Where and how to start building Famicom (NES ) board etc ??????

[RegalSin]

Okay, lets say I am programming a videogame for this system. I am looking for a website
to buy parts ( dirt cheap ), or some mail order company. I have noticed, that our Zhongguo counterparts
seems to have easy access to such parts.

I know it is a fact, that we can buy the same parts, boards, or related parts to do the programming. If I remember, long long time ago. a website was selling homemade NES games ( not the powerpak people ) who are constantly doing this. Where do I go to buy this stuff.

I am talking about pennies here not Euro's.

Thanks

[Xious]

I'd like to find a place that sells 1oz Troy gold bars, for pennies and not Euros too... an anybody suggest a source? Maybe trading doughnuts for them? Really big doughnuts...

If you make a small, feature-sparse game, you can get away with making PCBs and encoding small PROMs. There is no magical way to reduce costs without buying parts in gigantic volume (1,000 or 5,000 and larger quantities of pieces; each part), and then you'd still need to manufacture plastic shells.

In order to find the best prices, I suggest joining the industrial leads sites that fetch quotes from multiple manufacturers in China, Asia and the Orient. You might be able to manufacture very simple games for about €5-10 a piece in quantities over 1,000 units...

If you go over 10,000 units, the price drops further and you can go for Mask-ROM production. Be sure to have spare change handy to pay for all the up-front tooling costs too. 

[L___E___T]

I tried this before - the Chinese companies will not do business with non-chinese and they are very reluctant to do one-time business deals as it is.  It's too risky for them with only a slitehr of reward.

[jpx72]

You can still cooperate with retrousb.com if the game is going to be good, they might be interrested in releasing it.
But cheaper components? Xious is right, forget it. There are cheap chip-lots on eBay but what about the boards? You can ask some PCB-making company to manufacture them for you but I doubt you will find cheaper solution than retrousb is offering. And what about the mapper? Ah....

L__E__T: thanks for the info, I was curious about someone trying to contact them. It turned out exactly as I suspected.

[L___E___T]

It's still something I'm looking into - while they won't do business with me, I have lots of links in Asia and I can easily set this up with a little capital.  Trouble is, there's no money in it, so it becomes a fan-service project.   Something I wanted to do was set up a cart with all the best games and hacks on, not difficult in itself.  Could have done the same thing for my FamicomStation too but in the end all of the risk is on me and it's obviously an illegal operation even to cover the costs if no profit is looped in.

Best bet (assuming you have the capital and storage space) is to get in touch with a business that deals with Shenzhen regularly.  You'll still probably need to have a friend there, because there's nothing in it for them and any competent businessman would tell you to forget it.

At one stage, I tried to buy a lot of 100 118-in-1 multicarts from a supplier, at the cost of £5 per unit, but the guy wasn't prepared to sell £500 worth of carts at near to cost.  It was only worth his while to sell the console and trhe carts together for £10.  I don't have room for 100 N64-styled famiclones right now!

[RegalSin]

Isn't there some kind of parts catalog out there, like in the old school days? I am sure if I was more mindfully aware of the parts I need
to buy from the

PCB
ROM
On-board Memory
markers lights
Flash card slots ( currently is out there for less then .00 a pop ).

[Xious]

Some companies still do printed catalogues. They usually charge for them, unless you are an active customer with a business account, just so you are aware in advance. Ask around, visit sites, and send messages to request catalogues. That's the only way to know with certainty...

Nobody will have the PCB you need... You'll have to design, or have someone do a design for you, and then work with a PCB-manufacturing company, unless you try to etch them by hand, which isn't economical. There are several reputable firms in this business (e.g. Myro) that can do a run of boards for you that would cost around €1 per blank, unassembled PCB in the 100-200 quantity.

You should also price 74xxxx -series parts. The 74HC161 is what you probably will want. If you want any mapper on the board, you'd need to design one in Verilog and either make FPGAs (or possibly CPLDs); or pay up the nose for a run of custom ASICs (min 10,000 plus tooling). I would focus on finishing your game first. if you want to do a released cart, feel free to write me. I can offer you decent terms if I think it's saleable...

@L_E_T: I've had better luck with Chinese firms, but it is hit-or-miss, and as soon as they know you aren't Chinese, the prices generally rise, so you have to haggle them down to reality. I would've offered to kick in an extra fifty or eighty pence per cart on the multicarts, as that incentive may have been enough to convince the manufacturer to authorize the transaction. 

[L___E___T]

Heh, the chinese firm I spoke to didn't make money from famicom pirates anymore - but after speaking with my gf she said it's more to do with other things.  I will definitely be routing through her in future considering she has businesses around Shenzghen, Shanghai and HK.  I find it amusing that they spend all day on QQ mixing business with chat and cam socialising, I wouldn't dream of it :S