I’m one of the builders of this OSCR and I just wanted to say thank you so much for the kind words and visibility for this project! We’re so glad you’re enjoying it! You did such an excellent job of covering what an OSCR is in this video; I’ll definitely be sharing it whenever somebody wants to know more about what I’m working on. 😊
@@johndrippergaming Yes, but it's not as straightforward as choosing them out of the menu, and they won't be auto-recognized. There are some aspiring developers in the project Discord channel that can assist with reading the contents of multi-carts.
@@XVa-uj8m Sadly there are too many pins on a Jaguar cartridge for the current HW5 Arduino to support it. With newer revisions of the OSCR in development that are moving away from the Arduino Mega 2560, there may one day be a Jaguar cartridge adapter.
Yep, but the optical discs are even more important. Thankfully, I think it's possible to dump anything from the PS3 and older at this point, some of them are really easy like the Saturn and PS that can be done in a regular computer from RetroArch. Some are a little harder like the Dreamcast where it's just a cheap SD card adapter and disc to dump any of them. The Wii and PS3 are a little harder as they require that you have the system jailbroken to do. But, once you've done that, it's not that hard. That being said, the carts can be damaged over time, even if you don't use them, so backing those up for posterity is also a good idea. It's not a bad idea to use a combination of checksums and something like quickpar to repari minor damage and just run that on some sort of regular basis.
"Imagine if Microsoft shipped you a entire extra processor just to run Excel" reminds me that while you can now use Python (alongside VBA) in Excel, that code _has to execute_ on Azure. 🤦♂️ Anyway, happy V-Day! V stands for Veronica in my book!
Nice one, Veronica! I saw my OSCR video peeking through one of your screen grabs... it's a neat and very useful device! Re hidden files, I think the advice to hide them is just to help navigate the folder structure without all the extra file clutter when you're reading the card... at least that's why I hid all of my files. Re building one from scratch - there's a lot of soldering in the OSCR with all of those cartridge slots, but it's totally doable for less experienced folks, and it's great practice! And if you want some help improving your soldering skills, you should come out MGC 2024 next month and attend the gameBadge workshop - we focus on teaching soldering skills and you'll walk away with a cool pico-based handheld game system to boot 😁
Thank you so much for the comment! The workshop sounds like a lot of fun- I'll look into it as I figure out travel plans. BTW, thank you for your videos on MiSTer- you've been a big help as I've learned more about the ecosystem.
Not only that, but the PS3 is _technically_ 'retro'... And that deals me psychic damage. Personally I think we need to reevaluate the criteria for such things... In early gaming _every_ generation represented a quantum leap over the previous, so delineating 'retro' by generations or simply just the passage of time made sense... However, if we look at the past two decades, nothing after the PS2 has made such an advance. This is why I insist that until something drastic occurs, the PS2 is the last "retro" console, and everything after that is still contemporary, with only incremental improvements in the quality of the experience.
@@Bakamoichigei PS3 is vintage, there are still plenty of original PS3s out there and I think it still enjoys patent protection. If it's not old enough to have it's patents expire, then it's not old enough to be retro.
5:27 For such a bright, sunny personality, you are the queen of dirty looks . Love this vid. Thanks for all you do. I tell all my friends: "Linux is awesome, and so is Veronica!"
Really interesting Veronisode I enjoyed this. I've never owned a cartridge based console. My C64-C is the first machine I've owned that takes one. I have a KF device for that for the games
I don't think I will ever do this but the tech behind it is just so cool to see. I love the idea of just plunking some hardware down that has direct access to the address and data bus. Like the wild west of computers.
i just found out about your channel recently, and the calm and composure you and your videos have is brilliant, and may i add in today's era of flashy and loud content, you are a bloody gem. cheers! [i use arch btw]
Love the channel and the ROM vid is a nice light hearted change from the usual uploads!!!! As a Brit who cut his teeth on COBOL, pascal, 6502 and 68000 assembly I get a ruddy great nostalgic smile watching your legacy videos. Go go Veronica 😉😁🙏🏻👍🏻
OMG, core memory unlocked! I, too, left the NES running for DAYS so as not to lose my progress in Super Mario Bros 3. It was devastating when the dog ran by excited about something, got tangled in the controller cords and ripped the console out of the entertainment center. The NES Satellite was a godsend, for that reason!
Thank you for doing your own subtitles. It's really help for people like me who read along! This reminds me of the time my younger sibling overwrote my FF3/6 save file when we were kids. I was quite displeased!
I’ve been looking for a recent video on this for a couple weeks now and had to double take when I saw it pop up on my feed under your channel… THANK YOU!!!
Great video (as always, amiright?)! Love your sense of humor. Thanks so much for the breakdown, I know a decent amount of this stuff and I definitely learned some things thanks to you. I've been digging into handheld emulation a lot lately and it was nice to see another aspect of classic game preservation and enjoyment. Now I go to share your video with a few friends that will enjoy it.
I never actually used them, but between 1985-1988, in Finland, a radio program called sth like 'Silicone' sent computer code on the airwaves for listeners to record on their tape decks. You then put the tape into your early computer cassette drive to use it. Listeners made their own programs also. No wonder as this started in 1982 as a different project for citizens' edutainment benefit, we got Nokia phones and text messaging going first here - there was already a user base for tech stuff. Early PC mags always listed code to make your own programs, create drivers or tinker with stuff. Commodore 64 cost as much as a TV back then, and my first 486 machine the same amount as my first car, Datsun 100 A.
I have a sizeable Game Boy game collection and have been wanting to copy saves and backup my games. This open source project looks fantastic and an ideal way to do it, thanks for the video!
Not affiliated with the project in any way, but the hiding the txt files on the sd card is most likely to, well, hide them. de-clutter the sd card contents so it's easier to find the file you dumped between all those files.
》Its concept is something similar to that one employed with expansion cards connected to ISA/EISA/VLB/PCI slots throughout data bus, the same modular architecture we still see nowadays but, as you've said, it used be much more appropriate for actual implementation during that technological transition from the 70s to the 80s.
On start up, the chip (TPS2113) that handles the power switching could go through any state, even when 3.3V is selected because its enable pin is permanently on. The chip takes a little time to fully turn on and a little more time to actually decide what the output should be - we're only talking several milliseconds. The author of the project can resolve this problem by enabling the chip a little time after it's turned on; it'll be faster than turning the device and then plugging in a cartridge. The output of the chip is 0V when the chip is not enabled. A common method to do this is with a capacitor and a Schmitt trigger.
