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NEOGEO + AES Multigame cartridge - NEW POLL INCLUDED. PLEASE VOTE!

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Darksoft said:
samson7point1 said:
Sorry if there is an obvious answer to this, but what makes these carts so expensive? I get that FPGAs are involved and they're more expensive than straight up flash ROMs but is there more to it than that?
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probably the thousands of hours spent in developing it? Not to mention the costs of prototyping a couple of units, software licenses for libraries, etc.This is a project developed from scratch not a do-it-yourself kit from electronic shop, so obviously costs can't be the same. 8)
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My question was not intended as a complaint. Ostensibly Krikzz and SainT and whoever it was that developed the SD2SNES invested quite a lot of blood sweat and tears into their products as well, and the craziest one (because of the FPGA I assume) is the SD2SNES which comes in around half the price of the NeoSD and your cart. To the casual observer (myself) several possibilities are suggested by this.

1: The damn thing is outrageously more complicated than the majority of other flash carts
2: The materials and manufacturing themselves are expensive
3: You own a large share of a small market and can charge whatever you want/Neo Geo owners are used to paying high prices for everything so why should this be any different.

To be forthright, if the price differential between this and other flash carts was mostly profit, as boring of an answer as that would be, I would challenge anyone who thought that wasn't absolutely fine.

The purpose of my question was to get a more complete understanding of the difficulty - very much like this:
Mitsurugi-w said:
Also go price manufacturing costs for 8-layer pcbs and cost of assembly by a professional pcb manufacturer. You'll be surprised how little is actually profit.
Click to expand...
But in greater detail.

There's an interesting story tied up in all of this and while there are bits and pieces scattered throughout this thread, nothing coherently explains what makes NG flash carts so much more involved than a simple flash ROM. I gather it has something to do with the cartridges actually being more an extension of the machine than simple memory storage similar to how SNES expansion chips work, but that's pure conjecture and I was hoping for a more informed explanation.
 
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That's awesome to hear it come from Krikzz. I didn't even know he had an AES.

Yes, I've seen so many flash-carts through the years, but nothing that even really comes close to the complexity of the Neo Geo carts (2 PCBs, 8 layers deep, etc). With Darksoft using the more expensive FPGA and memory than NeoSD, his is a much better value for the buyer.
 
in the neogeo we have 5 buses that we need to serve, in the snes only one iirc. So we are talking 5 times the number of buses synchronized to work properly. The 2 PCBs in the neogeo are in size like 4 snes carts, so make your numbers. It should be around 3-4 times the price of a snes multi.
 
Darksoft said:
in the neogeo we have 5 buses that we need to serve, in the snes only one iirc. So we are talking 5 times the number of buses synchronized to work properly. The 2 PCBs in the neogeo are in size like 4 snes carts, so make your numbers. It should be around 3-4 times the price of a snes multi.
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If we're talking 3-4 times SNES Everdrive I'm cool, would even be cheaper then $400 that way :P
 
Well, no matter how much it costs, it is a lot cheaper than the entire library of MVS / AES games.

C4B7RtNWAAEjb7a.jpg
 
iCEQB said:
Well, no matter how much it costs, it is a lot cheaper than the entire library of MVS / AES games.
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I've seen that price is around $400. Is that so? or is it 400 Euros? Anyway, that's what samurai Shodown I to V cost. Not including V Special, of course.
 
I've just seen the reveal vid on youtube and read the article on retrocollect, this thing looks amazing, and 100x better than the NeoSD (friend has one) I can't wait to get my hands on it!

Thanks for all your hard work so far :)
 
A question from a user of the german Circuit-Board forum: Will the AES-Version run with a 50/60Hz switchless modded AES console with UniBIOS 3.3?

Background: He bought a NeoSD that worked with his AES with UniBIOS 3.3. After installing the 50/60Hz switchless mod, the NeoSD refused working (only original games work).

He owns another AES with UniBIOS 3.0 and a 50/60Hz switch mod, too. This one works with the NeoSD.

By the way: He sent some mails to the NeoSD guys but doesn't got a reply from them...
 
SVM said:
A question from a user of the german Circuit-Board forum: Will the AES-Version run with a 50/60Hz switchless modded AES console with UniBIOS 3.3?

Background: He bought a NeoSD that worked with his AES with UniBIOS 3.3. After installing the 50/60Hz switchless mod, the NeoSD refused working (only original games work).

He owns another AES with UniBIOS 3.0 and a 50/60Hz switch mod, too. This one works with the NeoSD.

By the way: He sent some mails to the NeoSD guys but doesn't got a reply from them...
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To be honest I don't know yet, but I can tell you that we'll do our best to support all systems and yes...we have an open discussion in this forum and we try to support everyone the best we can :)

So, the short version in German would be: "Wir versuchen unser Bestes" :thumbsup:
 
Darksoft said:
I already explained it, but wanted to show how complex this is. We have a Ciclone IV FPGA handling 2x DDR BGA memories. Then we have an ARM that controls the flashes and the microSD and then we have a CPLD that disconnects the bus when we are programming the memories. This PCB has so many technologies mixed that it should be a show case :P
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haha maybe a Gold Aes/MVS edition like the Zelda NES shell casting.
 
