Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

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eslapion
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Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by eslapion »

There are people in Montreal who are interested in me selling them a couple of Behr-Bonz carts.

However, producing PCBs is expensive and has to be done in relatively large batches and for that reason, I would only be interested in making another batch if it is going to sell in a reasonable volume.

For those who don't know about it, the Behr-Bonz is a multicart that contains the ROM images of 127 games.

Over the years, a few people even made copies of my multicart.

There would be at least 2 improvements to the original cart if I were to make a new batch:

- A "reset to menu" button. The original cart would send you back to the selected game when resetting the VIC because of the way it "locks" to the selected game to prevent games who write gibberrish in the IO2/IO3 region from causing problems.

- Improved PAL version menu colors. I didn't have a PAL VIC-20 myself when creating the original Behr-Bonz so I couldn't be aware the way PAL colors are modulated causes the menu colors to cause poor readability. AFAIK, PAL VIC-20 modded for S-Video output don't suffer this problem, nonetheless, the Behr-Bonz should be a cart for everyone.

This product IS NOT intended to compete with the Mega-Cart. The Behr-Bonz offers no programming tools, RAM expansion or tape based games. Also, just like the original carts, Scott Adams games require typing SYS32592 to start them. Choosing a Scott Adams game from the menu offers the alternative functionality of "disabling" the Behr-Bonz cart if you leave it plugged at all times. It is a low cost "bare bones" multicart.

The price tag should be around 40$ per unit.
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by sjgray »

If you're going to the trouble of modifying the design I'd say combine the Behr-Bonz with your 32K ram board and make a "Behr-Bonz Plus". You could probably add one of those 32K skinny-dip ram chips and not have to make the board too much bigger or more expensive. A couple more switches to disable ram or rom and you have a nice cart you can keep plugged in at all times.

Steve
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by akator »

I will happily purchase a "reborn" Berh-Bonz :)
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eslapion
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by eslapion »

sjgray wrote:If you're going to the trouble of modifying the design I'd say combine the Behr-Bonz with your 32K ram board and make a "Behr-Bonz Plus". You could probably add one of those 32K skinny-dip ram chips and not have to make the board too much bigger or more expensive. A couple more switches to disable ram or rom and you have a nice cart you can keep plugged in at all times.

Steve
The Skinny DIP SRAMs chips I have had the chance to study so far usually are the same kind used as cache on vintage 486 and early Pentium I PCs. As such they are very fast - somewhere aroud 15 - 20 ns response speed. As such with the slow transition signals produced by the address bus of a VIC-20 they react unreliably. Slower SRAM chips are better and they are usually offered either in surface mount package of full width DIP package.

Adding the space required for a SRAM chip would considerably increase the cost of production of the PCB with similar impact to the final sales price while offering very little more to the target audience.

Also, its REALLY not just a matter of having a couple more switches to disable RAM or ROM as a 32k RAM Expansion occupies EXACTLY the same address space used by the Behr-Bonz and this address space is represented by 4 different access lines on the cartridge port. These are BLK1,2,3 and 5. Switching from the behr-Bonz to the 32k RAM would require a 4PDT switch or electronic equivalent.

There is a cartridge which has this feature and it is priced accordingly; The Mega-Cart.
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by Mayhem »

I was also going to say, it would be a boon to the cart if you could add 32k RAM to it as well, but if it's too much trouble and cost, then fair enough.
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by sjgray »

eslapion wrote:
sjgray wrote:If you're going to the trouble of modifying the design I'd say combine the Behr-Bonz with your 32K ram board and make a "Behr-Bonz Plus". You could probably add one of those 32K skinny-dip ram chips and not have to make the board too much bigger or more expensive. A couple more switches to disable ram or rom and you have a nice cart you can keep plugged in at all times.

Steve
The Skinny DIP SRAMs chips I have had the chance to study so far usually are the same kind used as cache on vintage 486 and early Pentium I PCs. As such they are very fast - somewhere aroud 15 - 20 ns response speed. As such with the slow transition signals produced by the address bus of a VIC-20 they react unreliably. Slower SRAM chips are better and they are usually offered either in surface mount package of full width DIP package.

Adding the space required for a SRAM chip would considerably increase the cost of production of the PCB with similar impact to the final sales price while offering very little more to the target audience.

Also, its REALLY not just a matter of having a couple more switches to disable RAM or ROM as a 32k RAM Expansion occupies EXACTLY the same address space used by the Behr-Bonz and this address space is represented by 4 different access lines on the cartridge port. These are BLK1,2,3 and 5. Switching from the behr-Bonz to the 32k RAM would require a 4PDT switch or electronic equivalent.

There is a cartridge which has this feature and it is priced accordingly; The Mega-Cart.
I've never designed anything for the VIC so I wouldn't know about timing issues. I still think 32K would be useful, even if you need to use a regular dip size. The 32K chip only costs about $3 in quantity on ebay. Not sure what your "target audience" is, but there's probably room for a $50 cart with ram and rom that is could be available soon as opposed to a $100 cart with a two-year waiting list. The 32K cart I got from you only has one switch on it to enable/disable the ram. I don't think there is need to control individual blocks - it would be more like all or nothing - all RAM or all ROM. Perhaps the RAM could come unpopulated or as an option? I know your 32K ram board also had a socket (space) for ROM on it...

