PIRACY! Making an Amstrad GX4000 Cartridge with no ACID chips plundered! All new parts!
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- Опубліковано 19 лют 2023
- ** This video is kindly supported by www.PCBWay.com - My choice for for high quality PCB manufacturing, 3D printing and more! **
I thought we could do a little project to make our own Amstrad GX4000 (and CPC Plus) cartridges.
I didn't want to butcher any existing cartridges, so in this video there is a bit of everything; Converting ROM files, Programming EPROMs, 3D Printed Casing, Soldering, Photoshop design, Label Printing and Play Testing.
As always, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and the things featured in this video are listed below. I hope you enjoy the video and thank you for keeping the channel alive ❤
💾 Chinnery’s forum Post with the GERBER files: www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/amstrad-... (Sign up required for download)
💾 Cwiiis' GX4000 cartridge STL for 3D printing: www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.ph... (Sign up required for download)
💾 Oscar Sanchez's CPR to BIN: www.cpcmania.com/cprtools/cprt...
💾 The editable GX4000 Cartridge label I created is here: markfixesstuff.co.uk/amstrad-...
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🎶🎵🎶 Music Used in this Episode! 🎶🎵🎶
🎼Octodrone VI - ELFL 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/n...
🎼City Lights, City Dreams - Forever Sunset 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/i...
🎼Eyes To See It - ELFL 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/j...
🎼Fugent - Lupus Nocte 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/c...
🎼Give Me A Chance - The Basic Game 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/j...
🎼Humbot - Wave Saver 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/E...
🎼Midnight Safari - Lupus Nocte 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/B...
🎼Never Easy - Mattie Maguire 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/Z...
🎼Red Driver - Ben Elson 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/c... - Наука та технологія
Nice to see someone using my case design 🙂 I've been meaning to make a revision with a window for socketed boards but still haven't got round to it...
Om.
Thanks for designing the case and thanks for releasing it. Hope I said your name right! I did actually consider making a hole myself but the video was a bit too long already.
@@MarkFixesStuff not quite, but no one ever does so I only have my teenage self to blame for picking that spelling! 😝 It's Chris, but pronounced to rhyme with Squeeze, pretty much 🙂
might want to make the edges on the cartridge a little rounded where the label is so the paper doesn't have to crease. kind of like a genny cart
@@cheater00 looks like my reply got deleted, presumably because I linked to the Thingiverse page... Short of it is, the edges are already chamfered, like the original carts. I didn't want to stray from that design, but the source is provided for anyone that wants to have a more extreme chamfer.
Always nice to see someone else enjoying a pointless exercise 😄 Fun though. Today I found a phono pre-amp that was the first circuit board thing I made back in the late 1970s. The components were all crooked and the soldering was very blobby but it worked back then. With the knowledge I have absorbed watching your videos and others from UA-cam, I gave it a once-over and tidied it all up, repairing a lifted trace and now it looks really good. Almost useless but you never know! That's the thing with pointless exercises. 😊
I got such 80's horror film vibes from some of the music in this one it must be said!🎵
they should call the boards with the 74 series chip base since it neutralizes acid
Hahha!
Great stuff. The UK's one and only game console needs more love. Its meagre software library is growing now thanks to the efforts of hobbyist developers.
I did enjoy the label-making and all its typos. I would not say it was pointless to make this. For the recent homebrew games that have not had a physical release, this is a great way of preserving them and making sure you can play them on the real hardware. Of course it would be unscrupulous to use the technique to make reproduction cartridges and pass them off as originals.
very detailed, i don't have one of these machines I ended up watching from start to Finnish to see the end result.very detailed and and very clever
Aunt Edna would be proud
very nice job, i'm glad to see your doing better after the fire, keep up the good work mate.
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Really detailed and top video dude 🤘🏻
Looking forward to this. I’ve love the GX4000. I’ll never get rid of my CPC but this is now a perfect daily driver
Nice work on the label. Looks great 👍
Another informative and entertaining video Mark! 👍
Great vid, real nostalgia trip!
Sold Amstrad's in Adelaide, South Australia in the mid to late 80's.
My Amiga 600HD with ram expansion and a 40mb HDD was the bomb.
Nice one. Loved it. Well paced.
Thanks a lot Peter mate!
With a slight re-design of the pcb and the length of the cartridge you'll be able to use sockets for the eproms, but then some of us like things to look original.
lovely video. might want to make the edges on the cartridge a little rounded where the label is so the paper doesn't have to crease. kind of like a genny cart
That came together really well, I found the label editing portion fascinating! I have a system with the multi-cart but no originals so I might give this a go at some stage. And then there is the potential promise of converting some of my titles over to the system (when I get the time of course :)).
