[GUIDE/INFO] Flash Carts, ODE, and more!

[nightrnr]

Well I'll be damned!
Shantae seems to play GREAT on GBA flash carts (even my Supercard).

Before, I was using an old version of Goomba (apparently). When I loaded the latest version on my everdrive and saw it play nice, I made a GBA batch file of it for my EZflash too.
Both are good now.

Add another good use for the lousy Supercard too. Makes for a good emulation option as long as you have the most current emulator.

Everdrive still tops them both for saving though; Supercard and EZflash makes you reset and/or manually save. I have not tried the new EZflash firmware however. I will, but prefer the controlled saves for some uses right now.

[Jagosaurus]

So did we cover the SD2SNES (or whatever it's called now) can emulate GB games? Pretty cool.

@ziggy, carry over from our PS1 burn thread...

I dig the PSIO and have been contemplating getting one for a long time. That said... have you guys seen any info on why there's not a more traditional ODE for the PSX? Is there a technical issue preventing this or maybe even making the parallel port easier to load from? The disc drive is so plug & play so there must be more to it.

Seems like the compatibility issues (seems much improved over the years) were tied to the input on the parallel port, but maybe it's the systematic nature of an ODE on PS1?

[Ziggy]

SGB support for the FX Pak Pro has been added to the news section on the first page. I'll add it properly to the FX Pak Pro section once it's been assimilated into the official firmware. From what I've read, a few updates have already been pushed out to fix bugs.

Wasn't there a PS1 ODE before the PSIO? I seem to remember one, but I cannot recall the name.

[Anapan]

I finally got around to trying out the FXPAK's SGB2 support & it's pretty impressive. Couldn't really tell the difference between it and my original SGB2. I see that over at Zeldix they've gotten MSU-1 support for Link's Awakening working. Gameboy with streaming CD quality sound.
While I was updating the firmware I added some more MSU-1 games. My new favorite is Donkey Kong Country with a rebuilt soundtrack using the original score, but all the instrument samples are uncompressed - it's like pulling out earplugs how crisp it sounds compared to the original samples. Looks like someone fixed my old MMX Genesis soundtrack covered by Savaged Regime (I'd messed up the endgame track order).

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/676069416
https://youtu.be/z6qsqUJuO4o

[Ziggy]

My new favorite is Donkey Kong Country with a rebuilt soundtrack using the original score, but all the instrument samples are uncompressed - it's like pulling out earplugs how crisp it sounds compared to the original samples.

Whoa, thanks for the heads up!

Personally, I think the MSU-1 is amazing but I'm not a huge fan. I've seen a few videos of games with awesome CD quality soundtracks like Turtles in Time, but to me it just doesn't fit. It's awesome, and I'm glad it exists, but I prefer the original chip tunes.

This DKC uncompressed samples is very interesting, though. So apparently someone found the music files before they were compressed for the cartridge and turned them into WAV (or mp3 or whatever) and someone else then took that and made the MSU-1 patch. Looks like they did DKC 1 and 2 so far. Are they also doing 3?

I just listened to some tracks on YouTube, and wow, some instruments sound a lot closer to the real thing this way. Some parts are way clearer, and as a result of that some parts make the song sound/feel different. So I'm not sure how I feel about it. One could argue that what we got is the way the developers intended the music to be heard, they might have tweaked the samples so they sounded better after compression (like how Dolby noise reduction works on cassette tapes). After all, David Wise knew the 64KB size limitation when he was programming the music. So the uncompressed samples might not be what was intended, per se.

Either way, I'm gonna have to check these out! This will probably be the first MSU-1 audio enhanced games that I actually care to play through.

[nightrnr]

I dig the PSIO and have been contemplating getting one for a long time. That said... have you guys seen any info on why there's not a more traditional ODE for the PSX? Is there a technical issue preventing this or maybe even making the parallel port easier to load from? The disc drive is so plug & play so there must be more to it.

Seems like the compatibility issues (seems much improved over the years) were tied to the input on the parallel port, but maybe it's the systematic nature of an ODE on PS1?

