September has been and gone and not a lot of progress unfortunately, least of all my hope that I would have at least sent the analyser PCB out for manufacture.
I don't really have any good excuse except that I am trying to fit a lot into my days and at the end of it all there's little energy left to devote to NGPACE. As I've maintained before, it's not the type of project that lends itself to working on in short bursts; it is for this very reason that I was diverted onto software projects in the past. Lately though I haven't even being doing that; I've spent my spare time being lazy on eBay and forums (retro and otherwise).
The only Neo Geo related activity has been the acquisition of a few more AES cartridges and a bulk lot of NGCD titles to boost my collection a little. I'm still undecided as to whether I'm collecting AES or NGCD, so for now my strategy is to pick up the dirt-cheap titles whenever they present themselves, before prices inevitably get even sillier than they are now. I briefly toyed with the idea of picking up a copy of Razion for the AES, but it's a big investment and I ultimately decided against it.
Back on topic, I've been lamenting the lack of progress to my colleagues and they've been urging me to allocate time and push ahead to get it finished. They're right of course - I need to get this done before someone else beats me to it, which would make all this effort and expense for nought. That would be extremely disappointing.
So on that note, I am going to endeavour to schedule time into my week solely for working on NGPACE. What that means in the short term is completing the programmer FPGA image and reviewing the PCB before sending it out for manufacture, ideally drafting a preliminary flash cartridge schematic in parallel.
Having a working analyser/programmer PCB in my hands before Xmas would be something I could realistically aim for. Shortly thereafter, my son is due so I'd imagine not a lot will be done early in the new year. At least can say with certainty that I'll have produced something before the end of January!