Very cool! You should do that Tony!!
I love how much care you put into creating the new label, the result is pretty sharp! What kind of paper and printer did you use for them?
Thank you :)
It's this paper
amzn.to/3lL1ZMd
@@MarkFixesStuff PPD paper is very nice, I use the 280 gsm Satin Pearl for my Nintendo repro game boxes.
Aunt Edna certainly enjoyed that game!
Looks like if you re route the board you could fit a socketed eprom on the reverse side. With one of those beautiful zif sockets from that new commodore 64 motherboard replacement that could be a nice option for a multicart.
Hi Mark! Outstanding video as always from you :-). I couldn't find the PS template for the cartridge label though ...
The metal is strong with this one!
You should make a modified EPROM test PCB that makes the whole thing longer and brings the EPROM socket above the top of the case. That way you can stick a ZIF socket on the test cart for easier testing
Looks amazing.
Thank you!
Another fantastic watch and I also have the gx4000 we've only one , cartridge and happened to be burning rubber 😁 however I think if there a multi cartridge solution, I'm may stick with that has he could probably end up very expensive, that being said I think I will make one or two great video enjoy watching thank you for sharing ,😎
aHHH I was just rewatching your older episodes today !
Nice lables. And you're a demon with that iron. LOL.
Some of the games look really good …cool vid
It's a nice little console. Not a patch on the Mega Drive or Amiga of course so it flopped.
I had GX4000 as a kid😀
Mark running around in his underpants, why does this not surprise me in the slightest! Great vid as always and if you want to tease me back then I'm the one speeding hours in PS correcting ever signal darn pixel x.
Bloody pixel peeper x
This was my go-to Photoshop style in highschool (20 years ago 😭.) If you really wanted to make it look clean and fresh, black out the silhouette of the clock design and have at it with some dot matrix filters. This is really more like houndstooth or some crap, but whatever.
great job !!
And, as we know, PCB stands for "Pirate Cartridge Build". ;P
Or maybe 'Professionally Created Bootlegs'? Just a thought!👻
Get that knackered burnt console, spray it with clear coat, stick it in a perspex display box and stick it on Ebay. It's a survivor man, should be worth a few bob.
Or sell it back to Lord Sugar. As a conversation piece in a corner of his library I'm sure he'd happily drop a couple of grand for it lol.
Problem is it REALLY STINKS. Even in a seal plasting zippy bag you can smell the death.
@@MarkFixesStuff Fair enough. The only thing that would really work in that case is to embed it in clear resin and I wonder if it's worth the trubs.
Where can I get one of those amazing blue work station pads?
Great video! I learn so much watching your channel
Thank you so much :)
I got mine from Amazon. This one is similar. It has magnets to hold the screws in some of the partitions. amzn.to/3xFCm29
You could also make an adapter that could use a custom shell to extend the cartridge slot so that you could use socketed chips. Perhaps even longer cartridges that are narrow to fit in then after enough is over the system widen out to make room for socketed chips.
Plus side a cartridge slot extender adapter could also save wear and tear on the original cartridge slot. Add in a cartridge ejector on the extension adapter too. Make things a lot easier
I never new I wanted this till now dam you mark 😂
Arrr, that be a fine cartridge. ;)
Very good job!!!!...is the Photoshop PSD template available?....😥 I'm not very good with that tool....
Great upload - If you had used a resin printer you would of got a perfect finish.
I tried with my resin printer but ran out of time and patience. I have a problem with the ball socket on the build plate which kills the levelling. New printer inbound though!
Hi Mark! Excellent video! You could make a better quality label by using free software such as Inkscape that could be easliy convert bitmap do vector graphic which would looks much better.
Hmm, for testing purposes a version of the board with a ZIF socket on the end of a ribbon cable might be a useful iteration. I doubt propagation delay is going to be an issue on that system...
Lead solder comment resonates with me. Haha
Would it have been possible to have crafted a muticart for the system or is that not something on the "hobbyist" level of fabrication? I liked what you made and enjoyed watching you put it all together but I couldn't help but think over and over "all this work for ONE game?!".
I have a CPC464+ bought eons ago, no psu and no monitor and no basic cart, how do I make it reborn again? I've seen that one can convert it to run floppy disks much like a CPC6128+
It is not a miracle why the GX4000 flunked. If every software firm need to ask Alan Sugar for an ASIC to let it work then there are not many willing to make software for it. Commodore, Apple, all ZX's and MSX were open systems, for everybody to use, that is why commercial software developers took these and therefore these systems were a succes.
