Behold the latest AbCard

[spenoza]

Based on this picture, I can only assume that Commander Keen is a clown zombie. Either that or a skinny midget Stay-Puft man.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Based on this picture, I can only assume that Commander Keen is a clown zombie. Either that or a skinny midget Stay-Puft man.

EGA FTW!

all humans were gray in the land of EGA

[roflmao]

Oh man, I didn't get the Commander Keen reference.  That's even MORE awesome!

Commander Keen was a very popular shareware series back in the MS DOS days.

[KnightWarrior]

What does it do

[Arkhan Asylum]

What does it do

it plays the games we are making at Aetherbyte.

[TheClash603]

What does it do

it plays the games we are making at Aetherbyte.

Who does it do?

[RegalSin]

Where does he get those toys from......

[PikachuWarrior]

How does he?

[Arkhan Asylum]

This thread has gone retarded.

[esteban]

This thread has gone retarded.

Fixed that for you.

Hot damn, the craftsmanship is outstanding.  I must say, I couldn't be more impressed.

Did you guys create your own flash programmer for the pcbs?  If so, do you have any pictures of that?

BeaglePuss, you know Marble Madness (and the other prototypes you have, like Pit Fighter) would be nice on a genuine HuCARD.

[TheClash603]

Not to again throw this thread off topic, but...

HE HAS PIT FIGHTER TOO?

[NecroPhile]

Not to again throw this thread off topic, but...

HE HAS PIT FIGHTER TOO?

I think that's the Cook's wishful thinking.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Not to again throw this thread off topic, but...

HE HAS PIT FIGHTER TOO?

I think that's the Cook's wishful thinking.

It's wishful thinking on my part as well, not to mention it'd be cool if they had Peter Packrat, though, what lil' info there is on that one, I have my doubts that a proto exists.  Then again, I doubted that Marble Madness existed, so....

[SeymorOnion]

Holy Moly!
That prototype looks AWESOME! 

I know it's probably going to be quite a while before you finish your first PCE/TG16 Game, and iron out all the details to finalize your HuCard Designs, but...
If you want to order more than 750 HuCard Sleeves, in a single order, in the future, please shoot me an e-mail about one month in advance.
That'll give me plenty of time to either set aside the requested number in advance, and/or do another run if necessary.

I don't know what the lead time for the HuCard Trays is going to be, yet, to make a run (it depends on the manufacturer I chose), but it should be about the same as the Sleeves.

I'm glad to hear the final HuCard isn't going to have any bumps.
Well, if it did, that'd be ok, if the bump was in the same place as, and not any larger than, the one on the Arcade Card, as my current HuCard Tray design will support those too.
I can always tweak the Tray Design, if you need me to. Just let me know before I start mass producing those suckers. 

To get back on topic...
Do you guys plan to provide (sell) HuCards for (to) other PCE/TG16 Game developers, in the future?
Will ya also be making Arcade Cards at some point?
If ya can't talk about that stuff right now, It's cool.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Holy Moly!
That prototype looks AWESOME! 

I know it's probably going to be quite a while before you finish your first PCE/TG16 Game, and iron out all the details to finalize your HuCard Designs, but...
If you want to order more than 750 HuCard Sleeves, in a single order, in the future, please shoot me an e-mail about one month in advance.
That'll give me plenty of time to either set aside the requested number in advance, and/or do another run if necessary.

Our third game is what's going on the HuCard.    We've already released one CD game, and have a second one almost complete...

To get back on topic...
Do you guys plan to provide (sell) HuCards for (to) other PCE/TG16 Game developers, in the future?
Will ya also be making Arcade Cards at some point?

1) Probably.  Once the kinks are worked out and we test the waters
2) probably not.

[OldMan]

The ultimate goal, which I admit will probably never be achieved, is to create a new system card, to go with an ide adapter from charlie. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the cd gears anymore...

<sigh. Maybe someday...>

[_Paul]

Make a card that allows me to run games off my Minidisc player.

Minidisc is the future.