The MCU controlling the chip is also powered by it, so delaying turn on isn't all that helpful. Your proposed solution isn't wrong, but the time difference would be measured in nanoseconds if not microseconds. The latency for the toggling of 3.3V comes from the time it takes the MCU to boot and set the pin state. HW7 resolves the issue entirely by not powering the cartridge slots and processor with the same power rail. Instead, the slots get their own rail which can be toggled on and off and adjusted as needed by the firmware. It also monitors this rail to make sure the voltage is within bounds so it can cut the power to the slots if it isn't.
@@Shocker99 I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Your proposed solution was not a hardware solution because it was not a solution at all. It was not the TPS2113 causing the issue, it was the microcontroller. Your proposed hardware solution would not have fixed this because the MCU is powered by the TPS2113, so your solution would have made the problem worse by delaying the MCU booting and changing the pin state even later. Also, this problem was actually recently solved via a firmware update that moved the pin state update to even earlier in the code.
:) GO Veronica! LOVED IT and AMAZED at your CPM Cart ! ! Never knew it existed, and YES I am THAT OLD to have used it on 8 inch Floppy back in the day:) HAD to share with youngest Daughter as she goes to Retro Game shops whenever she finds one :) I am with you on SMT Soldering is beyond my capabilities... ALL the BEST, Happy New Year and Cheers from Upper Left Coast! :)
Thank you! Yeah, that CPM cartridge is something else. I want to do a proper video on it but I'm looking for more original media in order to show it off.
If I were someone into homebrew on any of those systems I could see that device being incredibly useful. Save game backup would also be fairly useful, but I'm guessing the SNES & N64 games I have in storage lost their data years ago and my NES ones would surely have if I still had them. Still though I really enjoyed learning more about this project and hope it has continued support for the future!
I loved this video! I saw your disclaimer about this being your channel and you cover whatever subject you want. I agree with you but let me say that for me, your channel is a tech channel and sooner or later you'll cover whatever tech subject in na pleasant vídeo like you did this time. I wish you the best of luck.
Fun fact: I built one of these a few years ago and while dumping my copy of Golden Nugget 64 the checksum didn't match. After talking to Sanni we discovered that the original dump was bad and had been for a long time.
I like this video and your enthusiasm! Thanks! I found this channel after you posted something on the OSCR Discord today. The only thing I would have liked to see you mention in some way was how to update the firmware on the OSCR, this is basically my only 'quirk'/con with the OSCR. Would have been nice if the new firmware could just be copied onto the SD card and be loaded from the OSCR menu. But I can't have it all and thus far I'm quite happy with my OSCR. One question I have is how you knew that for N64 cartridges it might be better to turn it on in 3.3V mode before inserting the cartridge to avoid the possibility of the 5V spike. I didn't find this in Sanni's userguide or I might just be reading past it. I'm looking forward to more of your video's, like how you mentioned that you would do a video about fixing your NES. That one is looking quite bad, so I'm curious what you will be doing to it.
> Would have been nice if the new firmware could just be copied onto the SD card and be loaded from the OSCR menu. The ATmega line does not support this. It has to be programmed by another device. The only way to implement this with the current architecture (the ATmega/Arduino Mega) would be to have another device boot first and look at the SD card for an update, and if found update the main device before booting it. I am currently working on an updater to make updating easier, but it will still require a computer. > how you knew that for N64 cartridges it might be better to turn it on in 3.3V mode before inserting the cartridge to avoid the possibility of the 5V spike The wiki page on Automatic Voltage Select.
Great hardware for preservation. However, the disclaimer made me want to comment on who owns what. Unfortunately, even back then at the cartridge games, we didn't own the games. we owned basically a license to use the media on its designated console. Even if you did dump your own games that you bought with your money, you still wouldn't be allowed to play the resulting roms in anything but its designated console. Just reading the first pages of my Sega Game Gear games' manuals, one can see that they give you the license to play the game only on the Sega Game Gear console in its intended way. Just to clear that "i bought it, so i can do it" thing. They did cover even this back then with a blanket statement about the cartridge's use.
First off, thank you! I'm glad you both are enjoying the videos! Second, regarding ColecoVision: I think there are, actually! I'm trying to learn more and might do a follow-up at some point, but there are lots of community-contributed adapters out there for other game consoles, and I think I saw ColecoVision in there.
If the battery is still good, you can always just wire a second battery in parallel to the main battery for a few minutes while you replace the main battery. That being said, it's far better to just use one of these units to backup the save ahead of time than to bother with that. Also, while you're at it, it's worth putting in a proper battery holder if the battery in there is soldered to the board so that the next time you don't need to. These carts just get more rare over time, so it's better to take the risk of redoing that now than later.
Great video! The OSCR _is_ an utterly indispensable tool for anyone into the physical side of retro games! I built my own v3 OSCR, and it's fantastic. 😃👌 The ability to rewrite flash cartridges is super cool. I've used my OSCR to write games to Nintendo's own rewritable Super Famicom flash cartridges. (Fan translations, romhacks, etc. All patched to ROMs dumped from my own carts using OSCR!) And I've used my OSCR for preservation; a Satellaview 8M Memory Pak or Nintendo Power SF Memory Cassette doesn't come into my possession without a complete backup. And I back up the SRAM of any games I acquire so I can examine the previous owners' progress later. (Sadly I'm like 0 for 4 finding Mario Paint cartridges with any art still saved on them! 😢) btw, emulator SRAM compatibility is usually a header issue. I've yet to try loading an OSCR dumped SRAM in an emu, but I know that save data dumped with a magicom such as a Super Wild Card or Super UFO Pro 8 needs to have the header stripped out before an emulator will recognize it. 😉👍 EDIT: Oh yeah, something about the older v3 OSCR; it can also read pretty much anything through the SNES slot, given the appropriate adapter...since it's all just arbitrary GPIO...same as the newer versions. 😃 (Personally, I rather like the more compact formfactor though!) Also, I've been running my OSCR almost exclusively off a decade-old powerbank for the half a year since I built it with no issues. It's super handy!
