Is there a Doctor in the Game Console? - The Venus Turbo Doctor 6M

Taiwan may or may not have been the birthplace of commercial video game piracy, but it certainly has a strong claim to have been its nursery.  When video games skyrocketed in popularity in Southeastern Asia with the Famicom, it seemed as through the entire island of Taiwan wanted to cash in on the efforts of the Japanese.  Taiwan was the first source of unlicensed Famicom clones and pirate cartridges.  But cartridges were expensive to make, even for Taiwan fabs and the larger games were not very profitable to clone.  Then Nintendo handed the pirates a gift, the Famicom Disk System, and as it turned out the gift kept on giving.  While copying FDS games was child's play for the organized pirates, they saw in the FDS an opportunity to pirate to go beyond games originally released on disk. They created RAM cartridges, hardware devices that worked with the Famicom and the Disk System to permit cartridge games put on disk to work.  In this blog entry, I will describe my personal experiences with one such device, the Venus Turbo Game Doctor 6M.

The EverDrive GB X7 - The Ultimate 8-bit Game Boy/Color Flash Cart?

EverDrive GB vs. EverDrive GB X7

For too long, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color had been rather neglected by the flash cart builders.  The old cartridges by companies like Bung faded out of existence as Nintendo sued Bung out of existence.  There were a few more recent cartridges like the 64MB EMS Smart Card, but it was really klunky to use and had poor game compatibility.  A few cartridges were more focused on music production than game playing.  In 2014 Krikzz released the EverDrive GB, a flash-based device with an FPGA with enough resources to handle basic games.  I bought one then and was satisfied with it, as I indicated in my review.  Three years later he released the SRAM-based EverDrive GB X-series.  Having finally acquired an EverDrive GB X7, let me share my thoughts and views of the device and try to answer the question, "Is it the Ultimate GB/GBC Flash Cart?"

FPGA NES and Famicom Solutions' Mapper Support Matrices

There have been several hardware devices released over the past four decades which play NES and Famicom games.  Any regular reader of this blog will know that the NES and Famicom have many, many different ways in which it supports memory management.  Hardware devices which support a wide variety of games use FPGAs to configure their logic to handle the various memory mappers used by NES and Famicom games.  Below I will give matrices of each device and identify the mappers it supports.  Both iNES 1.0 and NES 2.0 mappers will be identified.  None of these devices support UNIF format mappers and UNIF should be fully deprecated by NES 2.0 now.

Fixing NES Headers and Converting them to NES 2.0 : Putting Theory into Practice!

In my last blog entry, I announced the creation of an evolving database of NES ROM headers, focused on cartridge accuracy.  However, while I can make a spreadsheet for easy accessibility, spreadsheets are not the best way to organize data for use by other programs.  I cannot expect someone wanting a full set of proper NES 2.0 ROMs to manually edit the headers of over 2,900 separate files!

There has to be an easier way, right?
The task of manual fixing isn't slight.
Well, if you read further now,
I'll be happy to tell you how.

The NES and Famicom Accurate Cartridge Information Database

NES and Famicom emulation has been around for over twenty-five years.  In that time, the internal hardware has become very well documented.  NES and Famicom cartridges, on the other hand, have had a parallel journey of discovery during this time, but emulators and flash carts and FPGA devices have not always been up to date with current developments.  The core games which people enjoy with NES emulation, namely those licensed and approved by Nintendo and unlicensed games released during the NES' lifespan, sometimes suffer in emulation due not to bad dumps but a wrong information in their file header.  The header indicates what kind of hardware the game uses, but if the information in the header is wrong, out of date or missing, the game will not play or play correctly.  In this blog article I will explain how headers work, why they are necessary, the need for accurate information in them and how they have evolved over time.  Then I will describe and link to my database which contains the most accurate and up to date information for the NES and Famicom ROMs most people care about.

