Author: cdeschenes

SD2IEC

The SD2IEC is a mass storage device using an SD memory card and interfacing with the IEC bus of the Commodore 64. This little guy can replace a need for cartridges, tape drives or disk drives. When you choose a SD card for the SD2IEC, the smaller the better due to some limitations. I went with an old 1GB card I had laying around and it worked perfectly. I tried a 64GB and had issues reading the card. You need to format the card with FAT32.

Next your going to want to download CBM-FileBrowser and put it on the root of the SD memory card. This makes it so much easier to browse all the disk/tape images on the SD card.

Flashboy +

Here is a flash cart for a system that does not get that much attention. This is for the Nintendo Virtual Boy.

This is a standard Virtual Boy cartridge with a mini USB port on it. This is for writing roms to the 16 MBits (2 MBytes) internal flash memory.  The down side is, it only holds one game at a time. This is a bit of a let down since I am so used to the Everdrives carts which are some sort of SD/microSD and can hold a whole library. To load a game to the Flashboy + you will need to use the supplied loader software and connect the mini USB cable to your PC. This is a pretty simple & straight forward task.

The cart does not have a backup battery so games like Galactic Pinball and VB Wario Land are playable, but can not take advantage of the battery.

Normally I open up the carts to take pictures of but I am not wanting to break the superglue that holds this 3D printed case together. I will will pop it open in the future and update this post.

Switch madness

Thanks to Target for being on the ball with their pre-orders. I received mine on launch day (3/3/17) at 1:00PM and had plenty of time to get familiar with it. I only picked up Zelda: Breath of the Wild since I figured that would hold me over until more titles get launched.

So far I am super impressed with the hardware. It feels “expensive”,sturdy and durable. Feels more like an adult console and not “Fisher Price” like the Wii U gamepad.

Old 3DS, new to me.

With the launch of SoundHax & Luma3DS recently allowing the ability to aid putting a custom firmware on any 3/2DS with the latest firmware as of today (11.2.0) , I decided to pick up an older 3DS. I had a launch red one when they first got released and regret selling it. I flipped it to get a PS Vita at the time. I found this very clean Midnight Purple O3DS that I jumped on. I always loved this color and wish that the N3DS XL came in this color. I’m not a huge fan of the purple galaxy N3DS XL model.

I followed this tutorial and everything went by the book.

PSIO install

The PSIO is another seemingly “hard to get” mod device for the original Playstation. I actually waited and missed out on this device twice before finding a eBay auction for one and got it for the same price a new one goes for. It was actually new in box.

So what is this madness?

The PSIO is a development device that plugs into the early model Playstation parallel I/O port. The PSIO supports BIN, ISO and IMG files. It has a slick menu system with cover artwork and multiple CD game support.

In order for the PSIO to work properly, you need to install a switch board. This board is needed to switch the signal from the CD-ROM to the development device. 9 wires later… put it back together and see if we still get video.

I put the Cybdyn sticker on the bottom of the PS so I remember that this is the unit that has the PSIO Switch BOard installed.

 


Master EverDrive

Features list taken from StoneAgeGamer

Features:
  • FRAM for game saves (no battery required)
  • Max supported ROM size is 8Mbit (1Mbyte)
  • Sega Master System and SG-1000 games are supported
  • Save RAM data can be stored or loaded from the SD card
  • Cartridge also can be used on Game Gear via the Master Gear Converter
  • Codemasters and Sega mappers are supported
  • SD/SDHC cards supported up to 32Gb
  • FAT32 support

EverDrive-N8

Features list taken from StoneAgeGamer
Features:
  • NES, Famicom, and Twin Famicom systems are supported.* Many NES/FC clones supported as well.
  • Cart supports NES and FDS ROM images.
  • Automatic disk side swap for FDS.
  • Expansion audio.**
  • Game Genie cheat code support.
  • Automatically backs-up saves to SD card. There is no need to push reset before shutting down the system.†
  • Mapper support can be extended via software updates. As easy as loading new mappers files on SD card.
  • FAT / FAT16 / FAT32 file system formats are supported.
  • Supports SD (SD & SDHC) cards up to 32GB.
  • Quick loading of game files (approx. 4-8 seconds).
EverDrive-N8 hardware:
  • Powerful Cyclone II FPGA.
  • 2 x 512Kbyte SRAM for PRG and CHR data.
  • 128Kbyte battery backed memory. It write save data to SD.
  • Max II CPLD to handle FPGA reconfiguration, BIOS, SD and USB interfaces.
  • 1Mbyte flash BIOS.
  • Voltage shift buffers on PPU and CPU bus for matching levels between 5v NES bus and 3.3 EverDrive bus. Far better than simple resistor buffers at reducing noise and power consumption.

SD2SNES

I got frustrated with wanting to play some SNES games and finding out that my Super Everdrive could not play them due to the needed enhancement chips. Commence ordering the SD2SNES from StoneAgeGamer.

Features list taken from StoneAgeGamer

Features
  • SD/SDHC/SDXC support (tested up to 64GB; no exFAT support so SDXC cards must be reformatted using FAT32)
  • High quality push-push memory card slot
  • Fast ROM loading (~9MB/s)
  • Fast menu navigation
  • Directories are sorted automatically, no need for FAT sorting tools
  • High resolution menu (512×224) for adequate display of long file names
  • Real Time Clock
  • Supports ROM size up to 128MBit (96Mbit actually implemented)
  • Automatic near-time SRAM saving to SD Card (while the game runs). Some limitations apply:
    • near-time saving is switched to periodic saving when a game is found to use the SRAM as work RAM.
    • Automatic saving is disabled when MSU1 is used. SRAM is saved on reset.
  • Enhancement chip support (see below for implementation status)
    • BS-X memory map / Satellaview base unit registers (clock)
    • DSP1 / 1b
    • DSP2
    • DSP3
    • DSP4
    • ST-010
    • Cx4
    • MSU1 (Each supported enhancement chip can be used in conjunction with MSU1.)
    • S-RTC
  • SuperCIC key (SNES CIC clone):
    • enables operation on unmodified consoles of all regions
    • supports software 50/60Hz switching on SuperCIC enhanced consoles only (to be performed by sd2snes firmware, not yet implemented there)
  • Auto region patching: eliminates “This Game Pak is not designed…” messages regardless of 50/60Hz setting

 

Everdrive GBA

This is to replace my loved SuperCard MiniSD. Many hours of Advanced Wars have been played on my SuperCard over the years. Recently I wanted to update the ROMs on my MiniSD and found that the software was just as wonky as I remembered it and had trouble with some of the later GBA games. It all came down to playing Final Fantasy 6 and putting in 6 hours and finding out my save was corrupted to help push me to the Everdrive GBA. The Everdrive GBA is dead simple to get up and running, just add games to a MicroSD and boot. I know this is like beating a dead horse but I wish the size of the cart was of a standard GBA game like my SuperCard… but that said, this thing is awesome.

Features taken from StoneAgeGamer
Features:
  • High compatibility. Near to 100% compatibility with GBA game library
  • NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Master System, and Game Gear game support via emulation mode!
  • All save types supported, no ROM patching required
  • Fast Loading (most games load within 1 – 2 seconds)
  • 256Mbit PSRAM (32MByte) ROM memory
  • 1Mbit SRAM (128KByte) save memory
  • Real-time clock support
  • Low power consumption
  • SD, SDHC and SDXC cards are supported. Tested with micro-SD cards up to 64GB
  • FAT32 support
  • Supported with GameCube Player, Super Retro Advance and other GBA accessories