ToToTEK.COM

[CyberAxe]

I think carts for consoles such as SMS NES SNES MegaDrive up to n64 and so forth but with the ability to slot in an SD card in the top where you could store your ROMs

Since its SD Based your not as limited to what you can store as you can get 4gb cards now a days (through i think that's overkill for most of those systems)

Plus would keep the cost down i'd imagine since you wouldn't have to provide the memory built in

I'd imagine it working by placing a loader ROM on the root of the card which would be loaded on start up (assuming its possible) allowing you to select your ROM and such and then your backups in a sub folder and a separate folder where saves are kept

And possibly a seperate pass through cart for being able to backup carts

I personally think this would be quite a good item especially since SD is a cheap and widely used universal format bringing a modern element to classic consoles

I'd love to be able to put my collection on one of these and play them without having to fart around with all the original carts (which arent the easyest of things to store) plus would rock for games that save such as Sonic 3 since my battery is long dead and wouldnt have such problems in future

[kyuusaku]

Unfortunately, SD is not an easy alternative to using conventional memory (RAM/NOR flash) for storage, SD cards have multiplexed data and address bus, this means that a copier would have to work a lot faster than the console (but still keep synchronous) to translate the console's memory accesses into many SD card writes to gather the data stored there before the console realizes anything is wrong, generally this is beyond the scope of copiers (DRAM is similar except it's a lot faster than flash memory.) It also be even worse for consoles such as MD and N64 because they use 16-bit data bus (while the SD card has an 8-bit) so it would require twice as much "behind the scenes" work to fetch memory for the console. This is possible, but only realizable if the SD card is used as raw data storage, meaning no file system etc.

It's also not possible to implement a FAT file system in hardware (flashcarts etc generally don't have processors) to manage gamesaves and ROMs, this must be done in some sort of processor environment. While this is possible with a MCU, it's not possible for the game to be saved in a directory automagically without a MCU watching over the game and managing everything, normally some user intervention is required. Your idea requires a microprocessor to handle the file system/SD access and translate it on the fly to data for the console, this is possible in theory but again beyond the scope of copiers.

All in all, it is reasonable for a copier/"flashcart" to use SD memory as a mass storage device, but it will still need to use either DRAM or Flash for temporary game storage and it will always be up to the user to manage saves.

[rbudrick]

Interesting points, Kyuusaku. I suppose it would help if each rom played was moved from the SD, to a DRAM on the cart for the sake of speed. I can see how the extra cost for additional components would make it prohibitive. Not impossible, but certainly much more copmplex. I'm not sure if this is how the Cuttlecart works, but I know most flash memory is pretty slow...

For copiers, I can see this as more of an issue than with just the flash carts themselves, but I suppose it might matter whether your device is an actual copier or just a device that loads roms to the flash cart. That is, whether it actually dumps games and "copies" or just loads them.

-Rob

[kyuusaku]

I forgot to mention that ROM accesses can easily be decoded instantly into DRAM accesses which non-linear memory can't.

The Cuttlecart 2 copies ROMs to SRAM where it runs them, I don't think there's a device out there that emulates ROM with memory cards.

The best canidate for a memory card (specifically CF) copier would be N64, it has a very slow cart bus which is already multiplexed, it also doesn't require the copier to write saves back to the memory card (very difficult, Flash cannot be written like RAM or EEPROM) since that stuff can be passed to an external save cartridge. It also is the only single-ROM console that needs such storage space :)

[Suppafly]

What if the flash cards had some ram inside, but they were able to load roms from the SD to the cart´s ram?

The most common reason why I dont use my flash cards is that im too lazy to find the usb and parallel cables, install the software and flash them...

[MottZilla]

Cartridges for classic systems similar to the SuperCard/M3 for GBA would be awesome. Flash cards are so much more convient than floppy disks or CD-ROMs as they make unitd alot larger. I imagine you could fit everything you need into a Genesis, SNES, N64, etc. cartridge once you don't need a bulky disk drive of some kind. Like Suppafly said, it's annoying to have to flash games to the cartridge everytime you want to change games. Atleast for people that change games often. And anytime you can cut out the need for using your PC to load games is great.

I'd certainly buy a SNES, Genesis, or N64 cartridge if it could load off CF or SD memory cards.

[cd_vision]

Funny you guys have been talking about this. Neoteam's new cart for the Megadrive works in a similiar way, except it uses Neoflash carts instead of SD memory. You'll be able to put the same flash cart inside of their SNES and N64 adapters when they're released.

[MottZilla]

That would be neat but I imagine you HAVE to use their flash carts, and the total cost will be alot more than either the MegaCart or Tototek MDPRO carts.