Exciting Developments for NES ROMs

When it comes to the NES, everybody at one point or another has emulated the NES.  NES emulation has been around for a long time and has improved so much that often the experience of playing a game on an emulator is indistinguishable from playing the game on real hardware (accounting for video improvements via emulation.)  But NES emulation is continually evolving as we find more games to dump and understand better the hardware found inside previously-dumped games.  In this blog post let me share some recent developments regarding NES ROMs.

sd2snes and MSU-1

The MSU-1 was a software memory controller (mapper) created by byuu for the bsnes/higan emulator to allow for vastly increased storage for SNES software.  The MSU-1 allows for ROMS up to 4GB in size whereas ROMs for the SNES were limited usually to 4MB without extra hardware.  FMV playback became possible due to the DVD-like storage capacity provided by the MSU-1.  In addition to the size increase, the MSU-1 allows for streaming audio in the same format provided by a CD, namely 16-bit uncompressed stereo audio at a 44.1KHz sample rate.  The ill-fated SNES CD-ROM system that Nintendo and Sony collaborated on was not nearly as powerful and would have suffered from noticeable load times.  In this blog post, let's talk about the hardware behind the MSU-1 and some of the more interesting hacks available for it.

Flawed, Risky and Dangerous Devices for your Retro Consoles and PCs

Most of us appreciate it when enterprising entrepeneurs go out of their way to make new products for us to enjoy on our vintage consoles.  However, they don't always get it right.  Some products can be positively dangerous to your consoles, others are not obviously dangerous but have the potential to decrease your console's lifespan.  In this blog entry I will discuss modern products that are fundamentally flawed, risky to use or just plain dangerous.

He's making list, checking it twice,
Gonna find out whose naughty and nice...

Turbo EverDrive 2.x and the PC Engine - The Affordable NEC Experience

 Over two years ago, a friend of mine kindly let me borrow a Turbo Duo and a Turbo EverDrive.  I wrote about the experience here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/04/turbo-duo-issues-and-solutions.html  I had to give it back (and the Framemeister which came with it), not without a good deal of sadness.  I vowed that I would find a way to play NEC Turbo games again on real hardware/  Now, I have acquired an affordable, upgradeable solution.  Let me talk about it and about plans for future upgrades.

The 1541 Ultimate II+ Flash Cart - Running Carts and Disks Images on the C64

My friend Cloudshatze generously ordered me an 1541 Ultimate II+ Flash Cart (U2+).  The 1541 Ultimate flash cart series has been around for quite a few years, but the U2+ is the latest iteration of the device.  It was released in December, 2016.  In this blog entry I will give information about it and my experiences with it.

EverDrive GBA X5 - The Ultimate GBA Flashcart

In July of 2016, Krikzz finally released his long anticipated EverDrive flash cart for the Game Boy Advance.  He called it the EverDrive GBA X5 and sells it for $99.99 on his site and through his authorized vendors.  I bought mine on his annual Black Friday sale for 20% off, so it ended up costing me $87.00, shipping to the USA (from Ukraine) included.


The "X5" in the name represents a new branding of his product lines.  His new products will be released with an X3, X5 and X7 designation.  Each designation indicates the feature support of the flash cart relative to a desired feature set for flash carts.  The designation is not tied to the products released for any particular console.  For example, the Mega EverDrive X7 has save state support whereas the X5 and X3 do not.  Furthermore, the MegaEverDrive X7 and X5 support saving games without resetting the console whereas the X3 requires pressing reset to save or you lose your save games.  Krikzz has not officially used the X designation for his products except those released for the GBA and Sega Genesis.  There is no such thing as a GBA X7 or X3 and Krikzz has no current plans to make any other GBA flash carts.

SNES Flash Carts : SD2SNES vs. SNES PowerPak

Like most retro game consoles, the SNES has been blessed with a few flash carts.  The first great flash cart was the SNES PowerPak, released in 2009.  The second great flash cart is the Super Everdrive, released in 2010.  The third great flash cart is the SD2SNES, released in 2012.  All cartridges are expensive at $145.00, $79.00 and $195.00, respectively, but support hundreds of SNES games via compact flash (PowerPak) or SD card (SD2SNES).  In this post, I will talk about the pros and cons of each.