I really want one of these but $200-300 is a bit much for me right now Will definitely keep my eye out for different versions of this especially if there's one that can write to reproduction cartridges
Kits are about $100 if you want to DIY it. The soldering is pretty easy if you get the SMT components preassembled, which adds about $10-20 to the cost depending on if you want RTC or not (most people do not need RTC). It does take a few hours to do it all though. Also, assembled prices will be dropping soonish as well, likely to around $130-150.
That is so cool! Although it seems a hint excessive to me to have a separate device with its own display, controls and memory card slot, instead an accessory gadget that just has the cartridge slots and a controller, that connects to your PC via USB or whatever and then just have Linux drivers/tools for operating the thing.
Sometimes you need a toaster, sometimes you need an oven. You can do a lot more with an oven, including making toast, but sometimes a specialized tool is the most efficient.
Can the OSCR project be used to build a standalone emulation system or be used in conjunction with the Mister FPGA? It'd be cool to build a device using 1:1 scale 3D printed replacement shells for game consoles with the modern experiences like save states and Retro Achievements.
Loving the subject material Veronica. Gaming from my youth! I'm guessing there's an equivalent device for 'backing up' the older 8-bit games, like Atari, Colecovision, Intel vision, etc....? I enjoyed meeting you at VCFMW, & I'll be sure to bring more floppy disks for your Sony Mavica, at this year's show. :)
I'd love something like this and a MiSTer in a single case that could boot directly from real cartridges and use their saves. I have a GB/GBA reader now I use to back up those but more cartage types would be great.
This seems like a good way to build a library and back up roms to us on steam deck emulators. Thanks for the video I now have an idea for building up a retro steam deck library, while preserving my entire collection of games that are on cartridge. But would you also happen to know if this project will have DS/3DS support for your research in to it? Or maybe even game gear and Atari lynx? This seems like there's potential. I'd also love to see these folks add a TGFX16 port. Anywho I'm rambling, again thanks for the video.!
les gooo. also if anyone is put off by the price of prebuilts, there are clones for cheaper. and at this point you can sometimes find them used if someone only intended t5o dump a massive collection. like for me rn im buying games ocassionally and then adding them to my library
Wow, your voice reminds me of Joanne Liebeler from "Hometime." She did home improvement and repair shows and had her own shows on TLC and networks like that.
This is good for companies that are re-releasing /porting old school consoles games to the next gen gaming console and they do not a back up of their roms.
Looks awesome for N64 Cartridges, I have a Retro Freak and it can dump and emulate all your cartridges(NES, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Game Boy, Color, Advance, Mega Drive, Genesis, PC Engine, TG16, PC Engine Supergrafix). However it only works up to 16 bit cartridges so N64 would be impossible. I will check out this device for my N64 games
Excellent stuff! Been waiting for a tool like like this. Absolutely god-sent for game collectors and obviously for the future archiving purposes. Been saying it for years now, will say it now: Backup, rip and store EVERYTHING digital you love and consider important, or even just cool. One day, it will be gone. What comes to the "legality", at least in EU you have 100% the right to do a backup of any media product you've legally bought. This was ruled already back in the VHS and C-cassette days!
Long time no see on my UA-cam feed. Thanks for that video ^^ (Sidenote: I saw the OG FF7 game, did you know you could swap the disks in-game and it would mostly (IIRC) work? Only the CG videos seem to differ mostly on the disks, so you'll get the wrong CG video playbacks, and that's it)
That N64 port on the side for testing controllers is a great idea, and I'd love to see someone make a controller / cartridge tester -- plug in your controller or cartridge and know if everything is working great. Would save time for someone like me who buys and sells consoles and games and don't fancy dragging out a console and plugging it in every time.
This device can do all of those things (at least for N64)! It has a controller tester mode, but also, after dumping the ROM of a game for any supported system, it will run a checksum to confirm if the dumped data matches a known-good value in a database on the SD card. If it matches, the cartridge should be fully functional. If it doesn't, then either the cartridge pins are dirty (99% of the time there is a mismatch, this is the case), or the cartridge has a problem.
@@cmcm711 yep, but I'm referring to a more generalised thing for multiple consoles. Something modular, where you buy the base and whatever controller or cartridge adaptors you need to suit your requirements, then you can plonk it on your desk and just test cartridges and controllers as you're working. If I knew more about the hardware side of things, I'd attempt it myself, but I'm a programmer by trade.
I remember few years ago, I received my first GameBoy cart reader just shortly after the battery of my GameBoy Camera ran out of juice :( One may think, just forget about it, however in my case, I did some real good photos considering the quality since I was 10 or 11 years old with that thing. Losing family photos just shortly prior to that event made it extra sad for me :,( That said, everyone should backup their game savedata and preserve it well.
Auto voltage selection sacrifices function for ease of use. As such I don't recommend it unless you wont need to flash and or blank rom chips. You can also easily send 5v to 3v carts on accident potentially damaging them. It might also stop you from flashing repros also but I'm not 100% sure about that "Because this feature removes/replaces the hardware switch for voltage selection, it is not recommended if you want to use the OSCR to flash ROMs to blank ROM chips using a ROM adapter" The rest of the information is spot on. You could use these to self publish and manufacture homebrew and or games
The voltage is set when you enter the menu for the chosen game system. For example, if you are flashing a GBA cartridge with a new ROM, simply going into the Game Boy > Game Boy Advance menu will set the voltage to 3.3v, at which point you can insert the cartridge and write the ROM file safely. There are main menu options you can enable in the firmware config that allow you to write data to any EEPROM chip ("FlashROM Programmer"), but presumably if you are doing that you'll already have knowledge of the proper voltage requirements for the chip you're writing to. In addition, the devs are working on implementing more robust software-controlled voltage selection along with extra voltage safeguards in future revisions.
This is a great video. I had my eye on the OSCR for sometime but haven't been able to swing the cost yet. And I've been an avid gamer since the Atari days (I grew up on pong consoles and Atari 2600). Im sure the batteries in my cart games like Zelda and Mario RPG are probably dead lol since I've had them for about 30 years. But I've taken good care of my carts though and I'm sure they will still work. I may need to get on this and get this device before it no longer becomes available.
I just learned about this project and I really want one but I lost all of my nes/snes games after I moved out my parents house. I'm glad it exists however.