samson7point1 said:
Darksoft said:
samson7point1 said:
Sorry if there is an obvious answer to this, but what makes these carts so expensive? I get that FPGAs are involved and they're more expensive than straight up flash ROMs but is there more to it than that?
Click to expand...
probably the thousands of hours spent in developing it? Not to mention the costs of prototyping a couple of units, software licenses for libraries, etc.This is a project developed from scratch not a do-it-yourself kit from electronic shop, so obviously costs can't be the same. 8)
Click to expand...
My question was not intended as a complaint. Ostensibly Krikzz and SainT and whoever it was that developed the SD2SNES invested quite a lot of blood sweat and tears into their products as well, and the craziest one (because of the FPGA I assume) is the SD2SNES which comes in around half the price of the NeoSD and your cart. To the casual observer (myself) several possibilities are suggested by this.
1: The damn thing is outrageously more complicated than the majority of other flash carts
2: The materials and manufacturing themselves are expensive
3: You own a large share of a small market and can charge whatever you want/Neo Geo owners are used to paying high prices for everything so why should this be any different.

To be forthright, if the price differential between this and other flash carts was mostly profit, as boring of an answer as that would be, I would challenge anyone who thought that wasn't absolutely fine.

The purpose of my question was to get a more complete understanding of the difficulty - very much like this:
Mitsurugi-w said:
Also go price manufacturing costs for 8-layer pcbs and cost of assembly by a professional pcb manufacturer. You'll be surprised how little is actually profit.
Click to expand...
But in greater detail.

There's an interesting story tied up in all of this and while there are bits and pieces scattered throughout this thread, nothing coherently explains what makes NG flash carts so much more involved than a simple flash ROM. I gather it has something to do with the cartridges actually being more an extension of the machine than simple memory storage similar to how SNES expansion chips work, but that's pure conjecture and I was hoping for a more informed explanation.
Click to expand...
Darksoft's works are a labor of love dude. Here is how I have come to find how this is true because I too was thinking these guys were just out there to make a buck. Here is a list of the things that have come out that Darksoft & Mitsurugi-w have produced since I joined the board:
  1. Sega Naomi games fixed to work with Dimm/NetDimm
  2. Atomiswave to Sega Naomi conversion fixed to work with Dimm/NetDimm
  3. ST-V rom decryption
  4. CPS3 decryption
  5. CPS3 SIMM's
  6. CPS3 repro cart reproduction
Aside from the CPS3 hardware in the list above, the rest was just given away. And even with the CPS3 stuff, they were produced for cost or little profit (the CPS3 repro cart sold for $150. How much margin do you think was in that?) And each one of those CPS3 SIMM's, Mitsurugi-w QA'ed them all in record time. A process that takes about 50 minutes at a time for which only a total of 4 SIMM's can be tested at a time. All the while, the only bread and butter products for this forum were the ST-V Multi and the CPS2 Multi. As the Neo Multi is being produced, Darksoft got a new day job. And Mitsurugi-w took on a real life job opportunity managing additional fast food restaurants. So while your question is NOT a complaint, your words are definitely filled with skepticism.

If there was a windfall of revenue that Mitsurugi-w and Darksoft are enjoying, they are doing it between sparse free time after participating in this forum, working on these arcade projects, and their day jobs. Day jobs which they maintain for practical reasons. The same reasons why anyone would have a day job: because we have to.

If you haven't noticed, the arcade scene is about as niche as niche can be. Even if they were to fully exploit the dollars in this market, these two aren't doing that. The PCB's aren't manufactured in China, they aren't skipping QA, they didn't release the schematics to a manufacturer and are collecting royalties, they are selling through consignment rather than distribution, they aren't packaging boxes and shipping things out themselves to save money. Rather they do these things so that Darksoft's talents and passion is best served producing these arcade goodies for peasants like you and me.

Enjoy it and consider yourself being lucky we have guys like this helping us out relive days long since gone but fondly remembered. If you need more proof, here are some posts for you to read:

Important (maybe) Announcement about Mitsu
Ask Darksoft: What's it all about?
128Mb CPS3 SIMMS!!!!!!
128Mb CPS3 SIMMS!!!!!!
 
Darksoft said:
in the neogeo we have 5 buses that we need to serve, in the snes only one iirc. So we are talking 5 times the number of buses synchronized to work properly. The 2 PCBs in the neogeo are in size like 4 snes carts, so make your numbers. It should be around 3-4 times the price of a snes multi.
Click to expand...
5??? and the cartridge itself has to feed them? I'm no electronics engineer but that seems like brute force. Are we talking audio and multiple sprite layers or is it more esoteric than that?

Does the PCB have to have so many layers because the network you built is made to match original hardware with separate chips for each bus.
 
samson7point1 said:
5??? and the cartridge itself has to feed them? I'm no electronics engineer but that seems like brute force. Are we talking audio and multiple sprite layers or is it more esoteric than that?
Does the PCB have to have so many layers because the network you built is made to match original hardware with separate chips for each bus.
Click to expand...
Yes, indeed there are five busses that all have to be supplied data by the cartridge. That's why the Neo Geo carts are so expensive, large and have two PCBs. And also why the console was so advanced when it launched in 1990.

The five busses are:

V=8 bit PCM digital audio samples
S="Fix" graphics overlay for score, lives remaining, etc
P=16 bit programming code for the Motorola 68000 main CPU
M=8 bit programming code for the Z80 sound CPU
C=16 bit graphics data

Plenty more info for inquiring minds at the Neo Geo Dev Wiki: https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
 
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