ToToTEK.COM

[amptor]

It depends on how well efficient that CR2032 circuit is. But at least the battery is easy to change and isn't soldered directly on unlike what we saw in plenty GBC devices in the late 1990s with spotwelded batteries soldered directly onto the PCB (and hence forth the plethora of electronic illiterate gamers showing how they used scotch tape to get the battery to contact again thinking that it was an actual fix which in fact it was very mickey mouse).

I have had CR2032 batteries fail pretty quickly in VMUs for the dreamcast and have also seen CR2032 batteries last more than 3 years in a desktop motherboard. But I have also seen them fail before 3 years in a desktop motherboard due to the circuitry being different.

I have a CR2032 slot from a desktop board in my SWC DX right now. I'm not even sure if the battery is still alive since I don't use it any more but the pin out fits directly into the SWC main board and it is a clean fit (well it is clean if you didn't need a diode to cancel out the BRAM battery charging circuit but that is a whole other thing, trace cutting and etc..I wouldn't really want to butcher an FFE product like that).

Anyway so yeah it is better to reduce the load times by using battery and it is cool how they allow you to quickly replace both of them and they used NiMH rather than NiCD which is smart in a way (though everyone knows both battery types have problems unless it says Sanyo on it generally ).

I could be incorrect about the solid state terminology but afaik batteries are polymer or liquid inside. In this case, I would assume that both batteries are polymer. They market solid capacitors these days for electronics but those are mearly polymer and I'm not certain if they are solid state as well. I'll have to brush up and see. But we aren't talking glass tubes and vacuum here anyway so that might be the main difference.

I was trying to look around earlier and see if the CF to SNES adapter called RetroZone SNES PowerPak uses the CR2032 as well. I could have sworn that it does but all the images I find today on google aren't showing it and actually are only showing one side of the PCB. Ah well.

But at least this shows that they put some extra thought into this so I'd say it is worth the 90 bucks.

[madman]

The SNES powerpak doesn't use a battery, you can backup the save RAM to the CF card. I've never actually used mine, so I don't know if EEPROM or some other NVRAM is used to store the save data. Maybe I'll get around to that this weekend.

[Mystic_Merlin]

A little update here as I explored the device a bit more.

I installed the USB transfer soft on a XP machine and it works quite OK. It's very basic and did crash once. Loading times are similar between USB transfer and SD loading.
Regarding roms with trainers I figured out it was mostly due to illegal sized roms so a simple padding to higher size usually do the trick. I wonder if it was a flaw existing on the v8 as even a basic SPF or SWC would load those roms.

[MottZilla]

[Trenton_net]

[amptor]

I just ordered mine. Can't have enough SNES backup devices esecially in flash cart form.

Now just waiting for sd2snes to come out.

[RGB_Gamer]

out og all these flash carts, is the snes powerpak the only one that supports star ocean (96mb)?

[amptor]

[Trenton_net]

[MottZilla]

The thing is for $90 or so, the Super EverDrive costs about the same atleast if you provide your own case and it's in my opinion atleast, a better product. Krikzz does a great job.

[madman]

[MottZilla]

The number of games over 32M is extremely small, and even smaller when you realize some of those require special hardware to run anyway. Without the special hardware games there are something like... 2 games over 32M? The main one people might want is Tales of Phantasia.

[amptor]

But I thought people were usually buying 48Mbit UFO series copiers before. Or was it 34M? Hmm.. maybe it was 34, I must be confused. It was an odd number I remember whereas most other copiers are 32M.

Anyway if they were trying to cheap out I'd expect them to not do the battery configurations that they did. This looks like a pretty decent piece of kit to me so I bought one. I was going to buy it anyway but I was just procrastinating

Hopefully it turns out good. I like the shape and color of the housing. The board from the pictures here looks fine, one of the chips look somewhat crude but it might just be the lighting from the photo. The rest of the chips are good quality. I saw Samsung RAM on there and Altera logic chip. Good stuff.

So now I don't think I'll be buying the floppy version of this. It would be neat if CCL or FFE put something out but I don't think CCL will. Who knows what FFE does these days. And Bung makes e-cigarettes so I doubt they'd get back into the console market (more money in nicotine than classic gaming).

[madman]

Yea, the 34M was UFO copiers, the extra 2M was for realtime saves IIRC.

[monty_burns_007]

I received my superufo 8 pro (sd card version) yesterday and tested it some time now :
On some point i'm excited, but on some dissepointed that not all features as specified work.

Here are my conclusions :

Pro's:

1. It works! It does what is says: emulating a game from ex. a .SMC ROM file.
Where powered on, you get a small menu with icons where you can copy the .SMC file (on sd card) to a DRAM area.
Then you can start up the game from DRAM area. Loading is for a big rom a couple of 10's sec. Not that fast, but it's not annoying.
2. Usb transfer cable works (only on 32bit, better XP, not Win7 64bit). However don't see the point in using it.
Since SDcard is much faster and more comfortable. I hope we can upgrade the firmware in the future (with for ex. the usb cable)
Mine came shipped with firmware v.9.0

Con's:
1. i haven't got the cheat engine been able to run succesfully on any game. The so called build in 1000's cheats which give an auto popup if game recognized doesn't work. Self entered codes also not working.
Saw other people with review on youtube with same conclusion.

2. The instant save and later restore works on some games. On the most games however the so called "hyper mode" crashes the game or get's the game in a stuck mode.
Saw other people with review on youtube with same conclusion.

3. When i opened my box (brand new card), it smelled like burned PCB board. :-s However card is working.
Don't expect high quality electronics in this card i think. Or maybe it's a new plastic smell :-p

4. When a game is loaded, you can 't get back out of the game to the superufo menu without power off and on again.
So i you change a lot in playing games, the power switch is used a lot. (don't think it's so healthy for snes and cards)
Pressing reset button, only reset the card like a real card. So the loaded card in DRAM is rebooted. I read somewhere on the forum that a guy pressed the reset button longer to get back in the superufo, but that doesn't work on mine. If I press the reset button longer, i only get a black screen.

5. Sometimes with a power up, you get a black screen or even the power led isn't lid. That was the case on my first startup. (i immediatly though my card and snes what broken). :-s

6. All ROM names are displayed in the superufo menu with only 8 characters (DOS like) so sometimes i can't read which game it is. :-s

I haven't a super FX card, so didn't try that.

Conclusion:
I you sporadically want to play a snes game on the original machine and find all available solutions :
Super everdrive,... expensive like i did (costs more than twice the rest value of the snes itself), then this card is a cheaper solutions. The premium features don't work in most of the cases however.
Hyper mode doesn't work mostly, if you use only normal mode, most games run.
Everdrive apperently is'nt equiped with batteries, this card is (2 kinds : NiMH and small cell), i hope these will stay in good condition. I bought mine from superufo.com for 60 dollars (+5 dollars shipping) which was a good deal. (saw on the superufo.com site that price went back up to 89 dollars like on other retro games selling sites)
I received it with air mail (bubble package) pretty fast. (5 to 7 days from hong kong)

Most card here in Europe are 90 to 100 euro's ! So my advise, for a cheap card buy on in hong kong.

I hope Superufo will make firmware upgrades available in the future (but looking at there website and manuals,... i doubt it)
I want to see fixed with firmware :
1. working cheat system as promised in specs.
2. long filename support (otherwise not userfriendly)
3. a key combination to get back in superufo menu without having to power off and on the snes. (don't know if you have to do that also on a everdrive).

So Superufo: thanks for a great cheaper card that the other solutions.
If you could fix these 3 items with a firmware upgrade (possible with usb cable or sd card ?), I would be very happy.

monty