Thanks for this great video ! I have a question tho: The txt file with all the game numbers in, it's used to identify games before saving, right ? So what would happen with a cartridge that is not in the txt file, like modern homebrew games for exemple. I own some homebrew cartridge games I would like to secure. Thanks for your answer 🙏
The devs add a lot of carts as time goes on, but certainly there's stuff they've missed. If the cart isn't in the text file, you can manually select how to dump the ROM based on the type of cartridge- usually this involves looking it up in an online DB or opening the cart and looking at how it's mapped (sometimes you'll see board numbers which lead you to the right path). I haven't done this myself but that's my recollection based on the info I read.
This debate of whether it's acceptable to dump your ROMs/download them or whatever is why we need to push for publishers to preserve their older games more, and properly at that. For some games like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, it's easy to purchase the game on Steam or your preferred console's online marketplace, but games like Digital Devil Saga are still locked to older platforms and thus not that easily accessible without potentially illegally downloading the ISO (depending on where you live at least)
The only mainstream publisher I know of who lets people purchase ROM files without forcing a specific method of play is Sega. If you buy the Genesis/Mega Drive collection on Steam and open the folder it's installed in there is a folder named uncompressed ROMs which contains all the ROM files for the games you bought. These ROM files are not used by the software which uses a modified version of the ROMs for achievements. Rather, these unmodified ROMs were included specifically for people who wanted to use their own emulation software of choice. :)
But does it remind users to double-check the accuracy of the internal clock so that the ROM files get created with accurate metadata in the (presumably) Ext4 filesystem?
For OSCRs with the RTC and battery, in the the (current) firmware revision 13.1, the time is set during the flashing of the Arduino firmware. It pulls the local time from the PC doing the flashing. It can also be set manually with the Arduino IDE using the "SETTIME" command in Serial Monitor mode. The SD card filesystems currently supported are FAT, FAT32, and exFAT.
I remember, on my SNES, blowing into the Cartridge made it even faster (or work at all xD). Wonder If I can grab that Product. Got some SNES-Cartridges here, I'd like to play once more. ^^
Odd... i would think with the automatic V-Select it would use the lowest voltage possible unless a different cartridge type is detected that supports the "higher" voltage
The preservation of digital media as a bid for keeping history is _exactly_ what some companies hate. Modern-day games development from _many_ companies could be compared with fast fashion - sweatshop-style labour producing low-quality garbage at a rapid pace. Remember to avoid companies who kill their babies for falling short of their expectations, and for those companies which _use_ to not do this, but are today; remember what they took from you.
Even as a prebuilt it's far cheaper to get an OSCR than one-trick pony dumpers. For a GBx-only dumper you'd pay $50. Prebuilt OSCRs cost about $200. So for the cost of 4 single-system dumpers you can get this all-in-one dumper. It sounds expensive until you really think about it.
The SD card holds a database of games for all supported systems and the necessary settings to properly read the data from the ROM chips on the cartridges. For SNES games that require "unlocking" due to the CIC protection (SA-1 games, notably, such as Super Mario RPG), the OSCR includes an (optional) CIC unlocking chip to facilitate this.
@@cmcm711 But, reading data from ROM chips isn't the same as somehow gaining the ability to emulate a co-processor or potentially-more-exotic hardware ... I guess what I'm getting at is: In disc-based systems, yes, the game is purely data ... but in cartridge-based systems I could solder whatever the heck I want onto the PCB ...
"Who cares! It's my channel" This is why watching your videos is such a joy.
This comment makes my day. Thank you!
I freaking love her channel!!!!
I was coming to say the same thing!
That's when I hit thumbs-up. I wanted to hit it again a couple of times later in the video, but ... :/
Do we have permission to use that clip?
I’m one of the builders of this OSCR and I just wanted to say thank you so much for the kind words and visibility for this project! We’re so glad you’re enjoying it!
You did such an excellent job of covering what an OSCR is in this video; I’ll definitely be sharing it whenever somebody wants to know more about what I’m working on. 😊
Thank you for the work you do! It's a great project and it's very appreciated!
does it support dumping pirated multi-carts?
Will a Jaguar cart set be coming too?
@@johndrippergaming Yes, but it's not as straightforward as choosing them out of the menu, and they won't be auto-recognized. There are some aspiring developers in the project Discord channel that can assist with reading the contents of multi-carts.
@@XVa-uj8m Sadly there are too many pins on a Jaguar cartridge for the current HW5 Arduino to support it. With newer revisions of the OSCR in development that are moving away from the Arduino Mega 2560, there may one day be a Jaguar cartridge adapter.
I LOVE the idea of ROM files and saving save files. This is NECESSARY for game archiving and gaming history.
Yep, but the optical discs are even more important. Thankfully, I think it's possible to dump anything from the PS3 and older at this point, some of them are really easy like the Saturn and PS that can be done in a regular computer from RetroArch. Some are a little harder like the Dreamcast where it's just a cheap SD card adapter and disc to dump any of them. The Wii and PS3 are a little harder as they require that you have the system jailbroken to do. But, once you've done that, it's not that hard.
That being said, the carts can be damaged over time, even if you don't use them, so backing those up for posterity is also a good idea. It's not a bad idea to use a combination of checksums and something like quickpar to repari minor damage and just run that on some sort of regular basis.
"Imagine if Microsoft shipped you a entire extra processor just to run Excel" reminds me that while you can now use Python (alongside VBA) in Excel, that code _has to execute_ on Azure. 🤦♂️
Anyway, happy V-Day! V stands for Veronica in my book!
Happy V-Day to you and yours as well! :)
Nice one, Veronica! I saw my OSCR video peeking through one of your screen grabs... it's a neat and very useful device! Re hidden files, I think the advice to hide them is just to help navigate the folder structure without all the extra file clutter when you're reading the card... at least that's why I hid all of my files. Re building one from scratch - there's a lot of soldering in the OSCR with all of those cartridge slots, but it's totally doable for less experienced folks, and it's great practice! And if you want some help improving your soldering skills, you should come out MGC 2024 next month and attend the gameBadge workshop - we focus on teaching soldering skills and you'll walk away with a cool pico-based handheld game system to boot 😁
Thank you so much for the comment! The workshop sounds like a lot of fun- I'll look into it as I figure out travel plans. BTW, thank you for your videos on MiSTer- you've been a big help as I've learned more about the ecosystem.