[Duo_R]

Imagine a mini disc drive made for the Turbo Express... Drools

[Samurai Ghost]

THAT would be amazing. Imagine hooking up the SUPER-MD unit to your GT or TE and playing SUPER CD games on the go!!

[SeymorOnion]

Would the IDE Adapter be physically attached to (a part of) the System Card,
or would the IDE Adapter simply connect to the rear port of a TG16/PCE Core System,
or would the IDE Adapter connect to the place circled in red, in the picture below?

[esteban]

Not to again throw this thread off topic, but...

HE HAS PIT FIGHTER TOO?

I think that's the Cook's wishful thinking.

BeaglePuss is a smart fellow: he knows it is best to slowly release stuff over time instead of dumping everything on the market at once.

He has PitFighter, make no mistake .

[spenoza]

The ultimate goal, which I admit will probably never be achieved, is to create a new system card, to go with an ide adapter from charlie. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the cd gears anymore...

<sigh. Maybe someday...>

Given that the PCE uses modified SCSI, that might be easy to hack. In truth, I'd rather see a system card that packages the ADPCM hardware and a CD Emulation BIOS with a large pool of flash memory. CD on a card.

[Samurai Ghost]

The ultimate goal, which I admit will probably never be achieved, is to create a new system card, to go with an ide adapter from charlie. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the cd gears anymore...

<sigh. Maybe someday...>

Given that the PCE uses modified SCSI, that might be easy to hack. In truth, I'd rather see a system card that packages the ADPCM hardware and a CD Emulation BIOS with a large pool of flash memory. CD on a card.

Yeah that would be amazing. If that were the case you could play CD game ISOs directly off the card using only a CoreGrafx or other Hu-Card only system, correct? Seems like a tough thing to accomplish though.

[TheClash603]

Not to again throw this thread off topic, but...

HE HAS PIT FIGHTER TOO?

I think that's the Cook's wishful thinking.

BeaglePuss is a smart fellow: he knows it is best to slowly release stuff over time instead of dumping everything on the market at once.

He has PitFighter, make no mistake .

Well, I put the chances on him having Pit Fighter as substantially ahead of any douche bag on these forums having Bonk BOE.

[OldMan]

would the IDE Adapter simply connect to the rear port of a TG16/PCE Core System

Yes. Think replacement cd base.

Given that the PCE uses modified SCSI, that might be easy to hack

PCE uses a sub-set of standard scsi. And, fyi, IDE is only simplified scsi

I'd rather see a system card that packages the ADPCM hardware and a CD Emulation BIOS with a large pool of flash memory. CD on a card.

So would I. It would probably cost > $5000 or so, but it would be neat...
Keep in mind, you are asking for:
1) over 650M of flash memory. At 1M for $10 (AM29f080), that's $6,500, not including other support chips.
2) Another 8K and an adpcm chip. That they don't make anymore. Good luck.
And what about backup memory?

(Yes, maybe I exaggerated the problem. However, you would have to do all the cd hardware handling on the card. Half of the signals available through the external port on a tg don't exist on the card bus. Ergo, you would have to decode -all- the cd hardware from just writes to addresses. sounds like a huge multi-layer card would be needed...)

................................................
Now, consider what I've actually said:
 1) we make a board, like the cd-adapter, that accepts an ide drive. We have plenty of board space to use an fpga (or hell, a micro-controller if we want) to run the adpcm, backup memory, and ide.
 2) we figure out the cd-bios, and mimic the calls to use the custom adapter.
It might cost $300 to make; probably not, though.

Then think about this: Assuming that ide is standard across devices (or that the programming accounts for differences), what would stop you from hooking up a hard drive? That was charlies first choice.
Or better yet, using an ide->compact flash adapter. Compact flash may not be the cheapest route, but they aren't that expensive....


Or my favorite: adding a usb controller, so you can use an external usb drive

[Mishran]

Noticed the Aetherbyte site is getting a facelift. Sweet...

[SeymorOnion]

would the IDE Adapter simply connect to the rear port of a TG16/PCE Core System

Yes. Think replacement cd base.

