i-Cybie Preservation Project (i-Preserve Cybie) - i-Cybie Programmable Cartridges

Cartridges that can be programmed to add custom personality softwares or other additions for functionality (edited)

i-Cybie Cartridges are special programmable cartridges made for adding additional softwares to your i-Cybie robot dog. They insert on the right side of the robot. The cartridges were usually sold seperately, coming with the Silverlit Downloader or the Walk Up Charger accessories, until the re-release of i-Cybie in 2005, when they included a walk up charger & a working cartridge. Models prior to 2005 only came with a blank "dummy" cartridge or a cartridge with unpopulated pads. The blank cartridges just contain a piece of thin plastic, no circuit board is present. Unpopulated cartridges do have a circuit board with unpopulated pads, so you have the ability to solder components to the cartridge yourself is you'd like to. Unpopulated cartridges can usually be found in i-Cybies with large tail hinges. (edited)

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"Blank" Cartridges

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"Unpopulated" Cartridges (edited)

To get a bit more technical: There are two different types of i-Cybie cartridges designed for the 2001 and 2005 i-Cybie models. The 2001 models use two 1 Mbit SST39vf010 chips, using a total of 256KB of flash ROM. The 2005 models use a single 2 Mbit SST39vf200 flash chip. Both of these cartridges must be used with the correct model with the same year, or else the i-Cybie will not work properly. (You can tell the difference between a 2001 and a 2005 model on the battery compartment label)

Since i-Cybies did not do well in the commercial market, they flopped and Tiger, the distributor, was not able to provide any additional accessories for i-Cybie as initially planned, until the original manufacturer, Silverlit, opened up their accessories shop in 2002 and released the walk up charger, downloaders, shells, & batteries on there. Talented programmers in the i-Cybie community were able to reverse engineer i-Cybie and people such as aibopet, were able to develop projects and tools for developing and programming on your i-Cybie, including having an ability for programming cartridges. Silverlit had previously released a program for their Downloader accessory, which was used for writing software to cartridges, though no cartridge personalties were officially provided with the downloader. (edited)

Some of these utilities can be found here: #tools-utils