@@VeronicaExplains Thanks! ❤The MiSTer ecosystem can be a bit challenging to navigate for sure - I'm glad my videos have helped!
I'd love to watch any honest person argue about how this could be illegal.
Romerriffic episode! Always the best!
I have horrible news: I think the N64 is probably “vintage computing” now. So… this is more channel appropriate than we may want to believe.
Not only that, but the PS3 is _technically_ 'retro'... And that deals me psychic damage.
Personally I think we need to reevaluate the criteria for such things... In early gaming _every_ generation represented a quantum leap over the previous, so delineating 'retro' by generations or simply just the passage of time made sense... However, if we look at the past two decades, nothing after the PS2 has made such an advance.
This is why I insist that until something drastic occurs, the PS2 is the last "retro" console, and everything after that is still contemporary, with only incremental improvements in the quality of the experience.
@@Bakamoichigei PS3 is vintage, there are still plenty of original PS3s out there and I think it still enjoys patent protection. If it's not old enough to have it's patents expire, then it's not old enough to be retro.
Content variety is good. I enjoy expanding my horizons. Great video Veronica!
Great video. I haven’t seen any videos on ripping cartridges in my feed - not saying they don’t exist. An interesting product with great tips! 👍🏻
Thanks! I figured it was something different.
5:27 For such a bright, sunny personality, you are the queen of dirty looks . Love this vid. Thanks for all you do. I tell all my friends: "Linux is awesome, and so is Veronica!"
And I now have a new thing on my wishlist. Thanks, Veronica!
I ripped my Pokémon games so I could remove the battery for replacement. Love the idea that now I can do my whole library
Perfectly timed as I was about to explore solutions for this. Thank you very much for the video.
Perfect timing, I just ordered one of these the other day and this will be great information for when I get started with my collection.
...clicked on the video to see a cool rom dumper...gets that AND a stellar history of the cartridge... awesome vid!
The amount of info on each of your videos is mindblowing! You can tell how much work goes into your scripts
Really interesting Veronisode I enjoyed this. I've never owned a cartridge based console. My C64-C is the first machine I've owned that takes one. I have a KF device for that for the games
The UA-cam algorithm recommended you…and I’m glad it did! Great video! You have a new subscriber.
I don't think I will ever do this but the tech behind it is just so cool to see. I love the idea of just plunking some hardware down that has direct access to the address and data bus. Like the wild west of computers.
i just found out about your channel recently, and the calm and composure you and your videos have is brilliant, and may i add in today's era of flashy and loud content, you are a bloody gem. cheers! [i use arch btw]
Love the channel and the ROM vid is a nice light hearted change from the usual uploads!!!! As a Brit who cut his teeth on COBOL, pascal, 6502 and 68000 assembly I get a ruddy great nostalgic smile watching your legacy videos. Go go Veronica 😉😁🙏🏻👍🏻
2:09 in the early 80s, specially among home computers, rom cartridges were called Solid State Software
Not at all confusing today! :P
the "little brother ruining it for you" moment was priceless, made me laugh. yeah I lived that.
OMG, core memory unlocked! I, too, left the NES running for DAYS so as not to lose my progress in Super Mario Bros 3. It was devastating when the dog ran by excited about something, got tangled in the controller cords and ripped the console out of the entertainment center. The NES Satellite was a godsend, for that reason!
I'm one of your 0-17 fans :)
Youths! I hope you enjoy it!
Daam. Many would proly kill for this kit in 90s.
Thank you for doing your own subtitles. It's really help for people like me who read along!
This reminds me of the time my younger sibling overwrote my FF3/6 save file when we were kids. I was quite displeased!
I’ve been looking for a recent video on this for a couple weeks now and had to double take when I saw it pop up on my feed under your channel… THANK YOU!!!
Great video (as always, amiright?)! Love your sense of humor. Thanks so much for the breakdown, I know a decent amount of this stuff and I definitely learned some things thanks to you. I've been digging into handheld emulation a lot lately and it was nice to see another aspect of classic game preservation and enjoyment. Now I go to share your video with a few friends that will enjoy it.
Thanks for watching and sharing! Have fun with the handheld stuff, there's lots of great options there!
I never played tape games. It's still wild to me that you could use cassette tapes to store a game. I only ever used them for audio.
Same concept as modems really, putting data into an audio signal, except using magnetic tape instead of a phone line
I never actually used them, but between 1985-1988, in Finland, a radio program called sth like 'Silicone' sent computer code on the airwaves for listeners to record on their tape decks. You then put the tape into your early computer cassette drive to use it. Listeners made their own programs also. No wonder as this started in 1982 as a different project for citizens' edutainment benefit, we got Nokia phones and text messaging going first here - there was already a user base for tech stuff. Early PC mags always listed code to make your own programs, create drivers or tinker with stuff. Commodore 64 cost as much as a TV back then, and my first 486 machine the same amount as my first car, Datsun 100 A.
Only problem is it took a while to load the games these were very commonplace.
i find your videos very relaxing during my times of high anxiety!
I have a sizeable Game Boy game collection and have been wanting to copy saves and backup my games. This open source project looks fantastic and an ideal way to do it, thanks for the video!
Not affiliated with the project in any way, but the hiding the txt files on the sd card is most likely to, well, hide them. de-clutter the sd card contents so it's easier to find the file you dumped between all those files.
》Its concept is something similar to that one employed with expansion cards connected to ISA/EISA/VLB/PCI slots throughout data bus, the same modular architecture we still see nowadays but, as you've said, it used be much more appropriate for actual implementation during that technological transition from the 70s to the 80s.
On start up, the chip (TPS2113) that handles the power switching could go through any state, even when 3.3V is selected because its enable pin is permanently on. The chip takes a little time to fully turn on and a little more time to actually decide what the output should be - we're only talking several milliseconds. The author of the project can resolve this problem by enabling the chip a little time after it's turned on; it'll be faster than turning the device and then plugging in a cartridge. The output of the chip is 0V when the chip is not enabled. A common method to do this is with a capacitor and a Schmitt trigger.
The MCU controlling the chip is also powered by it, so delaying turn on isn't all that helpful. Your proposed solution isn't wrong, but the time difference would be measured in nanoseconds if not microseconds. The latency for the toggling of 3.3V comes from the time it takes the MCU to boot and set the pin state.
