A theory (or two)...

[KrunkSplein]

I'm new to the boards, and to modding in general, but I had one idea that I felt I needed to run by you guys. I find it's absence on the board suspicious, so I'm concerned that it's just a pipe dream that cannot be done.

I was looking at the PS1 LCD pinout stuff over at gamesx, and I saw that he uses a 9-pin adapter with an LM1881 as a generic input for his monitor. This got me thinking - why not create a single monitor unit, and then any number of portable system units which connect to it?

Connect may not be the word I want there - I dont mean cables going everywhere and whatnot, that wouldnt be very portable. I was thinking more along the lines of having the monitor sort of "click in" to whichever unit. Hopefully the description doesn't leave too many questions...

I was wondering why no one had yet attempted this, if there were some horrible problem that I'm just not seeing.

Also, another product on the market got me thinking. You can buy a blank GBA cartridge on which you can put more than one GBA game, and there is a menu of sorts which lets you choose which you want to play. Has someone attempted to do something similar with a large amount of a cartridge-based system games? In my head I picture an NESp with no cartridge slot, but when you turn the system on you are presented with a long list of games from which you can decide what to play. does that make any sense? I'm tired.

Thanks for listening!

[gannon]

That modular concept has been thought of and talken about on these boards a few times. The hard part would be to integrate a modular lcd and make it look good and not seem out of place.

[KrunkSplein]

my thought was to use the same basic mold for all of my mods, with the spot for the monitor being in between (and slightly above) the controls for each hand. When the monitor was removed, there would just be plastic in between the two, dipped heavily so that the monitor was flush when inserted (and to help keep it steady). there would be the opposite end of the monitor's connector near the middle, so that by placing the monitor in, the connection would be established. I hope that makes sense. I wish I had access to any sort of art program.

[gannon]

yeah, that's exactly the idea that's been talked about before. The problem is actually making the unit that holds the lcd inplace. Without cnc machinery it'd be fairly difficult.

[SpongeBuell]

I'm hoping to use that on my own portables, actually.

[Sparkfist]

Also, another product on the market got me thinking. You can buy a blank GBA cartridge on which you can put more than one GBA game, and there is a menu of sorts which lets you choose which you want to play. Has someone attempted to do something similar with a large amount of a cartridge-based system games? In my head I picture an NESp with no cartridge slot, but when you turn the system on you are presented with a long list of games from which you can decide what to play. does that make any sense? I'm tired.

To answer this question, yes. There has been talk about multi carts. The thing is as many (that is to say nearly all) of us here are not programmers and so those that have worked on the multi carts use a bank-switching technique.

[KrunkSplein]

Lets say I were to attempt to program a super-cart of sorts. How would I go about putting this cart within the confines of the portable system?

[JackFrost22]

you would need to know thebankswitching for the system or use dip switches. Probably custom etch a circuit board and them had wire the amount of pins that saystem uses (24 atari, 64 genesis, ect). Then put a switch on the volts line so you can still play external carts.