SNES PowerPak

The SNES PowerPak is the oldest cartridge, released in 2009, and it loads games via Compact Flash. Compact Flash cards are becoming increasingly hard to find and the connector is made up of 44 thin pins that can bend and break.  The default menu for the SNES PowerPak looks almost exactly like the NES PowerPak, although the font is thinner and ugly. The official combined NES and SNES PowerPak mappers (1.35b) from bunnyboy were last updated in October, 2010.  The PowerPak can be upgraded with a DSP-1 chip from a real SNES cartridge to play games supporting that chip like Super Mario Kart and (sometimes) Pilotwings.

The SNES PowerPak is RAM based, allowing for very fast loading of games.  CF card support can be a tad finicky, so you may need to turn the DMA mode off if games are not loading.  This makes loading games a little slower, but still faster than a flash memory-based cart like the Super Everdrive.  CF cards must be formatted for FAT16 or FAT32, which generally allows card support for up to 32GB in size.  Originally the SNES PowerPak did not work on an SNES mini/jr., but that problem has long been solved with newer mappers.

The menu allows for only about 28 characters on each line, which is not sufficient for long filenames.  The firmware of the SNES PowerPak is not designed to be user upgradeable.  The SNES does support high resolution interlaced modes, and a NESDEV forum contributor named Ramsis made custom firmware and mappers that double the number of characters per line for the menu as well as allow for color backgrounds whereas the official background was always black.  This requires a firmware update, which ideally should be performed by a flash programmer.  Sometimes the flash chip in the PowerPak is soldered instead of socketed, making that option unfeasible for most.  Ramsis's firmware can be updated by the PowerPak itself if you are willing to risk a slight possibility of bricking the device.  I did it with mine and had no problems.  The current stable version is v3.00 and includes an SPC player for playing back SNES chiptunes.  Although the firmware requires v1.02 of the original firmware, I was able to update my card with v1.01 firmware.

The SNES PowerPak does not sort ROMs or directories, you need a file sort utility like File Sort for Windows.  It does support up to five Game Genie codes and you can load them from a text file.  It does not support automatic save file creation for battery backed games and you must push reset before turning off the system to keep your save game.  There are no save state mappers for the SNES PowerPak.  Save states may not really be possible with the SNES because the cartridge may not be able to save the state of the SPC-700 audio coprocessor.

The PowerPak does not support any special chips via its FPGA, so no Super FX 1 or 2, the SA-1, CX-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, ST010, ST011, ST018, SDD-1 or SPC7110 support.  Forget about anything that would require Satellaview or Super Game Boy hardware.  The controller chip simply does not have enough logic to emulate any of these chips.  In theory it does support the DSP-2, 3 or 4, but you would have to take the appropriate chip out of a cartridge and install it in the SNES PowerPak.  As only one game uses each chip, this is impracticable, you might as well just save the cartridge.

I have had trouble with a few games, even as of the latest mappers, official or Ramsis.  Ys III: Wanderers from Ys and Secret of Evermore will run but not save a valid save file or load from one.  This is because they use unusual areas of the memory map to write their save game information and the PowerPak does not support this.  The Super EverDrive has the same issue with Ys III but apparently not with Secret of Evermore.  I have often had trouble with Pilotwings, regardless of version it frequently just does not want to load.  Using a small (256MB or so) CF card helps.  My main CF card is 4GB.

Even though the original ROM uses the S-DD1 compression chip, the SNES PowerPak or SD2SNES will run a hacked version Star Ocean.  Start with the original Japanese ROM.  This ROM can be translated into English with the DeJap translation.  Then use the Star Ocean no S-DD1/96Mbit hack to decompress the ROM.  Finally, change the following bytes in the hacked ROM with a hex editor :

000081D5 from 32 to 31
000081D6 from 45 to 02
00A081D5 from 32 to 31
00A081D6 from 45 to 02

This will tell the flash cart that the game has a battery backed save feature, otherwise you won't be able to save games.  This appears to be necessary only for the SNES PowerPak.