HW7 resolves the issue entirely by not powering the cartridge slots and processor with the same power rail. Instead, the slots get their own rail which can be toggled on and off and adjusted as needed by the firmware. It also monitors this rail to make sure the voltage is within bounds so it can cut the power to the slots if it isn't.
@@AncykerTwo methods to solve the same problem, which is pretty much the same thing. Mine is hardware defined, yours is software.
@@Shocker99 I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Your proposed solution was not a hardware solution because it was not a solution at all. It was not the TPS2113 causing the issue, it was the microcontroller. Your proposed hardware solution would not have fixed this because the MCU is powered by the TPS2113, so your solution would have made the problem worse by delaying the MCU booting and changing the pin state even later. Also, this problem was actually recently solved via a firmware update that moved the pin state update to even earlier in the code.
:) GO Veronica! LOVED IT and AMAZED at your CPM Cart ! ! Never knew it existed, and YES I am THAT OLD to have used it on 8 inch Floppy back in the day:) HAD to share with youngest Daughter as she goes to Retro Game shops whenever she finds one :) I am with you on SMT Soldering is beyond my capabilities... ALL the BEST, Happy New Year and Cheers from Upper Left Coast! :)
Thank you! Yeah, that CPM cartridge is something else. I want to do a proper video on it but I'm looking for more original media in order to show it off.
Perfect valentine day.
If I were someone into homebrew on any of those systems I could see that device being incredibly useful. Save game backup would also be fairly useful, but I'm guessing the SNES & N64 games I have in storage lost their data years ago and my NES ones would surely have if I still had them. Still though I really enjoyed learning more about this project and hope it has continued support for the future!
I loved this video! I saw your disclaimer about this being your channel and you cover whatever subject you want. I agree with you but let me say that for me, your channel is a tech channel and sooner or later you'll cover whatever tech subject in na pleasant vídeo like you did this time.
I wish you the best of luck.
Fun fact: I built one of these a few years ago and while dumping my copy of Golden Nugget 64 the checksum didn't match. After talking to Sanni we discovered that the original dump was bad and had been for a long time.
I like this video and your enthusiasm! Thanks! I found this channel after you posted something on the OSCR Discord today.
The only thing I would have liked to see you mention in some way was how to update the firmware on the OSCR, this is basically my only 'quirk'/con with the OSCR. Would have been nice if the new firmware could just be copied onto the SD card and be loaded from the OSCR menu. But I can't have it all and thus far I'm quite happy with my OSCR.
One question I have is how you knew that for N64 cartridges it might be better to turn it on in 3.3V mode before inserting the cartridge to avoid the possibility of the 5V spike. I didn't find this in Sanni's userguide or I might just be reading past it.
I'm looking forward to more of your video's, like how you mentioned that you would do a video about fixing your NES. That one is looking quite bad, so I'm curious what you will be doing to it.
> Would have been nice if the new firmware could just be copied onto the SD card and be loaded from the OSCR menu.
The ATmega line does not support this. It has to be programmed by another device. The only way to implement this with the current architecture (the ATmega/Arduino Mega) would be to have another device boot first and look at the SD card for an update, and if found update the main device before booting it. I am currently working on an updater to make updating easier, but it will still require a computer.
> how you knew that for N64 cartridges it might be better to turn it on in 3.3V mode before inserting the cartridge to avoid the possibility of the 5V spike
The wiki page on Automatic Voltage Select.
You should really do a video with Tech Tangents. You both have a very similar personality and I think you would work well together. 👍
Great hardware for preservation. However, the disclaimer made me want to comment on who owns what. Unfortunately, even back then at the cartridge games, we didn't own the games. we owned basically a license to use the media on its designated console. Even if you did dump your own games that you bought with your money, you still wouldn't be allowed to play the resulting roms in anything but its designated console. Just reading the first pages of my Sega Game Gear games' manuals, one can see that they give you the license to play the game only on the Sega Game Gear console in its intended way. Just to clear that "i bought it, so i can do it" thing. They did cover even this back then with a blanket statement about the cartridge's use.
Great video! My husband and I love your enthusiasm (and snark) it always makes us smile! --- Are there any solutions for old ColecoVision users?
First off, thank you! I'm glad you both are enjoying the videos! Second, regarding ColecoVision: I think there are, actually! I'm trying to learn more and might do a follow-up at some point, but there are lots of community-contributed adapters out there for other game consoles, and I think I saw ColecoVision in there.
Very comprehensive video V. I love the level of detail. Thanks for all your hard work.
If the battery is still good, you can always just wire a second battery in parallel to the main battery for a few minutes while you replace the main battery. That being said, it's far better to just use one of these units to backup the save ahead of time than to bother with that. Also, while you're at it, it's worth putting in a proper battery holder if the battery in there is soldered to the board so that the next time you don't need to. These carts just get more rare over time, so it's better to take the risk of redoing that now than later.
Ah yes. Who remembers the Save feature in SONIC 1?
Did you watch the video? I talk about that.
@@VeronicaExplains i was making fun of the thumbnail
Sorry for that btw :(
Great video! The OSCR _is_ an utterly indispensable tool for anyone into the physical side of retro games! I built my own v3 OSCR, and it's fantastic. 😃👌
The ability to rewrite flash cartridges is super cool. I've used my OSCR to write games to Nintendo's own rewritable Super Famicom flash cartridges. (Fan translations, romhacks, etc. All patched to ROMs dumped from my own carts using OSCR!)
And I've used my OSCR for preservation; a Satellaview 8M Memory Pak or Nintendo Power SF Memory Cassette doesn't come into my possession without a complete backup. And I back up the SRAM of any games I acquire so I can examine the previous owners' progress later. (Sadly I'm like 0 for 4 finding Mario Paint cartridges with any art still saved on them! 😢)
btw, emulator SRAM compatibility is usually a header issue. I've yet to try loading an OSCR dumped SRAM in an emu, but I know that save data dumped with a magicom such as a Super Wild Card or Super UFO Pro 8 needs to have the header stripped out before an emulator will recognize it. 😉👍
EDIT: Oh yeah, something about the older v3 OSCR; it can also read pretty much anything through the SNES slot, given the appropriate adapter...since it's all just arbitrary GPIO...same as the newer versions. 😃 (Personally, I rather like the more compact formfactor though!)
