regular nes please!

Posted at 3:32 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by tom

Really cool.

Posted at 3:41 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by sword77

The funny thing is that I actually want the opposite. Diy USB flash carts for old systems, most of the current solutions are being monetized, but there is one for NES, and most other systems including N64 if im not mistaken…

It would alleviate the emulation problems,

Most wouldn’t notice, but in some games you can tell a difference in the emulator vs the real thing

For example I always get higher scores and do better on the O.G. NES Vers. of Tetris,Marble Madness,etc than I do using any emulator..

Posted at 3:56 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by 36Chambers

Also this could be possibly useful for the people over at Ben Hecks forum making portable systems..

Posted at 3:58 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by 36Chambers

So cool. Pity it cant write a ROM to a Cartridge so you can play it on your real SNES/SMG

Posted at 3:59 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by VV

@VV

The roms in retail cartridges aren’t programmable though. If that’s what you want, get in line with 36Chambers.

Posted at 4:00 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by DanAdamKOF

@DanAdamKOF

What is 36chambers? Do you have a link or anything i can goto. I did a google for them, but it didnt come up with anything related.

Posted at 4:03 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by VV

Uh

look up a little bit :)

Posted at 4:07 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by DanAdamKOF

Add a port on the reader for an original controller so you can use a regular controller while playing

Posted at 4:07 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by renter

You could’ve just downloaded an emulator . . .

Posted at 4:09 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by Tubbo & Dubba Tubba

DanAdam.
I a,, 36 chambers also happens to be a band. So im not having much luck at the mo

Posted at 4:09 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by VV

It’s the guy that posted right above you wanting the same thing :)

Posted at 4:17 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by DanAdamKOF

Oh for gods sake, i thought you were talking about a product or something…
I feel like a right gimp now.

Posted at 5:58 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by VV

This project could be great for creating a universal old school TV game console, maybe add a micro linux board and get a composite video out, add memory card readers and ports for all the different game pads. Could turn out to be a beastly little project.

Posted at 6:09 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by Thomasbags

A projected price of $100?!?! Thats a little expensive for this sort of hack. I would much rather have the schematics for this and breadboard it myself. Even it it still cost $100, at least I could reuse the parts for another project once the novelty wore off.

Posted at 7:39 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by Bob

So awesome.

Posted at 8:05 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by blizzarddemon

emulators > Original Consoles > snega2usb

id rather not pay for anything, or at least enjoy the nostalgia of the consoles themselves (especially if i have to buy the carts too). Plus, consoles aren’t as rare as people think and are way cheaper than this alternative…

This “hack” is fail. I wouldn’t consider buying it, even if the price was $20, let alone “projected” at $100…

Posted at 11:14 pm on Sep 7th, 2009 by Mr. Sandman

no source code and no schematics makes me sad :(

Posted at 1:48 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by chris

@Bob:
First, it is not going to cost $100. (But well, that’s what you get when you put up figures too soon. My bad.) Second, doing this on a breadboard will require quite some mechanical hacking, since SNES connectors don’t have the standard 100mil pitch. Otherwise, see below.

@chris: it appears you are easily saddened :-) There will of course be a public release of the source code, once it is polished to a point where I could give away the source without losing face. Until then, allow me to sell a bunch of units so I can at least get rid of my debts. The wiring is more or less trivial. Take a datasheet of your favorite USB microcontroller, marry it to your favorite SNES/SEGA cartridge pinout document, and you’re done.

@Mr. Sandman: Is this a part of some Things Mr. Sandman Wouldn’t Consider Buying Blog, or am I missing your point?

Posted at 2:48 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by Matthias_H

@Matthias: This is hackaday, were if it’s not sporting an Arduino, is completely documented, free, open and doesn’t meet a very strict definition of hack, it’s not doin it rite. The peanut gallery can surely do it better, cheaper, faster and with more flair if you listen to them.

Posted at 6:10 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by Alchemyguy

Haha. I implied that documentation, freeness, and openality are bad things to the peanut gallery. Clearly that was not my intent.

Posted at 6:11 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by Alchemyguy

not something I’m really interested in but I do know a few people who would love to get their hands on such a product… I’ll pass it along for sure.

Posted at 6:40 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by twistedsymphony

Very original. Good hack!

Posted at 7:05 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by steve

Donde Esta the NES?

Posted at 8:30 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by homosapion

@Matthias_H: no comment.

