Yes the parallel port isn't such a big deal, I can use an older PC for the job. But you can't compare 24 and 32M with up to 4GB SD cards... :/
NES Power Pak http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=3213 Hopefully it will be available soon. CF
There are USB based flash carts for really classic systems such as Atari 5200, Intellivision, Vectrex, etc. People seem to have more interest in Neo Classic systems such as SNES/MD, etc.
Now, in theory, anyone could just desolder the memory chips and replace them with a CF\SD card slot, but the problem is, cartridges don't have file systems so to speak, they just assign things to their memory, ie 0x000fff would be a sprite, so some techincal ability would be needed to get this all working, should someone be brave enough to do it themself.
you mean a loader? I guess that's why you need to have logic inside your host cartridge, between the original hardware and the flash memory: So that the address requests of the console are translated into the proper address within the correct file each time on the flash memory card.
Well obviously, I was putting it into layman's terms. Just a look inside my DS' R4 chip shows at least an IC or 2 that isn't flash memory.
Sorry for the big bump, but I think its appropriate. The NES PowerPak has been released! http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?productID=133 Looks awesome! :thumbsup:
The guy who has RetroZone/RetroUSB refuses to send items to Greece. Anyone who could order it and resend it to me would be very welcome. I will pay everything plus all extra costs of course. (I have to wait for the CF version anyway)
Yeah that pretty much renders the whole rig useless:katamari::lol: I only need a MD cart with 5GBs, so I can put my entire ROM collection there, and also free some space on my HDD for more midget pr0n!
Sadly they are out of stock at the moment or something, but thanks for the bump, I intend to buy one. =)
I will be manufacturing 2GB MD flashcarts with USB support this year. I probably shouldn't spoil the news yet, but meh =P Stay tuned.
I haven't touched my PowerPak in a month or two. It's fun initially but its little problems make it frustrating (to me) in the end. The BIOS doesn't initialize everything properly so some games bug out on either cold or warm starts. BIOS upgrades are only supported through CopyNES right now so that means fixing those problems is out of the question for me since I never want a CopyNES... The BIOS is a flaky about CF interfacing too so I have to tediously hold a button at every cold start to not get a spastic error message. There's no way to view really long filenames like most filenames in GoodNES which is annoying. I had to make my own mappers to get rid of the reset-to-menu feature (I replaced it with a button combination so you can still reset in-game and not be brought back to the menu). The mapper development software is giant (3gb) so I had to stop working on mappers in order to free some disk space. Lastly I've given up (for now) developing replacement mappers since I've had a lot of trouble implementing some more complicated designs like MMC3 due to the design software's crappyness.
What about for gaming? Is it atleast good enough for playing the games that don't have init problems? I don't have much interest in developing mappers.
It's OK for gaming for the most part, but the mappers aren't all perfect right now so some games will have (usually minor) graphical problems. If you had bought the first batch of PowerPak, there's a good chance it wouldn't even work in your NES without a mod. He has since recalled the first batch to apply the fix and is shipping all of them now with a new PCB including the fix AFAIK. That's probably what the long production delay was. I'm lucky, the first batch works fine with my Famicoms. Altogether it's certainly worth the price for a gaming device (there are no alternatives with comparable features), but remember that right now it's like a work in progress, there are a lot of issues that hopefully will be addressed someday, but there aren't any guarantees... He released it early so that the early adopters could get started with it, not because it was ready for all gamers to have a cushy ride.
From what I've read he's pretty sure further compatibility can be achieved without hardware mods, just boot rom updates and new mapper files. So I figure it'd be worth it. Even if it can't ever handle MMC5 or other trickey ones (as in mapper files created for them) it's still worth it.
Right but you can't upgrade your boot ROM/BIOS without sending it back to him or getting a CopyNES or writing your own upgrade program which IMO is a problem. And it should be able to handle MMC5, but whomever designs it is not necessarily going to share it, the same goes for other mappers/fixes.
