Having cartridges would mean to make even more hardware and to have a new hardware for each program. The reason I wanted SD card support instead of cartridge support, it’s mainly because it’s a lot more practical to have programs available in an SD card, as it makes it a lot easier to copy files from a PC to it.
Games/Programs available through an SD Card. Ability to support Mario-style platform games (and of course other types of games as well). Scrolling background and moving sprites. No emulation, the games/programs had to run on real hardware, not necessarily hardware of the time, but hardware that is just fast enough for the job. The initial plan was to build a console with the following characteristics: I wanted to build a console that would be similar to those which are nostalgic to me, I wanted something between an NES and a Super Nintendo or between a Sega Master System and a Mega Drive. These video game consoles had a CPU, a custom video chip (in those days it wasn’t called a GPU) and an audio chip either integrated or separate. Games were distributed in cartridges, which were basically hardware extensions with a ROM chip and sometimes other components as well. 
Professionally I work as a software engineer and had no experience with electronics other than occasionally building and upgrading my desktop computer (which doesn’t really count). Even though I had no experience, I said to myself “why not?”, bought a few books, a few electronics kits and started to learn what I felt I needed to learn.
0 kommentar(er)
