> >Yes, but if you made your own circuit boards, and molded your own carts,
> >you could sell two games for not much more, if any more, than a single game.
> >In theory, you could attach both ends to just one 8K chip to make two 4K
> >games.
> >
> >How much of this is practical, I don't know.
>
> That's what I was supposing originally - one board with two sets of
> connectors, though I was thinking of two 4k roms rather than one 8k.
> (would it work to connect VCC to A12 from one connector - this'll be the
> high 4k of the ROM - and connect GND from the other connector to A12 to
> make a double-ender with nothing extra but the board and an EPROM? Chris,
> what'd be the price increase over the boards you already said you could
> do?)
>
> We wouldn't scrap existing double-enders for cases, though new cases might
> need to be made. Looks difficult to cut a hole in the front end of a
> standard case for another connector. New cases do mean we don't need to
> use *any* parts from old carts, too (not *all* of us have fifty Combats
> lying around :) )
Hmmm. Assuming a double 16K game, using a 32K ROM and the same BS logic,
the part tally is the same. And the price of the "bigger" parts is relatively
the same. If you don't mind a shorter double ender...say 4" long instead of
the typical 6", The board price would be about the same as two individual
boards, maybe less (fewer cuts to make).
But...
Molding new cases is, I think, a little beyond the scope of this project.
Unless someone here knows something I don't, it's gonna cost BOOKOO BUCKS
to get molds or stamps made. If someone has access to a kiln (pottery etc)
We might be able to use a "lost wax" process to make ceramic molds. We
could then use the kiln to melt plastic pellets and hack a gravity-feed
molding process. This would probably be a pretty low-yield process...very
time consuming with a lot of "do overs". Might be worth trying, though.
Another thought is just to cut the end off of Combat carts. Not to glue
them together, but to enable them to be a 3.75" double ender. I'll have
to look at a cartridge to see if this is feasible. If there is a lot of
modification involved in mounting the board it isn't worth it.
Now, if you just want to do 2 games per cart, here's another possible solution.
Just use a few bytes to do an immediate bank switch depending on the state
of the BW/Color switch on powerup. Maybe latch the value into RAM for games
bigger than 4K.
Ooh! Late for a meeting! I'll write more later.
-Chris
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