Viewer Challenge: NES-CADE Jukebox

An obvious question here would be "why not just emulate it?" but that isn't nearly as cool as your idea looks.

I think what you'd have to do is make a custom cart loader when it goes into a position and the contacts clamp onto it, versus pushing the cartridge into a standard card-edge connector.

The reason for this is that the force required to insert a cartridge is fairly significant if you're trying to do it mechanically.

Your drawing is very good and this could be a great project for Season 3! Thanks!

Dont forget some sort of blower to clean the contacts when it dosent quite boot the game.

If the NES was a ZIF connector (ts been years since i hacked one to pieces), then all you would need (lol, says me) is a cage that houses the carts, then something like an arduino controlled arm that, rather than selects the cartridge, just inserts a 'custom' zif conector onto the cart contacts (perhaps small support underneath to ensure good contact).

Then the harness can simply be extended across via long ribbon cable (Ben, I know you like ribbon cables....) across to a small NES mobo in the arcade cab, then just extend controller contacts to buttons and joystick on the front.

Perhaps taking the NES to the cart would be far far easier than taking the cart to the NES.

It lends itself to other cart-based machines as well then...... not in the same cab of course....

Thats my opinion anyhows....

Another route would be to make a custom pcb with connectors for as many game carts as you want mounted in series to the connector on the motherboard.             Except for the +5 volt pins on each of the connectors they would have a push to open push to close switch connected between pins 30 and 31 of each cartridge sockets to a +5 volt rail from the connector on the mother board then when you want to play a certain game push the button for that game and it only sends +5v to that cartridge and it starts the game when you power on the nes. This way you still have the tactile feel of a jukebox without all the mechanics and wear of the cartridges.