SD2SNES

The SD2SNES by ikari loads games by an SD, SDHC or SDXC card.  It addresses several weaknesses of the SNES PowerPak.  First, it has a battery on the cartridge for holding the contents of save memory.  This means you will not lose your save game if you forget to press reset before turning the game off.  However, because some games use their save memory as work memory, the SD2SNES will only save every 15-20 seconds for those games.  If the red (write) LED is constantly on, then you should wait or hold the reset button until all three LEDs are on before turning off the power.

Another improvement over the Super Everdrive is that the cart will automatically create new files for battery backed up save games.  The .srm extension is used for SNES save game files whether on the SNES PowerPak or SD2SNES or Super Everdrive, and it is just a memory dump of the emulated cartridge RAM.  The SD2SNES now saves .srm files to a common \SAVE folder just like the SNES PowerPak.

Second, the SD2SNES has sufficient power to emulate several of the enhancement chips.  It currently supports DSP1, 2, 3 & 4, OBC-1, Cx4, ST-010, S-RTC, OBC1 and a portion of the Satellaview.  It supports a real time clock even outside special chip support, so your SNES can tell you the correct time when you are using the menu and show accurate timestamps for modified files.  For certain chips, the following ROMs are required as of the latest firmware : dsp1.bin, dsp1b.bin, dsp2.bin, dsp3.bin, dsp4.bin, st0010.bin.  They used to be used by bsnes, but at some point bsnes/higan required the .rom files, which go from first byte to last instead of last to first, or the other way around.  The BS-X BIOS will also be required for running Bandai Satellaview games.  Excluding the Satellaview games, there are 57 licensed SNES cartridges that the SD2SNES cannot yet replace, most using the SA-1 or Super FX chips.  Support for at least the latter may come.  Sufami Turbo games will not work either.

Third, the SD2SNES will sort files and directories automatically if you set the appropriate option in the menu.  It loads games extremely quickly and will load games up to 16MB in size.  The SD card can be formatted for FAT16 or FAT32, and 64GB cards are supported.  You will need a third party partitioning tool if you are using modern Windows, which only formats FAT32 partitions up to 32GB.  Almost all SNES games are no more than 4MB.  The menu uses a high resolution mode to allow for longer file names.  If you leave the cursor on a file name, the complete name will scroll across the screen.  You can also see the CPU/PPU1/PPU2 revision in the main menu.

The latest official firmware is 0.1.7b.  This firmware officially adds cheat support.  There are in-game button combinations or hooks that will allow you to reset the game, return to the SD2SNES menu, kill the in-game cheat routines temporarily or permanently.  In the official release there are menu items to disable this.  I had to kill the in-game cheat routines in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past otherwise the top of the screen would flicker when accessing the inventory.  The Super Star Wars games would not allow a proper pause with the cheat routines enabled.  There is an SPC player implemented in the SD2SNES firmware and it supports up to 6 Game Genie (ROM) cheat codes and 24 Pro Action Replay (RAM) cheat codes loaded from a text file.

I had no trouble loading a saved game in Ys III: Wanderers from Ys or Secret of Evermore and did not have trouble with Pilotwings as I did on my SNES PowerPak.  It also can automatically patch NTSC games to run on PAL consoles and vice versa to avoid the dreaded "Your game is not intended for this region" screens.  This allows you to run an unmodified Terranigma ROM, which was only released in English in PAL territories, without breaking out your hex editor or having to install a CIC bypass switch.

The boundary pushing feature of the SD2SNES is its support for the MSU-1 coprocessor.  The MSU-1 was originally implemented in software in bsnes/higan, and th SD2SNES includes a hardware version.  It essentially gives you access to 4GB (yes, I mean Gigabytes) of data for a ROM file.

