Flash Carts killing your consoles (According to Nintendo life)

I'll let this video from my buddy Shawn Long bring you up to speed on this stupidity.

 

Ahh, the title... And then goes "i'm not a technical guy, i've just read someone else's stuff and though it would be cool to post a clickbait video"

Anyway, if you have any interest on the topic go straight to the source:

https://db-electronics.ca/2017/07/05/the-dangers-of-3-3v-flash-in-retro-consoles/

 

This certainly got blown out of hand quickly.

 

The span of this goes beyond just flash carts. I would also check your bootlegs. Lucky for me only one of my famicom bootlegs uses 3.3v chip and isn't properly leveled. My 7 dollar aliexpress earthbound use 5v windbond EEPROMs and a 5v Sony sram chip, yayyy.

 

Like Immediately, Shawn's a good dude, I was in the facebook thread this topic came up in.
Thought I'd give him some exposure.

Here's the other article. Now the Nintendo life Article DOES scream click bait.
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/07/flash_carts_could_be_slowly_killing_your_retro_consoles

 

Apparently custom made RGB SCART cables are also killing your consoles.

 

EVERYTHING IS KILLING YOUR CONSOLE!

 

It does feel like in recent years there has been a whole lot of people saying you need to buy this and that. Eventually retro gaming will become like the exercise industry.

At this point I can't visually tell the difference between certain rgb mods. I also don't see the ghosting or ringing issues on the snes mini bypass rgb mod that people claim exist. Maybe my eyes aren't sensitive enough. We have gotten to the point of splitting hairs. It's not like the jump from svideo to rgb.

 

I'm buying Super Famicoms and Mega Drives, Mega Drive is getting an RGB 3rd party cable going into a Framemiester. Both are getting flash carts stuffed in them. (X7 in the Megasis since that has support for large rom hacks) I have a Retro USB AVS on order, you better believe I'm putting an Everdrive N8 on that one.

BUT I'M GOING TO RUIN THEM ALL RUIN THEM ALL THEY ARE ALL DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMED.

 

IMO, it won't be as bad because things in computer science/engineering can be proven... if there is a deep-enough understanding of how things work.

 

I'd like to think that, but we're dealing with reverse engineering 20+ year old black box systems here. I understand most of DBElectronics's theory and campaign for best practices, but will those extra few millivolts during RAM accesses on the data bus actually shorten the lifespan of the Sega Genesis chipset? Who's to say...seems like speculation to me. Those custom Sega chips may have even been designed to be more tolerant than some of the current speculation suggests...but of course, this is just more speculation.

The other thing not being talked about here is cost. Krikkz designed many of the Everdrives to be as cost efficient as possible. I appreciate Krikkz adopting better practices as time goes on, but you better believe that he will be passing the added cost of proper level shifters on to the consumer.

 

I believe the main point behind the article was:

He clarified the purpose behind his article.

IMO it is cost-cutting measures like these that break specs, that results in poor-quality products. Maybe the console will not die, but the flash device may eventually fail.

I know, we would all love it if things could be made cheaply. But there is probably a reason why the 3.3V devices were not documented to work with voltages as high as 5V. If they could, I am pretty sure the manufacturers would have been more than willing to advertise that (since they can encroach on the 5V device market).
The 5V range may not even be exactly 5.0V, but around there.

 

Not exactly, because (I posted this on Krikzz.com as well) scientists only publish their research when it's deemed finished, and a thesis can be made. That research is also reviewed by peers. What db has been blogging has not been. He (as Krikzz has noted) has barely drawn any actual conclusions, just run a number of tests.

 

If flash and multi carts were killing consoles, why aren't they dropping like flies? First red flag to this dude's research right there and his retort isn't that reassuring to his conclusions either.

"This is like saying: “I’ve been smoking for 2 years and I don’t have cancer. Therefore, smoking does not cause cancer.” If you believe this statement, you deserve to damage your retro console."

Brad Tratzinski (who repairs things on his You Tube channel Good channel too) chimed in on this and said that if voltage would damage anything it would be the cart not the system, and even that is unlikely.

 

To be fair, he clearly stated he's an asshole.

 

If there were no problems at all, why is Krikzz doing new revision which fixes the problem ?

 

This was Krikzz's point exactly.

His revisions have to do with technical advances on his part, as well as cost savings, battery savings for portables, and the desire to offer a three-tiered approach to his flash carts.

 

Okay, fair enough. It is true that his blog title and some of this content overly emphasized on the wrong thing.
Somehow it sounded like he wanted to point out that the flash carts would die and that was the part that I agreed with.

 

This is how dbElectronics should have framed this issue rather than blogging 'everdrive x = avoid'. There is a better way of interfacing 3.3v chips with 5v chips (i.e. level translators) and Krikzz has been implementing this method as time goes on. But that does not automatically mean that the older revisions are unsafe.

Also, has anyone with a proper scope duplicated dbElectronics's measurements? Furthermore, if anyone has a scope, a Genesis, a 32x, and Sega CD, I'd be curious to know if the bus voltages sag at all by virtue of having all three share the data bus. I'd be quite impressed if even on an original cart the logic high was still a true 5.0v with everything Sega released connected.

 

I remember jack shit from when I studied analog eletronics at univeristy (computer science), but if I remember correctly interfacing 3.3V logic with 5V logic without using proper level shifting will probably damage the low-voltage components and not the 5V ones. 3.3V, 2V or whatever low-voltage logic. Also, if I also remember correctly older technology using TTL or RTL logic is way more tolerant to these voltage changes than the technology used to manufacture modern ICs.