Steve
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by tokra »

Not sure if (another) multi-cart is really necessary anymore. A 32K or even better 35K RAM-expander with the option to set to "Read only" seems a lot more sensible. You can always load the ROMs from an SD2IEC-drive instead and use all the ROM-images out there and have the advantage of not needing to unplug the multi-cart if you want to load a program that needs RAM-expansion.

Seeing how the MegaCart has a 2-year-waiting list a simple affordable and available RAM-expander seems to missing on the market currently.
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by darkatx »

I'm happy with my 35K expander from Eslapion...enables me to play Doom on my machine. It'll happily spend the rest of its days in my Commodore. ;)
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by tokra »

More options come to mind:
- a 32K-expander that can (by dipswitch) map 8K to $a000 or 3K to $0400 as the original 32K/27K-expansion by Klaus Jeschke. This would enable to play nearly all VIC-20 software
- or a 32K-expander which has another cartridge-slot at the back, so one can grab a cheap 3K-expansion from Ebay (they are are still pretty common).
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by sjgray »

Idea: How about a 64K ram expansion that installs inside the machine. Figure out some way to map out the roms similar to how the C64 does. Then you could soft-load new kernals, like jiffy-dos, or bank out the BASIC roms, or just make a game that uses 56K or more of ram ;-) Might encourage new vic software development...

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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by eslapion »

sjgray wrote:I've never designed anything for the VIC so I wouldn't know about timing issues. I still think 32K would be useful, even if you need to use a regular dip size.
Like I said, you need a single switch to toggle 4 things at once. DIP switches don't do that. The Megacart does it using supplemental glue logic.
The 32K chip only costs about $3 in quantity on ebay. Not sure what your "target audience" is, but there's probably room for a $50 cart with ram and rom that is could be available soon as opposed to a $100 cart with a two-year waiting list.
The cost of the electronics part is virtually nothing. The real money and hard work comes with:

- The design of the schematics and the design of the PCB: 1000$
- The production of the PCB which is calculated more or less as follows: 500$ to configure the production equipment then 2$ per board to run the machine
- The electronics parts cost 10$ in all per cart

Now, if you look at this calculation chart, you just paid 1500$ before a single board is out the factory. This figure increases to 2500$ if I add the RAM chip. The cost of the boards increase to 3$ and the electronic components increase to 15$ - the extra 5$ are: the SRAM chip, the extra 74LS08 and the switch.
The 32K cart I got from you only has one switch on it to enable/disable the ram. I don't think there is need to control individual blocks
The switch on the Ultimate Expander DOES NOT disable the RAM, it turns it to read-only for compatibility with cartridge game ROM images. The data is still available to the 6502. If you had a 3 slot cartridge port expander and plugged both your 32k cart along with the Behr-Bonz in it and "turned off" your RAM then you would have a bus conflict which could result in damage to both carts.

The Ultimate Expander also comes with a 74LS08 which reencodes 4 region selectors into 2 address lines because the VIC-20 sees these 32k as 4 areas of 8k each. The reencoding also uses a 74LS08 on the Behr-Bonz but it is connected differently because games are always 16k and so BLK1 and 3 are images of one another and the same is true for BLK2 and BLK5.
it would be more like all or nothing - all RAM or all ROM.
Which requires toggling all 4 BLK lines simultaneously...
Perhaps the RAM could come unpopulated or as an option?
Which requires increasing the pre-prod cost by no less than 1000$
I know your 32K ram board also had a socket (space) for ROM on it...
Incidentally, the UE had individual switches for toggling BLK 3 and BLK 5 individually between RAM and ROM...

In other words, instead of spreading a pre-prod cost of 1500$ across 100 carts, I would have to spread 2500$ across 50 carts as fewer people would buy the cart and this means I would have to sell the cart around 90$ each instead of 40$.

Does that make any sense?
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by Va. Slim »

Yes, I think I would be buying one if available again. I've been using the vic more and more these days, and don't think the cost would deter me from buying one.
I paid $5 for my vic about 20 years ago, at a thrift/goodwill store. Keeping it in use, giving it more options, can only enhance it's life. And don't we all wish we could find prices like that now ?
Too bad about the cost/complexity the additional ram would add, but I understand.
Yes, I'd be looking to buy one if available again.







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Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by TLovskog »

Does that make any sense?
It makes perfect sense. However, I don't know if you considered far east for manufacturing. My latest board (for the VIC 20 projects) was slightly larger than a cartridge and 4 layers with lines/spacing 150µm and 200µm via holes.

I paid 2.63 USD per unit and 200 USD in start cost (15 pcs). I got roughly The same quote from 2 other manufacturers. All in Shenzhen, China. Not pooling services.
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by English Invader »

Count me in for a Behr-Bonz 8) .
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Re: Rebirth of the Behr-Bonz multicart... interested?

Post by eslapion »

TLovskog wrote:I paid 2.63 USD per unit and 200 USD in start cost (15 pcs). I got roughly The same quote from 2 other manufacturers. All in Shenzhen, China. Not pooling services.
Quite attractive.

Do they offer gold plating for the edge connector?

Could you PM me contact information?
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