Posted at 9:23 am on Sep 8th, 2009 by Mr. Sandman

if supergameboyruns, that would be a reason to buy!
otherwise meh… cute

Posted at 1:30 pm on Sep 8th, 2009 by Arrangemonk

This is a really cool device, even if it WAS in the $100 range. The people who don’t think that it has merit are just not in the target market is all. (although the site at least now does say ‘well below $100′).

Someone who has a console and some games in a box is not the target customer really. Someone who has nothing and wants to get started playing older games for nostalgia is not the target customer.

For someone who had a console(s) and the console(s) have long since died yet they have 100 cartridges that they can’t play unless they re-purchse a console (good luck on what condition you can find one in) may find this very useful. Being able to play the box full of games they used to enjoy without the chance of buying a brick console on ebay or buying one that works but will die soon anyway seems to be a valid goal to me.

I realize we’re talking to the DIY crowd here, and some people just don’t want to actually pay someone for their work no matter what though. I don’t think the whole community is that way, but as one poster said it, even if the parts cost $100 he’d rather buy them for himself and put it together instead of giving money to another person.

I guess I can see some kind of logic there with re-using parts, but not after you look at the device (which is NOT a bunch of resistors that could be re-purposed). And c’mon, we blow $100 on tons of stuff as electronic geeks. You really can’t stomach the idea of one of our own getting a little monetary prop for some hard work that provides real benefit to people?

You turn a hard drive into a clock, cool. But nobody was lacking a clock before. Still, I’d bet a few people might be willing to buy one versus make one. Like if I had all those spare parts sitting around then I’d make one, but I don’t, so I’d have to destroy a hard drive to make one and buy all the components at full retail in low quantities. I’d buy some of these projects completed in a heartbeat if they were available and I’d be happy that I was supporting a hardware hacker’s next project.

I get the idea of being cheap, but you won’t even *consider* the idea of supporting another human being that is contributing to society? Really? *sigh*

Posted at 1:58 pm on Sep 8th, 2009 by archaic0

Isn’t this just a ROM dumper? He just dumps the game to a .bin file and opens it with an emulator (which is not part of the project). We’ve had those for a while.

Posted at 2:36 pm on Sep 8th, 2009 by Tyler

@Tyler:
> Isn’t this just a ROM dumper? [...] We’ve had those for a while.
Yes and no. First you’d have to get one, then you’d have to use it. Both of which could be pretty much of a pain from what I’ve heard. Unavailable devices, serial connections with pretty much zero datarate or having to run around with diskettes, stitching together multi-disk images using commandline tools, and stuff.

Also, technically I don’t actually dump the game to a file. The ROM chip is the contents of the file.

Posted at 6:49 am on Sep 9th, 2009 by Matthias_H

The renaming of the rom name is probably what added to that technical confusion.

Would it be fair to say that the ‘volume label’ that was detected was renamed so the emulator could use it (why was that again?) and not that an actual rom file was downloaded and given a local file name?

Would it also be fair to say that while at least some part if not all of the rom data must be in memory, any read functions that take place are being sent to the cartridge? And not handled by a local PC copy of the rom data?

Forgive me if any of that doesn’t make sense, I don’t really have much experience with the rom scene, I just read about it a lot and it seems those points might benefit from some clarification.

Posted at 10:23 am on Sep 10th, 2009 by archaic0

@archaic0: The data on the “virtual thumbdrive” consists essentially of two different memory regions: stuff that is contained on the ROM/SRAM chips (contents of the files), and stuff that the microcontroller makes up (i.e. mainly the FAT16 file system), the latter partly using metadata from the ROM. Which, in the video, lead to the problem that a couple of special characters from the cartridge ended up in the filename. When I “renamed” the file in order to make it readable, only its FAT16 entry was changed but it still referred to the same ROM data.

From the snega2usb’s point of view, at no time there is more than 1 byte from the ROM/SROM being stored in its memory, so IN PRINCIPLE it is possible to randomly access the cart data. In practice, any SCSI read access always gets an entire sector of 512bytes. Also, most emulators do load the entire ROM file before executing it. This is to avoid read/write delays during execution, and reading the whole thing is the only way to check the contents against the checksum. So, by the time you start playing your game, it will no longer be read from the cartridge but entirely from your computer’s memory. If you WANT your emulator to crash upon cartridge removal, just like the real console, I can have the snega2usb deploy a special hotkey which tells it to ;-)

Posted at 3:27 am on Sep 11th, 2009 by Matthias_H