The MSU-1 can play CD-Audio quality audio or Full Motion Video.  Several games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X & X3 and Rock n' Roll Racing have been modified to play high quality versions of their original music.  Using these MSU-1 game hacks is pretty easy.  Once you patch the main ROM, you convert wav files into the pcm format and name your ROM file .msu and your audio files .pcm and stick them in the same folder.  Essentially this would give you a taste of what the SNES CD Addon would have sounded like had it been released.

In addition to the hacks, the LaserDisc game Road Blaster (a.k.a. Road Avengers) has been ported to run on the MSU-1 as Super Road Blaster.  This game weighs in at a hefty 790MB.  Like all Laserdisc games it relies on timed input from the player at designated points while the video plays.  I have played the port and the game is pretty responsive to the controller for a LaserDisc game.

One very important feature of the SD2SNES is that it does not degrade the video quality like the SNES PowerPak.  Similar to the jailbar issue of the NES PowerPak, the SNES PowerPak will severely amplify the white line of the SNES console.  It will also show more prominent jailbars with certain color patterns.  The opening screens for Final Fantasy III are excellent examples where almost all SNES consoles will show jailbars.  The SD2SNES does not seem to display any more interference than a regular cartridge.  It also may draw less power than the SNES PowerPak.

Currently, the SD2SNES can play nine games that the Super Everdrive cannot play.  While the SD2SNES is expensive, consider that a Mega Man X3 cartridge alone goes for almost its price.  You can play Mega Man X2 and X3 with this cartridge and will save on having to buy the originals.

Finally, the SD2SNES loads ROMs more quickly than the SNES EverDrive.  Loading a large game like Star Ocean took about 3 seconds.  Most SNES games are 4MB or less, so they will load instantaneously.  The Super EverDrive is no slouch here either if the game has already been written to the flash,  but the near instant loading times of the SD2SNES are really something to behold.

Super Everdrive

Finally a few words about the Super Everdrive, the produce developed by krikzz.  Krikzz also manufactures and sells the SD2SNES, but at a much higher price point.  The Super Everdrive is kind of like an SD2SNES Lite.  It supports SD cards up to 32GB.  The current version is the v2, which has a battery for retaining save games. The v2 also has support for an optional DSP module that can support DSP1-4.  The v1 required harvesting DSP1 chips from real cartridges.

The menu is pretty basic just like every other Krikzz product except for the EverDrive 64.  It does not use a high definition resolution mode.  It will automatically sort files and folders, but the operation will be slower as a result.  It supports eight Game Genie codes.  The cart will automatically create new files for battery backed up save games.  The maximum supported ROM size is 7MB, so it will not be able to play the uncompressed Star Ocean ROM, which is 12MB.

Other than the menu and the ROM size, the only real issue with this vs. the SNES PowerPak is the loading time for the games.  The SNES PowerPak and SD2SNES load games to RAM, the Super Everdrive loads games to flash memory.  Flash memory must be erased before it can be rewritten, and writing to flash memory takes a lot longer than writing to RAM.  Fortunately, the game previously written can be instantly booted like Krikzz's other products.  Writing a 512KB game like Super Mario World takes about 8 seconds.  Super Metroid, a 3MB game, took 34 seconds. This is according to Krikzz's demo video.

Turbo Duo - Issues and Solutions

The Japanese PC Engine console was released as the TurboGrafx-16 in the US in 1989.  Conceived as a competitor to the NES and the Sega Genesis, it flourished in Japan, floundered in the US and barely had a presence in Europe.  However, it has many great arcade ports, fun platformers and lots of Shoot-em-ups.

Using HuCards

The TurboGrafx-16 can be a very expensive system to collect games for.  Japanese systems use HuCards for the games on ROM.  HuCards are slightly thicker than a credit card and have exposed contacts which get inserted into the card slot on a Turbo system.  Some US material called them TurboChips.  Japanese and US HuCard games are functionally identical but not pin compatible, requiring a region mod or a converter PCB to use cards for the other system.

