NES CART Idea

[rikitheshadow]

OK, for some reason yesterday morning i stood there looking at these two NES carts on the floor in my bedroom. I was thinkin to myself of all the mods done so far that have reached the forums and youtube to NES carts. I was like....hrm.....something interesting that i'm not sure anyone has tried yet....and i got like this one its similar to a older NES cart mod.

Put a hard drive into a NES cart!..........No no no.....not a USB external drive.....one designed for an internal drive. And it kinda fits in to the idea of putting a computer in the NES. What you do is grab a netbook drive...small as you can get, strip some SATA cable and solder the pinouts of the hard drive to the NES cart PCB, i mean after you remove the rom chips. And there you have a modular concept to an internal drive. It would slide into a slot and 62 pin connector like a normal NES cart into well any shell if you think about it, but be designed for switchin hard drives (maybe like diff OS loaded drives). A NES-PC would prove to be more stock retro like looks and give a sense of gratification that you can switch out the drive on it at anytime.

Sorry, its like 3am right now, i'm awake, bored, frustrated with my project at the moment, and I got work tomorrow.

Please Feel Free to Comment


on a **BONUS** note maybe you could make a removable slim CD-ROM and/or floppy drive in the NES cart as well.....

[Life of Brian]

So, a hard drive inside an NES cart, but using the original cartridge connector? I love it!

[eagle5953]

Fantastic idea!

Should be enough pins on an NES game, what with the American systems having 72 pins. You could even use 4 of them for a USB connection, too! Not only could you then connect USB devices (like flash disks and floppy drives), they'd be hot-swappable!

So, with 72 pins, you'd need 40 for PATA, 7 for SATA, and 4 for USB. That's only 51, leaving an additional 21 for other uses (more USB? additional voltages?). Some additional grounds might be in order - some PATA cables had an additional 40 grounds and used 80 wires instead of 40.

I think we need a standard to ensure universal compatability - a Rikitheshadow NES Cartridge Connector interface standard, or RNESCC, as it were.

[HotDog-Cart]

I dont get it. Are you saying put roms on the HDD and plug the HDD into the NES?

Or having a NES PC, and then put a hdd inside of a game case?

[eagle5953]

As far as putting hard drives with different OSes on it - that would work, but you wouldn't be able to take the cart out to plug in anything else, such as a disk drive, card reader, or floppy drive.

I dont get it. Are you saying put roms on the HDD and plug the HDD into the NES?

Or having a NES PC, and then put a hdd inside of a game case?

Wiring up the cartridge slot as a type of I/O port that would support PATA, SATA, and USB peripherals. Bascially, you could set it up to work with almost anything that you can fit in a cartridge.

For example: a USB hard drive. You just put the hard drive in an old cart and wire up the four USB wires to the appropriate cartridge contacts. Simple.

Edit: You'd also want to use 4 pins for Molex power for PATA components like disk drives and hard drives. Only 55 of 72 used.

[HotDog-Cart]

Okay. Still doesnt awnser my question. Which project is he doing?

[eagle5953]

Sorry - closest to the second thing you said.

[vskid]

Okay. Still doesnt awnser my question. Which project is he doing?

http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=33477

[XCVG]

Neat idea, but useless in practice. A flash drive or optical drive in a cart would be a lot more useful.

[eagle5953]

You can do that too! Four pins for USB connection. Whatever you want in the cart.

[deadlyfishy]

Cool idea, imo. Would definitely be sweet to have different os on different cartridges.

[eagle5953]

I was giving this some thought.

Ideally, you have your main operating system on the PC's internal hard drive (say, Windows XP). You set up your BIOS to boot from the cartridge slot if there's anything in there. Thus, if you want to use linux instead, just put that particular cart in there before you turn it on.

You still wouldn't be able to use the cart slot for any other peripherals while using a cart OS, but at least then you could when using your primary OS.

[XCVG]

Yeah, but why would anyone bother with a second OS on a cartridge? Seems kind of pointless to me. Maybe put games on it, but then why bother with a NES PC. Like I said, cool, but not that useful.

Or maybe it is? Have all the connections and make it a universal expansion interface.

[eagle5953]

Or maybe it is? Have all the connections and make it a universal expansion interface.

It would be universal - any PATA, SATA, or USB item that you can cram in a cart.

[Biased]

So, the NES would house the guts of an eeePC or a netbook, and then the cart slot and the pins on the NES cartridge would be modded to connect SATA drives in a hot-swappable interface? Me likey. I'd say I could sacrifice a few copies of Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt for this.

If I wasn't in my "keep switching OSes and wiping out your programs and bookmarks and files all the time" phase I'd be photoshopping some cool stickers onto NES carts for concept art RIGHT now. (Hint: This means someone else should. Shoop an OSX86 or Windows logo onto one of those bad boys)