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Bryan Edewaard
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Bryan Edewaard is known as programmer for the Atari 5200 game Castle Crisis, which Bryan added Easter Eggs and extra paddles. (4 players at once).
When it comes to programming, Bryan is experienced in 6502, 680x0, 80x86, and Jaguar RISC assembly, as well as C++ and Visual BASIC.

He has worked on a variety of systems including the Atari 2600, 5200 and Atari 800 series computers.
Also Atari ST series computers, PC under DOS and Windows, and even Atari Jaguar.

Bryan also collects and repairs classic video arcade games.
Bryan also worked in music stores, Radio Shack, as a programmer, digital engineer, game designer, and technician.
An he even worked briefly for Atari Corp.
But we ColecoVision fans knows him for:

Bryan Edewaard's MegaCart

As you may know already, regular ColecoVision cartridges are limited to 32 kilobytes of ROM data.
This, along with the ColecoVision's single kilobyte of RAM, severely limits the kinds of games that can be coded for the console.
Titles like Gateway to Apshai are probably the most elaborate games you're going to see within these harsh hardware limits.

Over 20 years after the commercial death of the ColecoVision, Opcode Games is proud to introduce a solution to the ColecoVision's 32-kilobyte ROM limit: namely the MegaCart !
This piece of hardware is designed by Bryan Edewaard, which fits into a regular ColecoVision cartridge shell, implements bankswitching schemes that go far beyond 32K.
There are several variations of the MegaCart: 128K, 256K, 512K and 1024K.

About the MegaCart:

There is no 64K variation of the MegaCart because the PCB architecture doesn't really support it.
If a game fits inside 64K, a 128K MegaCart will have to be used, which means a lot of available space on the MegaCart will remain unused.

The exclusive property belongs to Bryan Edewaard.
He streamlined the MegaCart PCB to make it as cheap to produce as possible.

It's mady by: ICD / TSD (Temporary Sanity Designs), a partnership of Bryan Edewaard and Damien Jones, started early in 1995.
TSD's main objective is to produce quality software.

All a programmer need is to add is an EPROM chip with software encoded into it.
Bryan is ready to sell MegaCart 1 PCB for a reasonable price, so you only need to seek him out and ask him about it.

To encode game data into a MegaCart will an 40-pin EPROM burner do the job nicely, as far as the ColecoVision software is concerned.
It's really not that different from a regular ColecoVision PCB/EPROM setup.

There's no extra RAM in a MegaCart

It's not technically impossible, but such a MegaCart would be far more expensive to produce.
The solution to add extra RAM to the ColecoVision is via the Super Game Module from Opcode Games.
So you can break the ColecoVision limit of 32K and add extra RAM via the Super Game Module, in that way can you program a really nice game.

The bankswitching method used in the MegaCart is such that the ROM addressing space is divided into two chunks of 16K, and one of these chunks can be switched at any time.
Therefore, no matter what MegaCart model is used, only 32K can be adressed at any one time by the software.
The programmer must design the game with this constraint in mind.

Most of the games we all want to see released on ColecoVision require more than 32K of ROM space, so those will necessarily make use of the MegaCart.
Newer games that require a Save Game feature, refers to the new MegaCart 2 also called: Super Game Cartridge.

The MegaCart will play a major role in the future ColecoVision games is definately not an exagerated statement.
The first ColecoVision game that used the MegaCart was Pac-Man Collection, the 2nd was Mario Brothers.


 
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