Announcing the 64drive nearing completion

One question marshallh. Is the command relative to the CI for reading/writing LBA on Compact flash work too when using an SD card?

Or it's reserved to Compact flash only?

 

Yay, I received mine!
Hmmm, strange stuff, however. Booting with the 1.06 menu (both "versions") shows the loading circle thing and then the screen goes black. When there's no memory card, it shows the appropriate error message, though.
1.05 seems to work fine so far!

 

haha just noticed the files created by the 64drive use the N64 US release date!

Nice one! lol

 

CI abstracts away the device specifics, the software doesn't know/care which it's using

 

marshallh: Say if someone ordered a 64 Drive around 29 Aug, how would their order be progressing?

 

Just another dude posting to say I received the 64drive in the mail today. I paid for it when the preordering started on the 8th August and spent almost every week since then refreshing this forum to see the updates. Landed in the UK without any problem and didn't encounter any problems with the UK customs especially since the box states the content as "used video game". During the time I waited for the 64drive to arrive, I prepped the N64 roms and transfered every single European, US and Japanese games onto a class 2 16gb Sandisk microsd card. Yes, the microsd slot does feel like I could lose the card inside the N64 cart but as long as everything's on the card, I felt like I didn't need to constantly remove the microsd. Fun fact, having every EU/US/JP N64 rom on one card comes up to a little over 11gb.

After I put the 64drive in my console, it showed all the folders and all the roms without any problem. I'm sure in time I'll be thinking, "man, I wish I could have cheats, more extras" but considering I had a Dr V64 a few years ago that was a trial and error in figuring out which bootcarts I need and how to save, the 64drive was a Godsend.

Another issue I should mention that is probably more to do with the TV is that since I have a PAL N64, I ordered the 64drive with the PAL CIC chip. This ran all the European roms without much problems but I figured that there's only a handful of EU exclusive roms, I really should be playing the US roms to play at their proper speed. This brings up the problem of ghosting and a thin grey bar at the bottom of the screen. The problem isn't helped by the fact that ever since my 15 year old Sony SDTV died last year, I only have HDTVs in the entire house. Any idea if playing N64 on a VGA box that connects to a 5 year old LCD PC monitor or a modern widescreen PC monitor can help?

Wow, I realised that this turned into a mini review but I guess I should conclude this post by saying that yes, it is indeed worth the money and it is worth the wait. Also, after browsing ebay to see what the average price is for a Dr V64 nowadays, I'm glad to say that yes, the 64drive is cheaper than the CD based backup solutions. I would've like to make a comparision with the Everdrive 64 but unfortunately my budget didn't stretch that far but I am sure both of the carts have their strengths and whatever you choose, you'll have a fun time reliving the N64 days all on one cart.

 

If you have a look over at the benheck forums you will see that marshall is working at something that will be the biggest gift for all us HDTV users =)
So before you go out and buy an expensive VGA Upscaler Box maybe you should wait till marshall finishes his solution. You may need to buy a NTSC N64 for it to work, I don't know.

 

My V64 is worth something?

 

I'm also a PAL N64 owner and I play only NTSC games, haven't experienced any of the mentioned problems, though I have tried a lot of games.
Also I heard about "popping sound" in some NTSC games when played on PAL N64, I have never heard what is this sound like though. Someone said here that this problem arises with Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest NTSC version, but I played it on my PAL console and it works perfectly.:shrug:

Looks like a VGA port for N64? Would be great, if only it didn't need soldering which I can't do myself

 

No, it's worthless... (joking)

Wrong thread, dude.

Go here, read the first post. http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19495

 

Then I shall blame it on the Sony Bravia HDTV then lol. By the way, I have a silly question. Am I right in thinking that the speed of the microSD is only important for loading the rom and once it's loaded, the read/write speed of the microSD shouldn't make N64 roms lag at all? Reason I'm asking is that during my time of playing and testing with NDS flashcarts, some microSDs do better than other at playing games so I was wondering if the same applied to the 64drive?

 

It doesn't apply to the NDS carts either.. You're just experiencing the placebo effect with the classes of the cards.

It's like taking one group, show them a DVD on the HDTV and tell them it's a bluray on it, then taking the other group, do the same thing, but inform them it's a DVD.

The first group will say it's better quality than DVDs, thinking it was a bluray.

So, you're thinking that games are running slower because of using a slower microsd cart, when they're really not. As far as I know, the chip is used to load the data and what not on the cart to boot it. It shouldn't effect the way the games run, only the loading time to boot the game.

 

Harsky, most of games on N64 just have low FPS, unlike 6th and 7th generation games. The processing power of N64 is not too high and the whole gimmick of 5th gen is that everything must be 3D. If someone released a 2D game, it wouldn't sell that well just because it's 2D no matter how hard you try in making it good. That's why there are very few 2D games on N64.

 

Flashcarts do use direct access to the SD card for larger games. (I.e. running directly from SD card).

If you look in modern cheap flashcarts, you will see there is no where to store the games for what you think is happening.

 

USPS really sucks. I got my delivery from China today with the fucking slow Hongkong post, took only 8 days. I am on my 21st day with USPS now :/

 

you are aware HKpost hands it to USPS for final delivery (in the us) right?:gravedigging:

 

You are aware that not anybody resides inside the US? (Iam in Europe)

If USPS took 21 days for a delivery inside the US I would already have left for their headquarters :dammit:

 

Nintendo DS flash carts do. Nintendo 64 is not so kind. I remember marshall or calpis I believe said they thought at one time that CF might be fast enough for the N64's relatively slow cartridge bus speed. But ED64 and 64drive both use SDRAM to temporarily store the ROM image. Once you load the game, your SD or CF card has no impact on play of the game.

Other than Nintendo DS, I can't think of any flash cart that can run roms directly from flash media like SD cards. The fact is for most systems it isn't fast enough. So even though the PowerPAK, EverDrive MD, GG, SMS, etc use SD or CF cards they are loading data off those into either RAM (SRAM, or SDRAM usually) or FlashROM. Older Copiers used primarily DRAM due to cost advantage over SRAM.

 

Few months ago I shipped 10x 10 packs of mini DVD-Rs to a fellow member in Berlin via "First Class Mail" as a parcel. USPS doesn't give an estimate rather they say it "depends on the destination" or something along those lines. I've used this method to ship DS games to Norway and the batch of Macronix flash chips for Dreamcast usage with the norm being 2 weeks. The Saturn modchip I mailed to Norway early this month took all of about 5 days if that (which was a shocker to us both).

The package to Berlin? 2.5 months.

 

Berlin, Massachusetts? God help me!

Nah, just kidding, thanks for your input, but its not really helping

Damn you USPS, damn you!!