That was pretty standard for consoles at the time, almost every manufacturer had some kind of lockout chip to ensure they got a cut of every cartridge sold. Indeed the only reason Amstrad wanted to get into the console market was because of the potential revenue from each game sold.
The hardware isn't actually that bad, although it's a bit quirky to develop for because of its heritage. What really killed it was not having a strong line up of games at launch, instead there were a bunch of barely enhanced CPC conversions and literally nobody was going to pay £25 for a cart game that could be picked up for £2.99 on cassette.
Such care an attention applied to such blatant thievery! Send them to me and I'll test them on my CPC Plus. (By "test" I mean "keep" obviously.)
I'm gonna tell Alan about this, he'll be cross with you :)
I’m Fired!
Sucks that sockets won't fit in the cart shells. :( Good idea socketing one for test anyway. I found that with ColecoVision carts, the repro boards will still just barely fit in the original cart shells even with sockets. Maybe someone could design another repro board and shell for the GX4000 carts that raises the eprom socket a bit and has a shell that bulges in that portion above the console.
🤔I can't help but think: why not just design a slightly taller PCB, move everything upwards just enough, so that a socketed EPROM would go clear of the GX4000's casing, and then obviously also change the 3D design to match. I mean, it quite obviously isn't ever going to look like an original cartridge anyway. So would a slightly elongated and top bulging (yet more practical) enclosure really be that much more of an eyesore?
Since you're making a new label anyways, I would have made an alternative one that has the box art to the game on the front to make it stand out more compared to the other official designs.
That's my plan when I recover some melted and burned up Colecovision cartridges
@@MarkFixesStuff Melted?! If those cartridges work after being burned then the Colecovision would have the strongest cartridges next to NES ones!
Yeah! I think they will work after cleaning. They are shown in one of my fire videos somewhere
@@MarkFixesStuff I'll have to watch those soon, the best repair videos are ones of systems that are seemingly unfixable like The 8-Bit Guy's Vic-20 which had loads of oil inside it he got to working order!
I know you're going for an authentic look but you could create an spacer or even horizontally aligned cartridges with cartridge pins sticking out the bottom to allow space for socketed chips.
Nice idea!
I appreciate this reply.
Hi Mark,
I wanted to ask you if the Sofi SP8-B programmer is suitable for programming that type of Eprom. Thank you.
It probably is, but it’s best to check with the manufacturer. You need to look for the “device list” for the programmer. I’d probably recommend the TL866 myself because I know it works.
@@MarkFixesStuff ok, thank’s…
Too bad my G540 won't program those particular EPROMs...unless someone were to somehow add support with a software patch.
I'm just now coming to the end of producing a new GX4000 game and remembered this video hoping it'd save me some time with the label design... Seems the link to the template is missing from the description, any chance of getting that, please? :)
I’ll upload it for you ASAP
@@MarkFixesStuff thank you kindly!
@@Cwiiis I've uploaded the file to my website and updated the description, but basically it's here: markfixesstuff.co.uk/amstrad-cpc/gx4000-game-cartridge-no-acid-chip/
Thanks for remembering me and tell me more about the game!!!
@@MarkFixesStuff Thanks, much appreciated! I'll send you an e-mail, UA-cam has a tendency to silently reject my comments whenever I post links :|
Just a comment on the ultrasonic cleaner. Did you see the UK gov notice about some of these being detained and destroyed at UK customs due to a faulty earth creating an electrocution and fire hazard? It's well worth checking the earthing internally.
I’m planning to check the internal wiring but I’d not seen that. Thanks for the warning!
It seem to be the VEVOR ones affected but a search of 'ultrasonic cleaner customs detained uk' should come up the first results.
@@andrewlittleboy8532 that makes sense. Vevor are awful. I had to fight them to get my money back when they delivered me a wrecked TV trolley.
Could you provide the STL location for the cool resistor bender?
Sorry, I missed this! www.thingiverse.com/thing:1467855/files
The perfectionist in me is annoyed you wrote "GHOSTS & GOBLINS" instead of the actual name "Ghosts 'n Goblins" though!
