Hi all I have an Everdrive 64 in a NTSC console... It works great, almost anything I've tried, have worked fine... I'm really happy with the unit and I'll buy the rest of the Everdrives There seems to be problems with some games and the saves... The N64 has that "Controller pack" which is (I think, I'm no expert) some kind of memory card like on other consoles like PS2 and all... My question is: if I plug the controller pack (a real one), and run the games from the Everdrive... I'll be able to save correctly? Even for those flashram games? Of course, I may be wrong... but I'd like to know your opinion about it Thanks in advance
The thread "The Everdrive 64 Game Fix Thread" may answer your question. I'll try to answer as far as my knowledge goes: The ED64 can handle EEPROM saves, this means games that would save in the cartridge memory. If you use a rumble pak or a memory card in your controller it will save normaly. Before you turn off your game you should press reset, when you press reset the ED64 will backup your save to the SD card. The only thing I'm not sure is that if when you use a controller pak to save your games and you press reset if the ED64 save it in the SD card and when you load the game a second time it will replace the save inside the controller pak. This is my question as well. The games that ED64 can't save are Flashram saves and for some of those games there are cracks and patchs that will give the option for saving inside the ED64.
Thanks for clearing it out KRIKzz I wounder how many games the controller pak can save. Anyone knows ?
So, even with the controller pack installed, the Everdrive will save to the SD card, am I right? Thanks for the fast answer
You don't understand. Most Nintendo 64 games utilize saving into the Cartridge. These types are generally SRAM, EEPROM, and FlashRAM. Some games allow for saving on the controller memory paks. The EverDrive is not involved in this. If a game saves to the controller pak there is no problem. EverDrive is involved in any game that normally saves to the cartridge. EverDrive supports SRAM and EEPROM but not current FlashRAM which is used by a few games. To be clear, games that save to the memory pak will not save to the SD card. Only games that save to the cartridge will save to the SD card.
Most of the games use controller pak saves here's the full list of save of each game US release: LINK So, it would be a good feature for the ED if it could emulate the controller pak.
It seems I was wrong about the ratio of game saves. Many of them do infact seem to use the memory pak. veggav, I don't believe it is reasonably possible to add such a feature. Just buy a memory pak, it's not like they are expensive.
It's not the cost of memory paks that is the issue, it's the quality of them. I have loads of them and very few work properly.
Well, the amount of saves is something that would be point in favor of the ED handling the saves in controller pak. When you have the ED64 you play A LOT of games because it's so easy to flash them. So an "infinite" save for those games would be awesome.
It would be cool, but I wonder if its even possible. The only way I could see it working is if the ED64 somehow used the Memory Card to read and write these saves. So you would still need a Memory Card, but it would basically be the middle man temporarily holding save while you are playing that game. The quality of most of these memory cards is pretty poor, I am not even sure how long they would last being written to so often.
i can implement auto backup to SD for controller pack, but controller pack should be installed in any case
Already ordered one )) Never heard of them before. It's a nice feature Krikzz, when you got time and the feeling please do it ))
That's great!!... It would be an improvement over an already great cartridge Of course, when you have time
With ED64, doing something like you propose would work better if the controller pak was cloned and used battery backed SRAM. No write cycle limit then. I think the Controller Paks are some kind of EEPROM which is bound to wear out eventually. Then again, maybe some 3rd party memory paks exist that use SRAM + Battery already.
I had a third party card split into 4 banks (selected with a switch) that had a CR2032 inside. Not sure if it was using SRAM or not as this was many moons ago and I have no idea where the card is now. I want to say it was made by Performance.
I'm not the only one surprised by all the 'never heard of a controller pack before' posts right? I use a bank switching pack personally, has a button to pick between 4 different pages, works well enough and never gave me problems, aside from having no indicator as to 'which' page you are currently on. If I recall correctly it was mentioned in the GC pad adapter project thread about adding support for patching in an SD card as an emulated controller pack, slightly unrelated but still an interesting idea
Well, I never had a 64. I used to play at a friend's house. So, I'm not familiar with all the gadgets for it. It was last year that I got my 64. So now I'm getting more used to it. By the way, about EEPROM lifetime, isn't the ED based on some kind of eeprom too ? So it may have it's own cicles to live. Like 1000x-10.000 flashes and it's over.
