Modern Cartridges
Contents
- 1 Background
- 2 Work so far on new PCB
- 3 Work so far on new ACID
- 4 Work so far on new plastic cartridge shells
- 5 Work so far on new cartridge instruction booklets
- 6 Work so far on new cartridge labels
- 7 Work on alternative cases
- 8 Solutions that use existing cartridges
- 9 New solutions
- 10 Converted GX4000 games
Background
A modern GX4000_cartridge is a cartridge that was not originally released.
Currently these comprise of Bootlegs and modifications of the System Cartridges.
How close are we to creating our own new cartridges with new pcbs, new roms and new acid?
The problems we need to solve are:
- creating new PCBs
- creating an ACID replacement
- creating the plastic cartridge shells
- creating the labels to go on the shells
- creating or finding a suitable case for the physical cartridge and manual to go into.
Work so far on new PCB
- Bryce's re-implementation of the cartridge pcb.
Work so far on new ACID
- Acid replacement by Nilquader -> Verilog_implementation_of_the_ACID_chip
- Reverse engineering of ACID functionality by Nocash -> ACID
Work so far on new plastic cartridge shells
Work so far on new cartridge instruction booklets
I (Arnoldemu) make a document for OpenOffice which has the same dimensions as an original cartridge instruction booklet.
Work so far on new cartridge labels
I (Arnoldemu) created a document for OpenOffice with a new label for a cartridge version of Blue Angel 69.
Maniac has created a label for Gerald's C4CPC cartridge which can be downloaded in PDF, DOCX (Microsoft Word) and ODT Formats. There is a selection of label colours to choose from that relate to the colours Amstrad originally used for their cartridges and a combination one if you so wish. The DOCX file contains layers available in the 'Selection Pane' so that the text can be edited for other cartridge titles if required. This also enables you to remove the templates for the holes required to accommodate Gerald's cartridge additions such as the DIP switches and the SD card slot.
File:CPC-Plus-Cart-Label.pdf File:CPC-Plus-Cart-Label.docx File:CPC-Plus-Cart-Label.odt
Work on alternative cases
- VHS Video cases can be used but they are not the same dimensions as the original cartridge cases.
Solutions that use existing cartridges
- Bryce's Man-in-the-Middle device
New solutions
Gerald has made a cartridge device which reads cartridge images from micro SD-Card. The device can be connected via USB so that cartridges can be downloaded while it is plugged in and on.
Converted GX4000 games
Now that there are solutions to play cartridge images on a GX4000, you would like to play more than the few titles that were availables at the time. Some fellow members of the forum work hard to convert some of the games for CPC so that they are playable on a GX4000.
The list is available here : Converted_GX4000_games