Classic bootleg style error
😮😮😮
Personally I would recreate the graphics in illustrator or inkscape in vector form :)
I have Illustrator but no idea how to use it. I come from a photography background
@@MarkFixesStuff I'm the same, i learned how to use the illustrator way much later than photoshop, but now I can say that it's basically the same thing once you know where's what :) last year in December I created two custom floppy label's in inkscape to learn how to use it and i can say that it's nice free vector editor but adobe illustrator is better. Now what would be benefits of recreation in vectors? You can print in any DPI and resolution if anyone wants miniatures or some poster. You can always add a bitmap image to it. You can actually make proper gray color of the artwork, as the dotted print is not really nice when photographed or scanned then rescaled and again printed. It might look ok for most people in this basics design but anything more complex might be visible. And lastly you can always easily edit colors, gradients and shapes in vector. :)
Lately I talk more with professionals in graphic publishing so I'm more interested into this, but your method is still valid in what you wanted to achieve 👍
i remember trying to flog these dreadful things. around the same time miles gordon tried to tell me the sam coupe was a great idea at an earls court computer trade beano. i also attended the launch for the Panasonic fz1 real multiplayer 3D0 (lol, that name!). it had buses full of the machines and remarkably attractive women pretending to care about them. happy times, and shite machines.
It’s true. A lot of these machines had the stench of failure on them from the start 😂
Mark the pirate king ☠️ 🏴☠️ 🦜
Mark labels stuff. Another episode where things get sticky.
Every episode really…
Looks like the Smurfs have a lot of ash in their diet these days!
It's vintage Papa Smurf merde
I would have created a vector image in Inkscape instead of all that extra work in Photoshop...
Norton flags the CPR tool as virus and explain its a reputation something. Is there another version or is this company reputable?
It's a false positive. Norton doesn't like unsigned software. It's a trusted program and on my system.
@@MarkFixesStuff Thank you. Yes i contacted the company and they scanned their system.Great company they contacted me back. I also submitted to Norton on the false positive. Thanks again. Keep making great videos. Been following you for years. Great info everytime.
Those are not (ER)EPROMs. Those are LEPROMs ol UVEPROMs. .
Why didn't they go with a ZILOG Z800 or a ZILOG Z8000 would have made for a much better console.
Proabaly cost knowing Amstrad
It was heavily based on the CPC, just adding a single custom chip to it. Adding a different CPU would have required to create a completely new design with much higher cost and time required to develop it. Plus: game developers would have had to learn to program a whole new machine - and it's hard to believe they would have chosen to do that since Amstrad obviously didn't have the resources to truly enter the console market and compete with Sega and Nintendo globally.
Using the ZILOG Z800 would mean that the original program would run as before but could be rebuilt to make use of the mul divs mulu div divu divs instruction and create a faster running program
@@DAVIDGREGORYKERR In theory yes, In reality there are lots of obstacles. The Z800 never entered mass production. The Z280 which is based on it also was a commercial failure. I don't know if it was still available (and for what price) in 1990. Amstrad, afaik, never chose "special" ICs and never chose an IC where only a single vendor was available. ICs had to be cheap and available in quantities.
It also would have required a complete different hardware design, e.g. a multiplexed bus is not easy to implement in a CPC. I'm also pretty sure that the RAM access for the gate array/CRTC would be hard in such a system, so you would have required even more changes to the design.
And just because it understands the same opcodes doesn't mean you can run your existing code on it. The CPC software (as it's the case for all 8bit home computer) is often heavily optimized and it's crucial to have exact timings. The Z280 is pipelined so you simply have no longer a reliable clock cycle per opcode.
@@eto6197 Turns out that OLIVETTI (Modena) produced a machine that actually used the ZILOG Z800 processor but most likely required a math chip as well but there was no math chip for use with the ZILOG Z800.
(That's "Ghosts 'n Goblins, you dolt. - Ed.)
Ooops... Just print another I 'spose!
@@MarkFixesStuff Classic bootleg error, leave it as it is or re-print it in Times New Roman font for some crazy bootleg reason ;-) Another great vid.
Comic Sans
I thought something about the label looked wrong but couldn't pinpoint it
dude the long hair
Yeah dude!
I've burned my rubbers
You've been hacked dude !!!!!
Shame it's called Ghosts 'n Goblins
It’s pirated so that’s a tribute to the great pirating labelling mistakes of history!
@@MarkFixesStuff haha cool
You should credit yourself for the new label.
the only problem with the whole project is having to play GX4000 at the end.
It’s true I’m afraid
Label creation in RGB and Photoshop, that just hurts me.
Sorry to hurt you Mr. Karoi! I come from a photography background so it's all I know really. What would you use?
You really spend 99€ pro Song? Thats one expensive UA-cam Video.
Good job Marky Mark
Thank you Bob!