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Hardware > Max storage

#5564 - gimp - Fri May 02, 2003 12:00 am

Hi,

I'm having some trouble finding out exactly how much data a gba cartridge can hold, a game cartridge not a flash cart. People claim 256 MBit/32MegaByte to be the max, but still all game roms I've had a look at are only 16 megabyte or less in size. This goes for games that could really benefit from using more space too. So what's the gig? If gba carts can store 32 megabyte max as people say then why don't any commercial developers make use of those extra 16 megs? Am I missing something here?

Erik

#5565 - tepples - Fri May 02, 2003 12:32 am

gimp wrote:
I'm having some trouble finding out exactly how much data a gba cartridge can hold, a game cartridge not a flash cart.

There's 256 Mbits of address space for ROM, but Nintendo currently isn't manufacturing cartridges larger than 128 Mbits. Most GBA owners wouldn't want to buy a $50 GBA game anyway. But once ROM prices come down, Nintendo may make 512 Mbit carts that use bankswitching.
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#5566 - arundel - Fri May 02, 2003 12:33 am

Hmm...well the question why some developers only use 32/64/128 mbit cards is quite easy. For some games you don't need that much space. Let's take some cheesy game like the gba version of invaders or the 1:1 conversions of the nes/snes mario games. Plus you'll need to buy the cards from Nintendo. And I believe the 256 mbit cards are much more expensive than 32 mbit cards e.g.

The reason why there is a limitation to the size of cards propably is the addressing size. The Game Pak Rom goes from 0x08000000 to 0x09FFFFFF/16bit.

Hope this helps a bit.
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#5568 - gimp - Fri May 02, 2003 12:41 am

Ugh.. Just what I didn't want to hear. Thanks to both for making sense of it for me, though.