However, it  is surprisingly easy to play games on any NEC system these days if you don't want to engage in the pricey journey to collect HuCards.  A Turbo Everdrive from Krikzz will play any official, licensed game (with one exception, see below). The Everdrive has a switch to select the console's region and an SD slot to load ROMs. The current card is flash based and loading a new game requires rewriting the old game.  The currently written game can be selected instantly by pressing the select button.  Writing a large 1MB game like Bonk's Big Adventure only takes about 11 seconds. There will be a newer, RAM based version released in the near future that will make loading faster and end worries about reaching the write limit of the flash media. However, the media should be rated for at least 10,000 write cycles, so if you flashed a new game every day it would take you at least 27 years to exhaust the memory.

The Everdrive can also be used as a CD System Card 2.0 replacement by loading the ROM.  It does not have the extra RAM needed for Super CD System 3.0 Card support or an Arcade Card.  It will work with the game Populous only in the Turbo/PC Engine Duo console line because that game came with extra RAM that is duplicated in the CD systems.  However, you can include the Super CD System ROMs so you can play CD games with an Everdrive installed in your Turbo Duo.  You can also load the US ROM in case you forget what the save RAM options are if you have a Japanese system.

One other irksome issue with regions is that the PC Engine uses a different gamepad connector from the TurboGrafx-16.  All Japanese consoles uses a mini-DIN-8 connector while TurboGrafx 16s use a DIN-8 connector. The US Turbo Duo also uses the min-DIN connector.  The controllers and multitaps themselves are otherwise compatible and there are converters available.  Japanese controllers and multitaps are often easier to find than their US equivalents.

A final issue is that the original PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 were RF only.  The TurboGrafx-16 required a Turbo Booster or the TurboGrafx CD add-on for stereo composite AV output .  The PC Engine usually did the same through the PC Engine CD.  As I mentioned in my RF blog entry, Japanese RF channels are not the same as US RF channels.  NEC later released the Core Grafx and Core Grafx II consoles which replaced RF with stereo AV output.  There is also the PC Engine Shuttle which supports stereo AV but has no expansion port for a CD add-on.

Using CD Backups

The TurboGrafx CD was the first CD-based console add-on.  It came with the CD unit, a Docking station and a CD System Card (2.0).  All three pieces are required to make it work with the TurboGrafx-16, and it makes the system look like a large, black inverted-T.  The system could be upgraded to play Super CD-ROM games with a Super System Card (3.0).  These are hard to come by for the US console.

In 1992, the TurboGrafx-16 and TurboGrafx CD were released in a combined unit called the Turbo Duo. Japan's version is called the PC Engine Duo.  The Turbo Duo plays US HuCard games but uses the controller ports from the Japanese consoles.  It also uses a 5-pin DIN AV output connector which supplies composite video only and stereo audio.  Finally it has a stereo mini-jack for headphone output.  The Japanese version is identical except for the color of the buttons and the support for Japanese HuCards.

NEC later released the white PC Engine Duo-R which removed the headphone jack and the lock switch for the CD cover.  Finally, the PC Engine Duo-RX was slightly cosmetically different from the Duo-R but included a six-button gamepad.  Only a few Japanese games like Street Fighter II - Championship Edition supported the 6-button pad.

Any of the Duo consoles are expensive ($250-$350) to acquire, but playing backups of the CD-ROM games are cheap.  The original Duos will almost certainly need to have the capacitors replaced. The Duo R and RX have a reputation for being more reliable. The lens assembly may also need to be replaced.  However, you are really getting the full NEC console experience with one of these systems and it can play a ton of great games.

In burning CD backups, however, you have a challenge.  Turbo CD games rarely look like standard CD-ROMs.  Except for a very few CDs with only a data track, all CD games are mixed mode games with data and audio tracks.  For these games, the first track is always an audio track intended to warn the user not to play the CD in a CD player.  The second track is always a data track (and the reason for the warning), and for some of the simpler CDs, they only have one data track.  CDs with more complex mastering also have a second data track as the last track on the CD.

