At first sight I thought the MegaFLASH cartridges had their own (emulated) SCC chips on-board. Now, I understand that old Konami games are 'recycled' to contain FLASH as well. I'm afraid a lot of rare MSX games might be recycled this way. What are your feelings about this? Wouldn't it be better to incorporate an emulated SCC chip (FPGA), even if this means the cartridge becomes more expensive?

Yeah, when I heard about it I was really (not pleasantly) surprised! How can someone systematically butcher konami's in this way when there are alternatives?!

Not only Konamis !!
They're 'recycling' non-konami MegaROMs as well !!
Every Flash cartridge 'made' is an old MegaROM (with ASCII mapper or Konami mapper) really.



I think that, now in 2003, every original item for MSX is itself a treasure !

Aren't you guyz overreacting a bit? I don't believe that many people will 'flash' their old mega roms....I think tweaking is pretty cool....Isn't that what we're doing for quite some time now on MSX?

Agreed, most people will buy a loose extra cart, wich they probably already have once. (e.g. buying an extra loose SCC especially for this)

Quote:

Agreed, most people will buy a loose extra cart, wich they probably already have once. (e.g. buying an extra loose SCC especially for this)

Buy an extra loose SCC... It's still destroying a SCC Konami, or any other megarom! A megarom mapper is SOOOOO easy to build, it's just a few cheap pieces of electronics...

I'm very much against this... it's vandalism!

Indeed. Why not use the catridge boxes Sunrise uses? Or find an other way to build these great flash interfaces in a professional-looking design?

Well I think it's not just about the boxes, but about the PCB's too.

I don't like it either. And the 2nd announcement mentioned something about 'preferring people to give him their own SCC cartridges because they were hard to find'. Does this mean Padial is trying to purchase SCC cartridges en masse to well, yeah, 'butcher' them?? I certainly hope not, some games are rare enough as it is already.

Why not use a custom-made SCC? Afaik the ESE-SCC schematics are freely available over the internet.

By the way, personally I still have 2 Konami cartridges without ROM: 1 F1 Spirit (bought it like that on a local fancy fair), however the PCB is too badly damaged to be able to still do something with it. And I've also got a Contra cartridge which I destroyed when I was little by pulling it out of a live MSX. The SCC sounds 'wrong', but I heard that could be a simple matter of replacing the DAC, and the ROM is broken, I desoldered it from the print. However I'm hoping the mapper is still ok, then if I fix the SCC I might be able to send that cart to Padial...

Ah, well.

~Grauw

Dude, you really have to take care not to confuse names! (like UN/NATO ^^
Padial is using his own design on his own manufactured PCB's!

Quote:

Dude, you really have to take care not to confuse names! (like UN/NATO ^^ Padial is using his own design on his own manufactured PCB's!

Ah, damn, I wrote Padial on the MSX Mailinglist, but did I write it here aswell?? Argh. Ofcourse I mean Manuel Pazos ^_^.

He also responded on the mailinglist btw:

"
Yes, you were right. We remove the ROMs from that cartridges. In some
way, it is a pity to sacrifice original games, but think then you can play a
lot of them like if they would be original

> Oops, sorry.
> I meant Manuel Pazos, not Padial.
> Damn Spanish names

Erm.... Leonardo and Manuel are very similar, indeed XDD

Regards,

Manuel
"

~Grauw

Dont be so negative about this innovative design. It is not at all destroying but enhancing!

The result is a still operational cartridge with added (much!) functionality!

And the result looks good: http://soft.mundivia.es/mpazos/flashrom/MegaFlashROM.jpg

It is very similar to MEGASCSI, also a high quality idea based on the same principle.
Note the last sentence: A Kazuhiro Tsujikawa, por sus sabios consejos.

I am _very_ postitive about this flash project. But I think there are better ways to get casings & SCC(+).

Laurens, I believe that mentioning Padial as manuel pazos is not strange at all.
I believe there are now two similar products , or Padial has given his permission to Manuel Pazos to sell and changing the chip used. Very doubtfull if you Padial a little
Reason:"Padial uses the chip of lattice 'Mach' and Mnauel uses the 29f040 (that chip is also on our ide). Since our Ide doesnot need all the space programmed, it might be possible to put also some extra software in it. E.g. Powerbasic (that was, laurens what you were referring to in the subject GFX9000_.
But If you want to to this right as Manuel Pazos really want a good product I agree with 'SNOUT' in all his comments. And a CPLD and not aFGA is a solution that is better way. More expensive is perhaps also not true, but that depends really on het 'gates'
you need (no , that one with the glasses)
I put the subject on the agenda for Madrid and will see if they are interested to put it intoÓur SUNRISE BOX.
Last remark to Hans, I donot think this is the PCB used for the new product but simply a changed cartridge.So what I mean I would like to see the real product first

Quote:

Dont be so negative about this innovative design. It is not at all destroying but enhancing!

It's destroying the face and internals of a Konami (or any other original MegaROM) cartridge! I would say that's obvious...

Furthermore, this is not an innovative design, anybody can just replace a ROM with a FlashROM, no further design needed!

I don't see how it compares to MegaSCSI at all, maybe you can explain that a bit in detail?

Also, I really don't like being negative (see msg on other thread) and I'm sure effort and good intentions have gone into this project, but I just can't help finding it extremely wasteful to cannibalize on these innocent megarom games!