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[cpix]

What is considered as the "best" backup unit for the genesis?

[MottZilla]

There are few to choose from. Double Pro Fighter which I have also does SNES. It also seems to be the most common in bigger ram sizes as it usually has 24M or 32M of DRAM. I've never seen it in 16M or less, though i guess 16M might be out there. The Super Magic Drive is the other big one. It doesn't seem as common as the DPF, and comes in DRAM sizes from 8M to 32M, but it seems to me that 24M is uncommon and 32M seems rare with the 8M and 16M units seeming to pop up for sale more often.

There are some other units like the Multi Game Doctor 2 which won't backup games unless you have the rare backup board from what I remember reading. There is also some Mega Disk Interceptor which is kind of odd and I've only seen in 8M and 16M and don't recall hearing anything about support for games that use SRAM.

In my opinion the best "backup" unit would probably be the Super Magic Drive if you have 32M of DRAM. The reason being it has a built in Parallel Port which DPF doesn't. But you can get a parallel port adapter card for the DPF. So that puts them back to about even. I think the SMD uses an external floppy disk drive that the super magicom used which is a minus. The DPF has a standard drive built in.

In the end the DPF is more available in 32M DRAM than the Super Magic Drive, plus you can use it for SNES games too.

If you don't want to copy games or collect a copier, a Flash Cartridge for Genesis would be cheaper for playing games. The EverDrive cartridge uses SD memory cards and is around 80$. It will play anything SMD or DPF will plus it also will work with Sega Master System and Sega 32X which DPF doesn't and I'm pretty certain SMD doesn't either.

[madman]

There is also the MD+, which is essentially an SMD with a built-in floppy drive.

[sledge]

[CrackLtd]

Everdrive. Period.

[MottZilla]

Everdrive isn't a Copier. But yes whatever class it is in it seems to be at the top.

[ssxcody]

depends on what you are planing to do with it. the multi game hunter is the most reliable one but with 16m very limited in size (the 24m version is very rare). the double pro fighter is good with 32m in size but less reliable. if you just want to play games i`d also recomment the everdrive.

[cpix]

[kyuusaku]

To say MGH is reliable is a joke. The dumping algorithms suck, ESPECIALLY for MD. IIRC you can't even backup a 24M game on a 24M unit! I vaguely remember having problems backing up even 16M games which doesn't make sense since 4, 8 and 16M games are all mapped the same. The hardware is also extremely unreliable, particularly the floppy drive which is its own sub-system based around a microcontroller. On the other hand both DPF and SMD are based around the same hardware which is better integrated than the MGH, and they share a lot of the same code. The dumping algorithms are basic but as good as you'll get on an old copier which has very poor mirroring detection. The later SMD BIOS and DPF at least know how to bankswitch SRAM and backup >16M games. None of the old copiers know how to do SRAM size detection so any protected games will always need cracks. The hardware is pretty reliable. The DPF is actually the successor to the MGH so I don't know why anyone would say the MGH is better XD

[MottZilla]

I have a feeling the "unreliable" reports about Double Pro Fighter are all based on the same one or two quotes that are copy/pasted all over the internet. I have DPF and it works wonderfully. It also doesn't seem in any particular way to be flimsy or unreliable.

[Mystic_Merlin]

[Trenton_net]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I seem to recall many Chinese stores having problems with MGH hardware. I mean high defect rates like 30% to 60% or something ridiculous. Dead Floppy drives, chips which popped out of sockets during shipping, etc. Or perhaps I got it confused with another copier?

Man, it's been so long! (^_^);

[madman]