The DIY cartridge: JOLLY CARTRIDGE!

[MCes]

Jolly carts received today. Thank you Max

Thanks to you,
and remember to tell me your impression about them!

[chysn]

Looks like these are ready? How do I order some?

[MCes]

Looks like these are ready? How do I order some?

I haven't opened the sales thread yet, but....

I am thinking of a "25€ minimum order" that can be reached by purchasing my projects, for JOLLY CARTRIDGE:
5 € / pc naked JOLLY CARTRIDGE
15 € / pcs JOLLY CARTRIDGE "prototype board" + 2ROM + 1RAM

Contact me if you need an "already programmed" JOLLY CARTRIDGE

[orion70]

Working, two of them already in their shell
I slightly modified my plans for boxes and manuals, will update when the packages are ready and labels printed.

[orion70]

Well, here I am. Experiment: partially failed.
I took a couple of old generic boxes containing Italian utility programs, and used them to put the carts and their manual inside.

The manual cover was intended to appear in the front "window" of the box, and it worked

BUT:
- The boxes were too worn out (in the pictures, they are protected by an outer plastic transparent box);
- Sorcery's manual was too thick to fit, it deformed the box and didn't fit well.

So, after this proof-of-concept, I decided to return the boxes to their original destination

keep the manuals as they are

and print labels for the cartridge shells (TBD). I'll eventually see if it'll be the case to imitate Giacomo Vernoni's small boxes in the future.

Now, back to my ACE mission .

[Lechuck]

I didn't get a good result when trying to make a box for my Space Invaders either...

I planned to build it in two parts (following similar layout as Giacomo Vernoni with his sleeves, that I had bought for my other cartridges):


I sent it to print in 300g cardboard. After glueing it, result looked OK:


But, cardboard is not rigid enough, and Box looks too fragile. Additionally, this cardboard did 'suffer' when bended (specially the painted area):


Given that, I did a second try, printing in the same cardboard but, this time, I ordered it 'laminated'. Result, from a rigidness point of view was very good, but now I had the opposite problem. It was really dificult to bend it (even having marked the bending lines with a knife). Besides that, when bending, the laminate tended to detach:


Anyway, if you don't look at it too close, looks nice with my other cartridges...


Cheers

[orion70]

Thanks for sharing your experience! Maybe I'll stick to professionals doing boxes for me instead of trying to do them myself, or reuse old ones.
In the meantime, I'm happy with the labels i just printed and slapped on the shells

[doug_in_nc]

Thanks for sharing your experience! Maybe I'll stick to professionals doing boxes for me instead of trying to do them myself, or reuse old ones.
In the meantime, I'm happy with the labels i just printed and slapped on the shells

Very professional! Did you reuse old cartridge cases, or are those 3d printed or ones from TFW8B but painted?

[orion70]

I used a couple of doubles I had in the drawer (Slot, Avenger), here you can catch a glimpse before the new label. They're neither perfect (label slightly smaller than the space where it's intended to fit) nor complete (opaque paper, I am waiting for transparent plastic sheets from Amazon to apply on it).

Edit: transparent plastic applied

[doug_in_nc]

I received my Jolly Cart pcbs just before Christmas, and have just made my first attempt to create a simple cartridge, and it wasn't entirely successful , ie it doesn't work. Hopefully someone can answer my question fairly easily. I am using an old Fairchild NM27C64 Eprom that I had laying around from another project, and the J2 setting High links to Pin 27 which is A14 on a 27C512, but the program line on a 27C64. Which setting, if any do I set J2 to? I read that some 27 series Eproms need the Program line held to 5V when not programming the chip, but I couldn't find anything that said which ones. Without the jumper set I get a black screen, and have not yet put a jumper on it.

I am just creating a simple cartridge ROM (Jelly Monsters) in Block 5, so I have U1B5 jumpered on J1, which should be correct. I verified the PRG file of the ROM worked in VICE, then removed the first 2 bytes and checked the BIN file in VICE and it worked too. After burning the EPROM, I read the contents and ran than in VICE and it too worked, so at least I know the EPROM and the code is fine. I checked my soldering too, and all of the joints look fine.

[MCes]

I read this only now.....

I can confirm that for a 27(C)64 into U1, 8k ROM into BLK5 the settings are:
J1: connect "BLK5" with "U1B5"
J2 and all others J1 pads have to remain unconnected

So your cartridge should be working....
Please, post hi-res pics of front and rear of your not working cartridge (as you setted it to be working...) and dump your eprom and link the dumped file:
In this manner I can repeat exactly your experiment with another jolycart into my hands...

[doug_in_nc]

I'm pretty sure it isn't my soldering that's to blame - I soldered up three cards, and each of them has the same problem. Two also have a socket in U2 which I have confirmed to work with a 62256 RAM chip as both 24K RAM and 3K RAM.I have enclosed the download from the EPROM, so you can have a look at that, but as I said, I have loaded it into VICE and it worked, as you can see from the enclosed screen shot.

I have just noticed something odd. As you can see from the photos, the EPROM is branded as an SG M27C64, but my EPROM programmer won't read the chip unless I select a Fairchild MQ27C64, so I guess the chip was "rebranded" in China. I don't have any acetone on hand to try to remove the label to confirm though.

I have some modern W27C512s on order that should come tomorrow, and hopefully that will solve the issue, or at the very least confirm of the soldering is not the problem.

[MCes]

All appear to be well done,
tomorrow I'll try to find the time to download your file into a 2764 and observe what happens...

[MCes]

I found 3 different 8k EPROMs and filled them with the file you posted, the result is: (my VIC20 is PAL)



I have no clear ideas about why your experiment fails.....
Something unusual may be happening, as
the EPROM is partially damaged (it can be read by programmer but it doesn't drive well the VIC20 bus...)
The red jumper doesn't close the pins

I assume your VIC20 will "auto-start" other game cartridges without problems

I think that new experiments with another (E)EPROM chip (27C64 also) could gift information

I remain curious!

[doug_in_nc]

Looks like the problem was that specific EPROM. I burned 3 others, and they are all behaved correctly. Sorry to have wasted your time with trying to track down a problem that had nothing to do with your excellent design.

Now I have “completed” my Commodore cartridge collection by burning Jelly Monsters, Rally-X and the Japanese version of Super Expander. Time to print out a cartridge case for each one, though not in the original color as I don’t want my kids trying to sell them on eBay as genuine in a few decades