my MSX1 but for some reason it doesn't work. When putting the ESE into the MSX, the image stored in the ESE seems to get corrupted (can't be run in an MSX2 after being placed in the MSX1). MegaRAM is I guess an ok invention but it can't be loaded on an MSX2 and then run on an MSX1, right?.
Would be nice to know if there is such a solution.