There is nothing inherently non-standard about mixed mode CDs.  Many, many MS-DOS CD games used a data track and one or more CD audio tracks.  Most Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, Jaguar CD, 3D0 and some Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation games used mixed mode CDs.  However, for the MS-DOS CDs, Sega CDs and Sony games, their CDs always have just one data track and it is always the first track.  One or more audio tracks follow.  Turbo CDs, even those with only a data track, are not readable in a PC except as an audio CD.

A good backup uses high quality media.  I have read good things about Taiyo Yuden CDs, and I have also used Sony SUPREMAS CD-Rs with some success.  Ideally these CDs should be burnt as slowly as your burner can burn them. However there are several caveats to this.  First, modern CD-Rs were designed to be burnt at 16x speeds or better, as are modern burners.  Second, if you use a really old burner it may not support the ideal settings for burning Turbo CDs.  The ideal setting is to use a CUE sheet (either with a BIN or ISO and WAV) in the Disk at Once mode.  Really old burners may not support Disk at Once or may balk at the nutty mixture of audio and data tracks some of these images have.

Compared to playing with original pressed discs, the CD motor may exhibit more noise and the load times may be longer.  Load times for pressed media are often very quick.  It takes virtually no time for even a 1x CD-ROM unit like the one in a Turbo console to switch and audio track.  Additionally, there is only so much RAM to fill in a Turbo system (8KB CPU RAM + 64KB Video RAM + 64KB ADPCM RAM + 64KB CD-ROM RAM + 192KB Super System Card RAM).  A 1x CD-ROM transfers at 150KB per second, so load times should be fairly reasonable.  When you get to Arcade Card games, which add another 2MB of RAM, things might take longer.

Here is a list of all US released CD games by their type :

Two Data Tracks US CD Games
Buster Bros.
Fighting Street
J. B. Harold Murder Club
Jack Nicklaus Turbo Golf
Last Alert

Two Data Tracks US Super CD Games
Bonk III - Bonk's Big Adventure
Cotton - Fantastic Night Dreams
Dragon Slayer - The Legend of Heroes
Dungeon Explorer II
Dungeon Master - Theron's Quest
Fantasy Star Soldier
Forgotten Worlds
Godzilla
John Madden Duo CD Football
Loom
Lords of Thunder
Might and Magic III - Isles of Terra
Prince of Persia
Riot Zone
Shadow of the Beast
Sim Earth - The Living Planet
Super Air Zonk

Interleaved Data and Audio Tracks US CD Games
Cosmic Fantasy II
Magical Dinosaur Tour
Valis III

Two Data Tracks US Super CD Games
3 in 1 DUO Demo CD
4 in 1 Super CD

Single Data Track US CD Games
Exile
Final Zone II
It Came from the Desert
Lords of the Rising Sun
Splash Lake
Valis II
Vasteel
Ys Book I & II
Ys III - Wanderers from Ys

Single Data Track US CD/Super CD Hybrid Games
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Volume II
Syd Mead's Terra Forming

Single Data Track US Super CD Games
Beyond Shadowgate
Camp California
Dynastic Hero, The
Exile II - Wicked Phenomenon
Implode
Meteor Blaster DX
Shape Shifter (98 Tracks!)

Data Only US CD Games
Addams Family, The
Bikini Girls
Hawiian Island Girls
Local Girls of Hawaii, The
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

http://www.necstasy.net/ can inform you of the proper CUE sheets for every CD game, US or Japanese.

Even if you have a Turbo Duo, you should still keep the BIOS images for the Super System Card on your Turbo Everdrive.  You can load the BIOS image into the Turbo Duo to play CD games without having to remove the Everdrive.

Getting into a PC Engine Duo requires using a T10 Torx Security bit, a Turbo Duo requires a 4.5mm gamebit, which is also used with the SNES and N64 consoles and Genesis cartridges.  Inside the CD systems are five potentiometers marked VR101-105.  You can use a small screwdriver to adjust these if the drive is not spinning or CD audio is not playing.

