BackBit Platinum Cartridge

evietron

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Jul 30, 2024
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Hi everybody,

Over the last 4 months I've been working on a Neo Geo RAM based cartridge for MVS. While the hardware is essentially done, I have a few things I need to sort out before I make it available for sale.

First of all -- the case. The cases you see in this picture are 3D printed PLA, and take about 5 hours to print on my 3D printer. It's just not something that can easily scale. I think due to the size and aesthetic of the Neo Geo cartridges, they really demand a professional case. I'm currently researching companies I could work with, but I haven't settled with anyone just yet.

Next, there is a question of what users really want from a cartridge. First and foremost my focus will be reliability. That's why I will need a bit more beta testing before announcing an official release. Something the cartridge offers which I don't think is available elsewhere at the moment is fast loading. The largest games, like KOF2003 will load in about 12 seconds. Another feature that may be not so common is support for the link cable (for example, League Bowling or Riding Hero). One beta tester requested USB support, so that is something I can add in the next run of beta cartridges. I'm not sure what USB would be for other than a way to access the SD card while it's still in the cart, but maybe there is another use case. I've confirmed that the cart also works on AES machines, and have not decided whether I will offer a MVS-to-AES adapter or just make a separate AES cart.

Evie c/o BackBit
 

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city41

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Awesome, a new cart is always welcome.

With the NeoSD's USB port you can hot swap roms for a faster dev cycle. But even though I have the software for it and the need, I never use it. If a game as big as 2003 can load in 12 seconds, there's even less need for hot swapping.
 

JoeAwesome

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What's the final cost expected to be for retail?
 

Fygee

Bewbs! Z'OMG, Teh BEWBS!,
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Nice! Consider me intrigued. Always good to have some competition.

Personally, what I would absolutely love is a version of the 1## in 1 carts that has a fully working ROM set of the entire released catalog, without any of the bootlegs or technical issues like it sucking major power, sound problems, or the cases not fitting properly into the slot.

I like that they all load instantly just like a regular cart, and the vast majority of folks just want the games there and ready to go without having to download/upload ROM sets.

Beyond that, if you can provide something that is at least on par with the NeoSD Pro's features at a cheaper cost and with more reliability, I think that would definitely do the trick.
 

wyo

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Looks interesting. Good luck with the project!
 

Moob Butter

Bare AES Handler
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Holy fuck, kevums is back for @kernow 's birthday!

Really like the sound of this, especially as DarkSoft have basically said 'we are doing one last run of MVS (none for AES) and after that go fuck yourselves'.
 

HornheaDD

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Personally, what I would absolutely love is a version of the 1## in 1 carts that has a fully working ROM set of the entire released catalog, without any of the bootlegs or technical issues like it sucking major power, sound problems, or the cases not fitting properly into the slot.
They exist.
 

HornheaDD

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Oh nice! I'll have to add myself to the waitlist.

That said, would still also be great to have it as a from-scratch option without requiring existing 161 cards to modify and other carts to sacrifice.
Most definitely. Not to knock the Darksoft or NeoSD's but the all-in-ones I linked to have zero load time. No flashing to memory, etc. The only caveat is that there are a few games that are too big to fit (not exactly sure why), so two bootlegs have to be used. Garou, and KOF2000 or 2003, can't remember. Also there's a modified version of the UniBIOS that will allow you to boot back to the main menu without power cycling.

But failing that, Ive got the whole library on my cart so I'm good with mine. Its a pretty swanky set up.
 

Roch

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Sep 13, 2017
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Great project !

Having done a lot of testing on the latest NeoSD and Darksoft batches, these two cartridges are problematic from my point of view. They have issues depending on the slot model or other factors. So yes, reliability is the main thing. No need to have several slots, one is enough if everything works. Better to have a few simple things that work in all cases: different slot models, different bios, unibios, power supply, memory cards.

Very curious if the project succeeds, I will take a copy to test it and compare it with other products on the market.
 

Burning Fight!!

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This would be great especially for developing games. Plus it will soothe the pain of never getting the hacked banana multicart :(
 

Neo Alec

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Wow, it's real. Very cool. Thanks for posting it
 
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