They were just talking about that a few days ago on the psio forum:
https://www.cybdyn-systems.com.au/forum ... start=1200
In particular:

In a PC, an optical drive and all its associated hardware is built in to a discreet device that connects to your computer through a standard interface, like IDE or SATA. The computer really doesn't care how the drive works, as long as it gets the data it needs from whatever is on the other end of that IDE/SATA connection. Realistically, this means that you could swap out your optical drive for an SD card reader and your PC wouldn't really notice (yes, I'm oversimplifying here but stay with me). The Saturn/Dreamcast/GameCube have optical drives that work like this, so swapping them out is a *relatively* straightforward process because what happens on the other side of the cable is immaterial as long as the console is fed the data it wants.

The difference between those platforms and the PSX or PS2 is that important portions of the optical drive are actually integrated in to their motherboards rather than being part of a discreet piece of hardware. When you're disconnecting the PSX/PS2 optical drive, you're really only disconnecting the laser assembly because the chips that interpret the signal from the laser are actually on the console's motherboard. This means that, as I understand it, you can make a PSX/PS2 ODE in one of two ways:

1. You could replace the laser assembly with a piece of hardware that imitates the laser assembly in a way that is totally transparent to the drive controllers (extremely challenging).
2. You could find a way to bypass the optical drive hardware entirely and route a signal in from an external piece of hardware (also challenging).

I think PSIO is doing the second method, which is why it has an FPGA and an ARM core in it; it's essentially mimicking the chips that would control the optical drive so that Cybdyn has more flexibility with how it can feed the console data. Regardless, it's an uphill battle and a lot more complicated than what MODE/Fenrir/GCLoader/USB-GDROM/etc. are doing.

And there is talk of them (Cybdyn) making an ODE for PS1 as well, maybe to even work in tandem with their PSIO to do other things (virtual MC and save/restore memory cards for starts). It would work as a standard ODE too of course.

I'd take at least 2 if it becomes a reality.

Oh, and Gameboy/SGB support is very good news for the SD2SNES, or whatever something-FX card it's called now. I was going to dedicate a GB everdrive to a SGB cart, but heck, that works too. (But methinks my PSP will keep pulling my SGB duty for now).

[nightrnr]

...and now there's (more than) talk of the X-station, another upcoming ODE for the PS1:

https://www.retrogameboards.com/t/new-p ... ation/2018

If this works for the PSone (with screen), I am so in.

But I may get Cybdyn's ODE too if it becomes a thing. I mean, I've been holding on to some bad-drive systems for a while now.

I am completely nuts for these things. They are practically instabuys for me (assuming I can get an order in; I mean lucky-obsession is almost a requirement to get a hold of some of them).

I'm reading that a lot of guys have PSIO's but still haven't installed theirs (due to moderate difficulty install) to even try out. I couldn't wait to install mine. And I had a few systems to fall back on in case of a botched effort, but all turned out well.

[Ziggy]

Voultar just posted a video showing the installation of PS1digital and Xstation prototype.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZTMTG267II

From what he says, the Xstation sounds like it'll be cheaper and have better game compatibility than the PSIO. But it will only work on 550x and earlier models, IIRC.

[nightrnr]

I read 7000 and earlier models for X-station. It's similar to PSIO (I think that is 7500 and earlier).

I wouldn't be too quick to discount PSIO's compatibility though. They are making (the last few) major breakthroughs and the reported bad games are mostly old news; most have been fixed.
The next update will fine-tune it even more.

Cybdyn's upcoming ODE will be practically plug-and-play, so I may just stick with them for everything.

Still, it might be nice to have 1 X-station to mess with. Heaven knows that I have enough PS1 systems with bad drives to repurpose. Not sure how much of a mess I'd make with the install; that guy made it look easy.

What I REALLY need, is an ODE for the PSone. Paired with a screen, that would be oh so sweet. If Cybdyn offers that on their ODE, I will be totally stoked.

[Anapan]

I got the UNO cart for Atari 2600 hoping it would work with my cartridge-port modded Flashback 2. It does not, but I just read that the Harmony Flashcart can work with a firmware upgrade (I didn't even know the firmware could be upgraded). Someone even internallized the Harmony Cart. The UNO, and a couple other flashcarts for Atati products can be purchased @ https://thebrewingacademy.com/