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PicoCart64: Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi RP2040

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Re: PicoCart64: Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi RP2040

#11

Post by bschwindHN »

It might be worth your while to have JLCPCB (or another PCB fab) do all the surface mount assembly. They can even do USB C connectors these days, so you just place an order for the boards, receive them in the mail, take them out of the box, and plug them in.

This would of course require laying out a circuit for the bare RP2040 chip instead of using an RP2040 stamp, but it's not a complicated design, and you'll save a lot of time and money if you're planning on producing a decent sized batch of these.

Re: PicoCart64: Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi RP2040

#13

Post by bdowling »

yomkippur wrote: post #10

I really think this is the best way to enjoy retro games. Original hardware + cart/cd emulation with games loaded on sd card. Access to every single game in every region for the entire console that runs flawlessly. The hiccups and bugs you experience with emulation totally ruins immersion. Also best played on CRT. I still remember there used to be a Hong Kong vendor that sold these flash carts and you could load N64…

Probably Lik-Sang. [0]. RIP.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lik_Sang

Re: PicoCart64: Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi RP2040

#14

Post by bdowling »

bri3d wrote: post #5
mmastrac wrote: post #2

While this is interesting, the project page is a little light on what it can do. Can the RPi feed streams of instructions to the N64? Can it act as a co-processor? EDIT: more info on Twitter apparently: https://twitter.com/kbeckmann/status/1539738410063208454

The N64 flash cartridge feeds data to the N64 on a 16 bit parallel bus. It's used to store the game ROM. I suppose by writing clever self-modifying "ROM" code, you could hack the Pi into acting as a coprocessor, but in this configuration, it's just feeding arbitrary game data to the N64 - emulating the ROM that would be seen in a normal N64 flash cart. Unlike in older consoles like the SNES where cartridges often con…

The N64 cartridge bus is just a parallel bus. Commercial cartridges may not have included coprocessors, but there isn't anything that prevents them.

(Edit: The cartridge bus is set up to be most efficient when reading/writing blocks of memory (address is latched w/ auto-increment). It would still work for accessing devices though.)

Re: PicoCart64: Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi RP2040

#18

Post by asveikau »

yomkippur wrote: post #10

I really think this is the best way to enjoy retro games. Original hardware + cart/cd emulation with games loaded on sd card. Access to every single game in every region for the entire console that runs flawlessly. The hiccups and bugs you experience with emulation totally ruins immersion. Also best played on CRT. I still remember there used to be a Hong Kong vendor that sold these flash carts and you could load N64…

I remember in the late 90s reading about a device that sat in the N64 cartridge slot and loaded games from a zip drive. I think it may have been called z64.

I remember similar units for SNES that loaded from floppy disk.

Re: PicoCart64: Nintendo 64 flash cart using a Raspberry Pi RP2040

#19

Post by iamevn »

klodolph wrote: post #7
bri3d wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N64 flash cartridge feeds data to the N64 on a 16 bit parallel bus. It's used to store the game ROM. I suppose by writing clever self-modifying "ROM" code, you could hack the Pi into acting as a coprocessor, but in this configuration, it's just feeding arbitrary game data to the N64 - emulating the ROM that would be seen in a normal N64 flash cart. Unlike in older consoles like the SNES where cartridges often con…

I'll add that this makes preservation a lot easier. For example, there's the 64DD. It's a disk drive peripheral for the N64. It's Japan-only--for various reasons. Some people thought it would be difficult to emulate. Nope, it turns out it's basically just some disk I/O. Games are just data.

Data which, with fairly simple patches, can be run from the same flashcarts you can run normal game data from!
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