Given that the PCE uses modified SCSI, that might be easy to hack

PCE uses a sub-set of standard scsi. And, fyi, IDE is only simplified scsi

I'd rather see a system card that packages the ADPCM hardware and a CD Emulation BIOS with a large pool of flash memory. CD on a card.

So would I. It would probably cost > $5000 or so, but it would be neat...
Keep in mind, you are asking for:
1) over 650M of flash memory. At 1M for $10 (AM29f080), that's $6,500, not including other support chips.
2) Another 8K and an adpcm chip. That they don't make anymore. Good luck.
And what about backup memory?

(Yes, maybe I exaggerated the problem. However, you would have to do all the cd hardware handling on the card. Half of the signals available through the external port on a tg don't exist on the card bus. Ergo, you would have to decode -all- the cd hardware from just writes to addresses. sounds like a huge multi-layer card would be needed...)

................................................
Now, consider what I've actually said:
 1) we make a board, like the cd-adapter, that accepts an ide drive. We have plenty of board space to use an fpga (or hell, a micro-controller if we want) to run the adpcm, backup memory, and ide.
 2) we figure out the cd-bios, and mimic the calls to use the custom adapter.
It might cost $300 to make; probably not, though.

Then think about this: Assuming that ide is standard across devices (or that the programming accounts for differences), what would stop you from hooking up a hard drive? That was charlies first choice.
Or better yet, using an ide->compact flash adapter. Compact flash may not be the cheapest route, but they aren't that expensive....


Or my favorite: adding a usb controller, so you can use an external usb drive

Could you also integrate various Audio and Video Outputs into the back panel:
S-Video, SCART, Component, RCA Stereo, Headphone, VGA, and so on?

[spenoza]

I would be OK with an expansion port-connected device. I think having simply an SD-card adapter might reduce the cost a little over an IDE interface, as IDE is very much on the way out and there are all sorts of different offerings out there for dealing with SD cards.

[thesteve]

remember a CD is a serial data device, just like an SD card.
most ADPCM chips are expansions/upgrades of the original chip used in the dock/duo, (meaning they are code compatable)

would the IDE Adapter simply connect to the rear port of a TG16/PCE Core System

Yes. Think replacement cd base.

Given that the PCE uses modified SCSI, that might be easy to hack

PCE uses a sub-set of standard scsi. And, fyi, IDE is only simplified scsi

I'd rather see a system card that packages the ADPCM hardware and a CD Emulation BIOS with a large pool of flash memory. CD on a card.

So would I. It would probably cost > $5000 or so, but it would be neat...
Keep in mind, you are asking for:
1) over 650M of flash memory. At 1M for $10 (AM29f080), that's $6,500, not including other support chips.
2) Another 8K and an adpcm chip. That they don't make anymore. Good luck.
And what about backup memory?

(Yes, maybe I exaggerated the problem. However, you would have to do all the cd hardware handling on the card. Half of the signals available through the external port on a tg don't exist on the card bus. Ergo, you would have to decode -all- the cd hardware from just writes to addresses. sounds like a huge multi-layer card would be needed...)

................................................
Now, consider what I've actually said:
 1) we make a board, like the cd-adapter, that accepts an ide drive. We have plenty of board space to use an fpga (or hell, a micro-controller if we want) to run the adpcm, backup memory, and ide.
 2) we figure out the cd-bios, and mimic the calls to use the custom adapter.
It might cost $300 to make; probably not, though.

Then think about this: Assuming that ide is standard across devices (or that the programming accounts for differences), what would stop you from hooking up a hard drive? That was charlies first choice.
Or better yet, using an ide->compact flash adapter. Compact flash may not be the cheapest route, but they aren't that expensive....


Or my favorite: adding a usb controller, so you can use an external usb drive

Could you also integrate various Audio and Video Outputs into the back panel:
S-Video, SCART, Component, RCA Stereo, Headphone, VGA, and so on?

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah, the site did get a facelift.

http://aetherbyte.com/

Check that jive out!

[soop]

Yeah, the site did get a facelift.

http://aetherbyte.com/

Check that jive out!

Lookin' good!