Development Hardware

I was wondering what is commercially out there for testing ROMs on hardware. What are the comparative advantages amd disadvantages of available dev carts/tools and most importantly what are the comparative prices?

Depends on a lot of factors:
• how much you feel like designing it yourself
• how much random EE equipment you already have
• whether you're testing (or "testing") commercial games or making new games from scratch
• what mapper you want to use

I mostly like to use one of these: PowerPak

More info here: http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/PowerPak

The big two are PowerPak (CF to NES adapter) and EverDrive N8 (SD to NES adapter).

Between the two, I think the PowerPak has more of a third-party mapper development scene, and more U.S.-based support if you are U.S.-based. I think EverDrive N8 might be cheaper, and SD cards are sometimes easier to obtain, and its open bus behaves more like a production cart (compared to PowerPak that has data pull-ups), and there's a 60-pin version for Famicom and Famiclones, and there's more international support if you aren't U.S.-based. But both are limited to 512K PRG ROM, 512K CHR ROM, and 32K WRAM, which poses a problem for those doing crazy experimental big-memory stuff.

Both of them are very versatile. I prefer the PowerPak to the Everdrive for a number of reasons, but they're both pretty good, and can handle a laaaarge assortment of mappers.

There is also a wiki page describing the Everdrive, by the way: http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Everdrive_N8

If you don't want to experiment with different mappers, and would be happy working with just one, Infinite NES Lives offers a cheaper solution involving two pieces of equipment:
1. A Kazzo cartridge flasher.
2. A flashable cartridge.

Otherwise if you have soldering skills and already own soldering and desoldering tools, you could buy ready-made PCBs from various places (many places sell these, including Infinite NES Lives), or even desolder the ROM chips out of an old NES game, and then put your own EPROMs in. If you don't already have an EPROM programmer, that alone would probably cost more than a kazzo + flash cart, let alone soldering tools, EPROMs, etc.

[shameless plug] There's also fdsstick.

Pros:
Dirt cheap. Price was dropped recently.

Convenient for development. It can load directly thru USB so your test cycle is: Compile, push reset.
With powerpak et al., it's more like: Compile, power off, remove card, connect to pc, copy file, move card back, power on. Gets tedious fast.

Cons:
Need ram adapter and famicom.
Not for cartridge games, so it might not suit your needs depending on what your goal is. (Making rom hacks? planning to distribute physical carts? Or just testing a piece of code?)
Not as flexible. No fancy mappers to play with. Can't run many *cough* commercial games... but you asked about development.

Thank you, I ended up purchasing an UNROM flash cart and the cartridge flasher. I wish my country's dollar wasn't shit (and that I didn't have post-secondary bills and other woes!) compared to the USD but hey still a decent cheaper alternative until I can afford to buy a more advanced dev cart. Thank you guys for helping me out with this. Its back to working on a projectile object system!

Got a weak dollar? Try exporting more.

Overall, exchange rates track a country's export productivity. Exporting increases demand for your labor in your country, drawing workers away from local service industries into export industries. This causes wages in local industries to rise in an attempt to retain workers.

Source: Balassa and Samuelson

I don't think one person will have much influence on money markets, Tepples.

thefox, loopy, myself, …?
But, I suppose I haven't actually heard of 3rd-party N8 mapper support. (And, it seems Krikzz has taken down the devdocs.) nevermind, updated wiki's link.

edit: N8 supports 48 mappers that PPak does not. PPak supports 7 mappers that N8 does not. N8 appears to have no present capacity for NES2.0 support, using a binary 512-byte table of mapper files (high bit for savestate-enabled).

Good luck trying to convince our Liberal majority government to do anything to bolster the economy. They stand in the way of economic growth in the name of the environment. They'd rather us import blood oil from OPEC than make domestic production of our own oil cheaper and thus more competitive on the world market. And that's just the federal government don't even get me started on the Ontario and Alberta provincial governments.

Please split off this tangent about economic policy, or since Rainwarrior would object to a useful split, please do NOT continue this topic in this thread.

Disagree that one (vocal) user have (effective) veto power on splitting.

But, that was a bit off-topic, Tepples. We're talking about NES hardware here, not political machinery.

And if you find a NES Gamepak board with the ability to affect political machinery, you simply must show me the diagrams. (/joke)

Looks like Light-Dark is already set up, but here's a little info about my kit anyways.

Cheapocabra devkit, $35. Includes USB to NES controller port adapter, don't need to remove your cartridge from your NES to rewrite it. Cart has 512kB FlashROM, bankswitched CHR-RAM, bankswitched 4-screen nametables. There's (still!) no online store or centralized information source for it though. But there are some details about the board in this thread:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12716

Damn that is pretty nice for the cost and features. I'm tempted to buy it and make something that takes advantage of its features or port my present project to it. I'll have to wait for my next pay cheque!

What was the lesbian oil ad ruckus about then?

Dont want to derail so Im just going to say this; Highest subnational debt in the world. Lying lesbian premeir lowest approval rating in ontario history. Unethical cronyistic spending.

LOL at tepples' succesful troll. (I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it definitely worked.)


Totally rad! at Memblers' cheapocabra. I had forgotten about that one, it looks cool.

(Loopy's FDS stick is also really nice, if you've got an FDS already. It made me so happy to replace my FDS drive with it.)

On a slightly more related note... does the Kazzo work with Linux?

No, I don't think there's any support for a Linux client at this time (though there's nothing preventing it from being used in linux, just a lack of available software).

A few years ago qbradq made some kind of linux port of some of the software involved, but I'm not sure how far that effort went.

Yeah, we just had a PM discussion about it.


That'll probably have to wait until Cracked runs an article like "6 Video Games That Changed History", with a link between Contra and Iran-.

Does this mean there's no way to purchase one yet?

It can be ordered now, anyone who wants one should send me a PM. Main reason I don't have a more automated way to sell them yet is because I'm still working on the bootloader (been distracted by a lot of things, but there is progress), which will streamline the devkit quite a bit. But it's fully usable as it is. I'm actually getting ready to order a second production run of them, then there will be a total of 2000 of these things in the world. It's a little scary and exciting at the same time.

Coming improvements are:
1) better/more utility software for the PC-side
2) bootloader that can work with cartridge alone

Right now the bootloader is in a modified Game Genie, so this does require a front-loading NES. The upside is that it can program a completely blank cartridge. But the future versions of the bootloader will reside in the cartridge alone, and removing the Game Genie from the equation is what I mean by streamlining the devkit. It's kind of a pain tracking down the right version of the GG to modify, but I've got about 5 of them ready to go right now (thanks to k3vbot and SoleGoose).

So yeah if anyone wants a devkit, 10 carts, 100 carts, any amount just let me know. In the near future I'll be able to supply USB adapters in quantity too, if people want to get some PC or internet connectivity going in their games.