My $0.02
This is an exciting development and I'd like to throw my opinion into the ring too.
99.99% of you won't know me as I'm more of a lurker in the scene, but I've been following emulation for over 2 decades now and contributed to MAME many years ago and have also worked on many of my own projects over the years. By trade I'm an electronics/software/FPGA design engineer with over 10 years experience in FPGA work, including several dozen implementations of retro arcade games and 8-bit microcomputers.
I was a relative latecomer to Neo Geo but must admit it's now one of my favourite systems, recently working on a few ports to the platform. More significantly to this thread, I actually designed a flash cart for the Neo Geo almost 3 years ago now, and have had a fully laid-out schematic ready for final review and prototype manufacture for about 18 months now. The main impediments to moving forward have been the arrival of my daughter and son, a significant change to my working circumstances, and finances; i.e. no time, no money.
Of course I expect few of you to believe any of this, so I offer up some blog entries over the years...
Some adapters I designed and had manufactured for the flash cart.
An AES cart "running" on an MVS system.
A 3D rendering of the finished flash cart PCB layout.
And to add credence to some of my software developments...
Arcade Donkey Kong on the MVS (MAME) - 100% 68K assembler (50% complete)!
Apple II Lode Runner, MVS (MAME) - C (99% complete)
ZX Spectrum Knight Lore, MVS (MAME) - C (99% complete)
So as you can imagine, I greeted this news with some amount of disappointment, but also excitement!
Although technical details are limited, it appears as though it is a very similar design to that I had prepared. An FPGA, some flash, even an SD card slot, though with a larger FPGA I planned to use a soft-core processor rather than an external ARM - at least for the prototype.
And this brings me to my first topic - the claims that this design was 'ripped off'. In short, as
neosd would know, there are only a limited number of ways to skin this particular cat, and most of them are bleedingly obvious to any engineer worth his salt that knows the system. To claim any kind of ownership of a design of a Neo Geo flash cart is simply ludicrous and, IMHO, reeks of pure jealousy.
And onto my second topic -
complaints of loading times and the UI design. Not unexpected, given the (sometimes pathetic) history of any retro gaming scene, and Neo Geo in particular is not immune to it. Most complaints of this nature can be put down to either immaturity, jealousy or simple ignorance.
ElectricGrave hit the nail on the head earlier ITT! And I'm not having a go at those that only seek to question or make observations of these aspects or even the (understandably) cautious 'wait and see'; that's fine - it's the proclamations of 'rubbish' and 'never buying that' that add no value to the discussion and only hurt the scene. You can be rest assured that anyone producing such an outburst has absolutely no fucking clue what-so-ever about anything more technical than plugging in a cartridge.
As someone OTOH somewhat
knowledgeable of the technical obstacles and challenges that go into the design, I can only applaud
neosd and I have absolutely no doubt this is a real product, a product that works, and works well.
I also believe that there's some confusion as to the ultimate utility of this design, which is perhaps the source of some discord. To be blunt, if you're just looking to play KOF95 - give this a miss and go and buy a 161-in-1 multi-cart. This was
never meant to allow you to flip through games every 5 minutes. What this cart
will do is open up the whole home-brew development scene like nothing before it and - to me - that is the most exciting aspect of the product. One of the main reasons I haven't finished off Donkey Kong, for example, is the fact that you can't actually play it on real hardware, unless you have an NGCD and are willing to turn your TV on its side! Now with a flash-cart and a vertical cabinet...
Anyway, hats off to
neosd and best of luck with the project! I'm impressed and more than a little jealous that you beat me to the punch, but I got caught napping on this one! Sounds like you've got it in the bag and I have little doubt this will sell well when the positive reviews start to flow in. IMHO Neo Geo enthusiasts are amongst the more well-funded retro gamers and are always willing to outlay some serious cash for their hobby (well, they have little choice at today's prices!) So please, ignore the nay-sayers and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what else you can come up with too!
Now to get my Neo Geo Motherboard clone off the ground... though I believe that is also in the works somewhere too!