Why isn't there a flash cart for the Neo Geo?

[guyjin]

what exactly are multiple rom buses good for? as far as I knew, the NES had only one...

[SignOfZeta]

The notion that it has huge ROM space isn't the issue. The issue is the five ROM buses. It could be done in software but it is more feasible to use five separate flash memory chips.

So did the price of flash memory just shoot through the roof and I didn't notice?

[Michael Helgeson]

The notion that it has huge ROM space isn't the issue. The issue is the five ROM buses. It could be done in software but it is more feasible to use five separate flash memory chips.

So did the price of flash memory just shoot through the roof and I didn't notice?

Cost of designing and fabbing the pcbs and cart casing, memory, obtaining whatever special chips are needed, paying people to design it as a whole,and paying to have it built in batches/bulk. It all adds up, and isn't feasible when you know the odds are not great you will be able to recoup and that the sale price you will have to gun for will be up there. The vast majority of Neo collectors are not into bootlegging and will not bite easy on such a product.

 Also,as with the bootleg stuff sometimes being buggy,chances are good the same would be the case on a flash cart. In the end, it could be done, its just simply not cost effective knowing what all is involved and the demograph you would be trying to sell the product to.

[ccovell]

what exactly are multiple rom buses good for? as far as I knew, the NES had only one...

The NES had 2 ROM buses, one for graphics, one for program code.  The pluses of having multiple ROM buses is that the overall speed of the system is greatly increased, as the CPU doesn't need to load graphics from ROM, [decompress it] and display it on-screen, resulting in a delay.  Nor would the CPU, graphics, and audio HW have to share the same address bus, resulting in a delay as each hardware unit gets its slice of clock time.

The NES was pretty quick at animating its entire screen in certain ways because it could rely on the MMC/mapper to do graphics bank swapping.  The Neo-Geo similarly has separate buses for its graphics ROMs, sample ROMs, so each unit can function mostly independently without lagging the CPU.

[guyjin]

The NES had 2 ROM buses, one for graphics, one for program code.  The pluses of having multiple ROM buses is that the overall speed of the system is greatly increased, as the CPU doesn't need to load graphics from ROM, [decompress it] and display it on-screen, resulting in a delay.  Nor would the CPU, graphics, and audio HW have to share the same address bus, resulting in a delay as each hardware unit gets its slice of clock time.

The NES was pretty quick at animating its entire screen in certain ways because it could rely on the MMC/mapper to do graphics bank swapping.  The Neo-Geo similarly has separate buses for its graphics ROMs, sample ROMs, so each unit can function mostly independently without lagging the CPU.

Nifty, thanks