Also, I've been running my OSCR almost exclusively off a decade-old powerbank for the half a year since I built it with no issues. It's super handy!
Hey, I know you! :P
@@Ancyker 😜
I really want one of these but $200-300 is a bit much for me right now
Will definitely keep my eye out for different versions of this especially if there's one that can write to reproduction cartridges
This one can write to a lot of repros! At least from what I can see. It is a bit steep preassembled but I've enjoyed it.
@@VeronicaExplains guess this will be my next purchase after I build a new pc
Kits are about $100 if you want to DIY it. The soldering is pretty easy if you get the SMT components preassembled, which adds about $10-20 to the cost depending on if you want RTC or not (most people do not need RTC). It does take a few hours to do it all though. Also, assembled prices will be dropping soonish as well, likely to around $130-150.
That is so cool! Although it seems a hint excessive to me to have a separate device with its own display, controls and memory card slot, instead an accessory gadget that just has the cartridge slots and a controller, that connects to your PC via USB or whatever and then just have Linux drivers/tools for operating the thing.
Sometimes you need a toaster, sometimes you need an oven. You can do a lot more with an oven, including making toast, but sometimes a specialized tool is the most efficient.
Can the OSCR project be used to build a standalone emulation system or be used in conjunction with the Mister FPGA? It'd be cool to build a device using 1:1 scale 3D printed replacement shells for game consoles with the modern experiences like save states and Retro Achievements.
Soon™
Just discovered you channel right now. What a good find. And what a great idea this OSCR! :D
Loving the subject material Veronica. Gaming from my youth! I'm guessing there's an equivalent device for 'backing up' the older 8-bit games, like Atari, Colecovision, Intel vision, etc....?
I enjoyed meeting you at VCFMW, & I'll be sure to bring more floppy disks for your Sony Mavica, at this year's show. :)
babe wake up, new veronica explains video just dropped !!
I'd love something like this and a MiSTer in a single case that could boot directly from real cartridges and use their saves. I have a GB/GBA reader now I use to back up those but more cartage types would be great.
This seems like a good way to build a library and back up roms to us on steam deck emulators. Thanks for the video I now have an idea for building up a retro steam deck library, while preserving my entire collection of games that are on cartridge. But would you also happen to know if this project will have DS/3DS support for your research in to it? Or maybe even game gear and Atari lynx? This seems like there's potential. I'd also love to see these folks add a TGFX16 port. Anywho I'm rambling, again thanks for the video.!
Oh no, I care more about how they work, than actually fiddling with them. Also the studio is coming along nicely.
Oooh, if you ever dive into homebrewing, I'd be very interested in following every step of that!
If I didn’t already have solutions for all the consoles I own, this is something I would consider picking up.
les gooo.
also if anyone is put off by the price of prebuilts, there are clones for cheaper. and at this point you can sometimes find them used if someone only intended t5o dump a massive collection. like for me rn im buying games ocassionally and then adding them to my library
"I legally own these games" - ahhhh those were the days
It's so hard to even want to "buy" a game today!
That's why I love GoG. Doesn't help with AAA, but it's nice to use on older systems. 👍
All that great hardware you have there... Oh my! You made me remember my commodore 64 and amiga days... 😁you rock!!😎
As a little brother, I make no apologies.
Thanks for another great video!
Wow, your voice reminds me of Joanne Liebeler from "Hometime." She did home improvement and repair shows and had her own shows on TLC and networks like that.
This is good for companies that are re-releasing /porting old school consoles games to the next gen gaming console and they do not a back up of their roms.
Looks awesome for N64 Cartridges, I have a Retro Freak and it can dump and emulate all your cartridges(NES, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Game Boy, Color, Advance, Mega Drive, Genesis, PC Engine, TG16, PC Engine Supergrafix). However it only works up to 16 bit cartridges so N64 would be impossible. I will check out this device for my N64 games
Excellent stuff! Been waiting for a tool like like this. Absolutely god-sent for game collectors and obviously for the future archiving purposes.
Been saying it for years now, will say it now: Backup, rip and store EVERYTHING digital you love and consider important, or even just cool. One day, it will be gone.
What comes to the "legality", at least in EU you have 100% the right to do a backup of any media product you've legally bought. This was ruled already back in the VHS and C-cassette days!
Long time no see on my UA-cam feed. Thanks for that video ^^ (Sidenote: I saw the OG FF7 game, did you know you could swap the disks in-game and it would mostly (IIRC) work? Only the CG videos seem to differ mostly on the disks, so you'll get the wrong CG video playbacks, and that's it)
That N64 port on the side for testing controllers is a great idea, and I'd love to see someone make a controller / cartridge tester -- plug in your controller or cartridge and know if everything is working great. Would save time for someone like me who buys and sells consoles and games and don't fancy dragging out a console and plugging it in every time.
This device can do all of those things (at least for N64)! It has a controller tester mode, but also, after dumping the ROM of a game for any supported system, it will run a checksum to confirm if the dumped data matches a known-good value in a database on the SD card. If it matches, the cartridge should be fully functional. If it doesn't, then either the cartridge pins are dirty (99% of the time there is a mismatch, this is the case), or the cartridge has a problem.
@@cmcm711 yep, but I'm referring to a more generalised thing for multiple consoles. Something modular, where you buy the base and whatever controller or cartridge adaptors you need to suit your requirements, then you can plonk it on your desk and just test cartridges and controllers as you're working.
If I knew more about the hardware side of things, I'd attempt it myself, but I'm a programmer by trade.
Great video and great teaching for beginners! Congratulations
I remember few years ago, I received my first GameBoy cart reader just shortly after the battery of my GameBoy Camera ran out of juice :(
One may think, just forget about it, however in my case, I did some real good photos considering the quality since I was 10 or 11 years old with that thing.
Losing family photos just shortly prior to that event made it extra sad for me :,(
That said, everyone should backup their game savedata and preserve it well.
Ripping is probably not the term I would use, but rather dumping.
