Is it possible to buy homebrew games for the VB, on ebay or the like? And how much are they?

Not that I know of. You might be able to get someone here to build you a dev cartridge and put all the homembrew games/demos onto it. Unfortunately theres not a whole lot of homebrewn anything for the VB. Blox is currently the best out there, and it doesn’t even have music(though it is a nice game otherwise).

As of now, the only homebrew games are simple ones like Blox. They can be downloaded from PVB. If you mean buy as in already on carts, none of us have gotten that far yet.

Some of us have started more advanced games and cart designs, but like most pastimes, work/study have killed our progress. 🙁

I remember posting a while ago about making some carts, but unfortunately I haven’t progressed much since then, and still have no idea how much they would cost to produce.

Ah, fair enough.

It might not matter anyway though, because my VB is broken, and if I can’t repair it, I’ll have to return it to the shop :'(

I could build a flash VB cart for $50 apiece, but that would not include a programmer. If I had lots of free time, wich I don’t, I would make a flash cart that could be programed in the VB using a link cable to paralel port adapter.

The hardware design is simple, its the same as the 44 pin eprom design on my website with the adition of the programming pins that need to be maped to unused pines on the VB edge connector. I would configure it such that a write to expantion ram sets the flash in to programming mode. And I would put a boot loader at the top of the flash, overwriting the interupt table, to trap all of the interupts so that you could enter programming mode by holding down a sequince of buttons while turning on the VB. Thain you just need to relocate the real interupt table to ram or a blank spot in the rom (maby where the rom name sits). This way you could play comercial games as well as develop new titles, in fact you could do a multi boot like the game boy and load several games in one cart

David

…That method sounds uncannily like the method I was considering, except I was hoping to make my programmer patch each ROM with a basic bootloader the would communicate with the PC on boot to download the progger/dumper to the VB RAM, allowing you to flash or dump carts and SRAM.

If you permanently mount the boot loader in the flash rom you can write protect it (top boot flash chips) and guarenty that a bad flash will not kill your cartrige. Either way you have to patch the roms, but my method would patch them on the fly as they get downloaded (in my mind anyway =0)

David

would you really build a flash cart to sell David?

For $10,000 I will drop everything and make one today
for $1,000 I will put it on my todo list for this year
for $100 I will think about it someday
for Free It may never happen =0)

I would love to make a proper flash cart but It is a time consuming job getting the boot loader just right. I will make one some day, but just for reference I have been saying that for 7 years… (actualy I made one once but it never worked right, I think I fried my flash rom by wiring it to 12v on my I/O-56 card)

David

I’ll do it for the same prices, just in Australian currency. 😛

Mine’s been in my mind for a few years now, but has only gotten as far as a VB cart connector in Protel.

…Problem is, I need a flash cart to test my flash cart. 😐
…That, and at least 30 mini (1.5mm?) jumpers to make a VB cart socket for a programmer, hence my idea of in-console programming. 😉

Yea, I had to cut apart a spare VB to get my cart connector for my dumper. It was a sad day for me….

David

I see. well if either one of you build one and want to sell it, find me, please. but since that day is about as likely to happen as Heidi Klum bending on her knees, drooling in front of my naked body while I stand straight up, I geuss I’ll attempt building one myself. without self electrocution I hope….

…If you somehow manage to electrocute yourself on 5-12 volts, I’d like to know how. 😉

If you build your own look to spend about $400

Eprom programmer (with flash rom support): $200
Circuit board fabrication: $100
Flash chips and sockets $60
VB Cartrige and Unit to scrap for edge connectors: $40

You could save a bundle by droping the eprom programmer and circuit boards but in the end you will save a lot of time if you can verify right away that your board works (by wiring your edge connector to the eprom programmer and flashing the chip), rather than strugle with some homebrew programmer. And the circuit boards will increase your reliability 100%. Wiring up a cart involves connecting some 100+ wires, its far to easy to make a mistake.

David

Eprom programmer (with flash rom support): $200
Circuit board fabrication: $100
Flash chips and sockets $60
VB Cartrige and Unit to scrap for edge connectors: $40

Electrocuting self to death from 5-12 volts: Priceless

well good to know. that’s not too bad a price. something to throw in my pile of projects I intend to finish by 2038 if I buy it peice by peice. thanks for the info David.

Hey guys, I was just reading through the article on this site about the Games Convention 2003, and it said you were originally planning to bring some homebrew games along with you, so does that mean you know how to put homebrews onto cartridges?

Putting homebrews (or any kind of ROM ;-)) on a cart is easy.
The hard part is making the rewritable cartridge. 😛