Cartridge dev tutorial?

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gauauu
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by gauauu »

tokumaru wrote:The main advantages of the N8, IMO, are the lower price and the fact that it takes SD cards, rather than CompactFlash, which are much harder to find these days.
I can attest to this. To make it worse, the powerpak didn't work with the ancient 4mb Compact Flash I had laying around. If you buy a PowerPak, make sure to buy a new-ish CompactFlash card to go with it.
iGonzalez
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by iGonzalez »

So then, there is no reason for don't buy the everdrive...

For what I read, I understand they both are more or less the same, so I guess I will take the easier/chraper one.

For the everdrive there is versions for around 60£, but they are not official...should I avoid it and pay de 100£ one?
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

gauauu wrote:the powerpak didn't work with the ancient 4mb Compact Flash I had laying around
Aside the possibility of compatibity issues, from what i've heard, the really early CF:s were terribly unreliable.

New CF:s are used as silent, easily swappable and energy saving HDD replacements in old computers, so there's that.

CF:s are supposed to load quicker, but i don't think it should matter here.

My main gripe is the flimsy build quality of the few available CF capable multireader dongles in stores around here.
iGonzalez wrote:For the everdrive there is versions for around 60£, but they are not official...should I avoid it and pay de 100£ one?
The unofficial ones is a bit of a russian roulette regarding whether they're healthy for your console. Check out this article before you buy. https://db-electronics.ca/2017/07/05/th ... -consoles/
tepples
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by tepples »

The smallest CF cards (4 MB and smaller) are likely formatted in FAT12, which is a somewhat more problematic file system to support than FAT16 or FAT32.

These four subtypes of FAT can be found:

FAT12: Smaller than 16 MiB
FAT16 subtype $04, one sector per cluster: 16-32 MiB
FAT16 subtype $06, multiple sectors per cluster: 64 MiB to just under 2 GiB
FAT32: 2 GiB to (officially) just under 32 GiB

I conjecture that the firmware is designed to look for FAT16 subtype $06 or FAT32, not FAT12 or FAT16 subtype $04. Can someone back this up?
lidnariq
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by lidnariq »

FAT12 is a pain to support (individual FAT entries can be stored across sectors!) so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if its support is lacking.

Certainly the powerpak source has an error message that specifically says FORMAT: .db " Bad Format - Use FAT16/FAT32"
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Sumez
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by Sumez »

If the PowerPak only uses compactflash, I'd say that's more than enough reason to go with Everdrive. :)
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Sumez
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by Sumez »

Fisher wrote:
iGonzalez wrote:where does the buy the pcbs?
I think a good option woud be Infinite NES Lives.
Good luck and have fun. :wink:
How are these on the 3.3v issue btw? Has anyone looked into it?
I've been using them for a while, and I'm very happy with it. Would suck if it uses 3.3v components.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Sumez wrote:
Fisher wrote:
iGonzalez wrote:where does the buy the pcbs?
I think a good option woud be Infinite NES Lives.
Good luck and have fun. :wink:
How are these on the 3.3v issue btw? Has anyone looked into it?
I've been using them for a while, and I'm very happy with it. Would suck if it uses 3.3v components.
They're fine. I kind of knew this from him voicing the issue himself, but i had a bare UNROM board laying around so i double checked and it's all 5v compliant.
iGonzalez
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by iGonzalez »

FrankenGraphics wrote:The unofficial ones is a bit of a russian roulette regarding whether they're healthy for your console. Check out this article before you buy. https://db-electronics.ca/2017/07/05/th ... -consoles/
I will, thanks!
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Sumez
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Re: Cartridge dev tutorial?

Post by Sumez »

FrankenGraphics wrote: They're fine. I kind of knew this from him voicing the issue himself, but i had a bare UNROM board laying around so i double checked and it's all 5v compliant.
I knew I could trust INL :) Nothing but good experiences from this guy.
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