Ripping feels like optical media source. 😊
Auto voltage selection sacrifices function for ease of use. As such I don't recommend it unless you wont need to flash and or blank rom chips. You can also easily send 5v to 3v carts on accident potentially damaging them. It might also stop you from flashing repros also but I'm not 100% sure about that
"Because this feature removes/replaces the hardware switch for voltage selection, it is not recommended if you want to use the OSCR to flash ROMs to blank ROM chips using a ROM adapter"
The rest of the information is spot on. You could use these to self publish and manufacture homebrew and or games
The voltage is set when you enter the menu for the chosen game system. For example, if you are flashing a GBA cartridge with a new ROM, simply going into the Game Boy > Game Boy Advance menu will set the voltage to 3.3v, at which point you can insert the cartridge and write the ROM file safely. There are main menu options you can enable in the firmware config that allow you to write data to any EEPROM chip ("FlashROM Programmer"), but presumably if you are doing that you'll already have knowledge of the proper voltage requirements for the chip you're writing to.
In addition, the devs are working on implementing more robust software-controlled voltage selection along with extra voltage safeguards in future revisions.
This is a great video. I had my eye on the OSCR for sometime but haven't been able to swing the cost yet. And I've been an avid gamer since the Atari days (I grew up on pong consoles and Atari 2600).
Im sure the batteries in my cart games like Zelda and Mario RPG are probably dead lol since I've had them for about 30 years. But I've taken good care of my carts though and I'm sure they will still work.
I may need to get on this and get this device before it no longer becomes available.
I need to find one of theses I’m just hoping they are in stock. Can this be shipped to the UK?
I just learned about this project and I really want one but I lost all of my nes/snes games after I moved out my parents house. I'm glad it exists however.
Love that MiSTer menu in the intro of your video ;-)
Thanks for this great video ! I have a question tho:
The txt file with all the game numbers in, it's used to identify games before saving, right ?
So what would happen with a cartridge that is not in the txt file, like modern homebrew games for exemple.
I own some homebrew cartridge games I would like to secure.
Thanks for your answer 🙏
The devs add a lot of carts as time goes on, but certainly there's stuff they've missed. If the cart isn't in the text file, you can manually select how to dump the ROM based on the type of cartridge- usually this involves looking it up in an online DB or opening the cart and looking at how it's mapped (sometimes you'll see board numbers which lead you to the right path).
I haven't done this myself but that's my recollection based on the info I read.
I see, I guess I will have to check if I can find that online or open my cartridge my self before I purchased a OSCR
Thank you very much 👏
This debate of whether it's acceptable to dump your ROMs/download them or whatever is why we need to push for publishers to preserve their older games more, and properly at that. For some games like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, it's easy to purchase the game on Steam or your preferred console's online marketplace, but games like Digital Devil Saga are still locked to older platforms and thus not that easily accessible without potentially illegally downloading the ISO (depending on where you live at least)
The only mainstream publisher I know of who lets people purchase ROM files without forcing a specific method of play is Sega. If you buy the Genesis/Mega Drive collection on Steam and open the folder it's installed in there is a folder named uncompressed ROMs which contains all the ROM files for the games you bought. These ROM files are not used by the software which uses a modified version of the ROMs for achievements. Rather, these unmodified ROMs were included specifically for people who wanted to use their own emulation software of choice. :)
Is there also an option like this for DS/DSi/3DS cartridges? Would love to see this for DS games too
@VeronicaExplains Do you have a demo for neo geo rom cartridges?
so with OSCAR... can i take my old NES games and get them on my WII?
But does it remind users to double-check the accuracy of the internal clock so that the ROM files get created with accurate metadata in the (presumably) Ext4 filesystem?
For OSCRs with the RTC and battery, in the the (current) firmware revision 13.1, the time is set during the flashing of the Arduino firmware. It pulls the local time from the PC doing the flashing. It can also be set manually with the Arduino IDE using the "SETTIME" command in Serial Monitor mode.
The SD card filesystems currently supported are FAT, FAT32, and exFAT.
I remember, on my SNES, blowing into the Cartridge made it even faster (or work at all xD). Wonder If I can grab that Product. Got some SNES-Cartridges here, I'd like to play once more. ^^
I also use retroarch on my linux mint debian, with crt shaders with curvature, they look awesome... i also have a partition with batocera linux
Odd... i would think with the automatic V-Select it would use the lowest voltage possible unless a different cartridge type is detected that supports the "higher" voltage
The preservation of digital media as a bid for keeping history is _exactly_ what some companies hate. Modern-day games development from _many_ companies could be compared with fast fashion - sweatshop-style labour producing low-quality garbage at a rapid pace. Remember to avoid companies who kill their babies for falling short of their expectations, and for those companies which _use_ to not do this, but are today; remember what they took from you.
How do I backup my pokemon yellow/crystal/sapphire/pearl save games to a computer?
you're a very good presenter and speaker.
Good morning my Teacher Veronica...🤩
This is such an excellent find. I must have one.
Great video! Please, if possible, make a video talking about Mister FPGA. Thanks!
The save game backup option sets this apart from simply finding and downloading roms online but preserving those saves will cost some $$$
Even as a prebuilt it's far cheaper to get an OSCR than one-trick pony dumpers. For a GBx-only dumper you'd pay $50. Prebuilt OSCRs cost about $200. So for the cost of 4 single-system dumpers you can get this all-in-one dumper. It sounds expensive until you really think about it.
How does dumping work for carts that have non-ROM chips -- the FX, for instance?
The SD card holds a database of games for all supported systems and the necessary settings to properly read the data from the ROM chips on the cartridges. For SNES games that require "unlocking" due to the CIC protection (SA-1 games, notably, such as Super Mario RPG), the OSCR includes an (optional) CIC unlocking chip to facilitate this.
@@cmcm711 But, reading data from ROM chips isn't the same as somehow gaining the ability to emulate a co-processor or potentially-more-exotic hardware ... I guess what I'm getting at is: In disc-based systems, yes, the game is purely data ... but in cartridge-based systems I could solder whatever the heck I want onto the PCB ...
VerROMica explains?
I still have the Retrode and three of the adapters. Although I only recently upgraded to the V3-ALTER
If you didn't know, some of the Retrode adapters work with the OSCR. :3
@@Ancyker Ah thank you!
Hmm wonder if it could be made to read Saturn memory cartridges as well. Good that you can read SegaCD memory cartridges.
Thanks Veronica.
This is just a comment for engagement algorithm bias, so just pretend I said something intelligent and insightful.
I actually have something like this for the Mega Drive. A useful took although I don't use it as much as I should.