Video Output

Unfortunately, no Turbo console outputs anything better than composite video.  Despite their limited 512-color palette, the Turbo consoles could put out some very colorful images and do not generally look their best with composite.  Fortunately, Hu6260 GPU outputs all the signals needed for RGB and S-Video.  There are many mods, and all require obtaining these signals from the chip itself or the expansion connector.  The PC Engine Duo I have been testing has an RGB mod from a Japanese seller called doujindance.  His mod is passive and very small.  The 5-pin AV DIN is replaced with an 8-pin DIN, with the extra lines being wired to R, G and B.  Sync is taken from the composite video pin.  This mod retains compatibility with existing composite video cables.  Other mods convert RGB to component video.

RGB looks quite superior to composite video, especially in games that use 320 horizontal pixels rather than the more common 256 horizontal pixels.  However, with the RGB amplifier in my system, one can see jailbars in the image that are not present through the composite output.  Jailbars are alternating patterns of light and dark across the screen and they are quite obvious in some games but not in others.  Bonk's Adventure is a game where they are immediately noticeable.

Save Game Backups

HuCards typically used passwords for saving, but a few Japanese supported the Tennoke 2 Backup Unit.  This device plugged into the back of a PC Engine's expansion port.  The Turbo Duo implements 2KB for game memory saving.  Many Turbo CD games only require a fraction of this memory, but some may require most or all of it. Multiple saves can be stored in the system, but there is no real way to transfer saves off the internal memory.  This 2KB SRAM chip is not battery back but instead is kept energized by a large capacitor (I have read the Duo-R has a lot more RAM).  The SRAM will completely drain the capacitor in approximately two weeks if the console is not turned on in that time.  NEC made the Tennokoe Hu-Card to backup saves from the unit.  This device appears to use flash memory, so you don't have to worry about the battery dying.  The current Turbo Everdrive does not support backing up the internal memory, but the next one may).

A Harmonious Relationship - The Harmony Cartridge for the Atari 2600

The earliest Atari 2600 cartridge that could load games was the Cuttle Cart.  This used the Starpath Super Charger method to load games by converting the binary file into an audio signal which the Cuttle Cart would receive and load into its 64KB of RAM.  It was very impressive for its time because it could run virtually the entire 2600 library.  However, it was slow, every file had to be converted, only one game could be stored in its RAM at a time and the audio connection was not always reliable.  (There was a utility to convert binary files on the fly, and when I onwed one I rarely had an issue when a game was corrupted.)  Next came the Krokodile Cart, which supported serial transfers and a menu but was not as compatible with as many games.  It did come with 512KB of Flash to load games and 32KB of RAM for games that required it.

This Christmas I was extremely fortunate to acquire an Atari 2600 Harmony Cartridge.  The Harmony Cartridge is a flash cart that can load games off SD cards (SD Version) or microSD cards (microSD Version).  It will work with just about any Atari 2600 game ROM in existence.  The Harmony supports SD and microSD cards up to 32GB in size, and has 32KB of Flash and 8KB of RAM for games.

When the Harmony boots, you will see a Ying/Yang symbol for a second, then go to a menu.  The Harmony supports folders and can display ten files or folders on a page and twenty four characters of a file or folder name.  It has a page number to help keep your place in directories.  It will not automatically sort files and folders alphabetically, use a Windows program like Drive Sort for that.  You may wish to truncate file names for a more refined cosmetic experience and make a note if they require a controller other than a joystick.  I place the games that require Paddles in separate directories.

When you select a game, you will see the Ying/Yang logo for a second or three as the game is burnt to the Flash, but it is very quick.  Then the game will start as if you had the original cartridge in the slot.  And this cartridge will play anything ever released during the 2600's lifespan (with one exception, see below) and most homebrews and reproductions (provided you can find a good dump of the ROM).

The price of $60 is so reasonable I wonder how any money is being made off these carts, and unlike some other flash carts, they are readily available for purchase.  Even collectors can take advantage of the Harmony.  If you collect games with boxes, you can keep the original cartridge in its box and use the Harmony to play a game.  A 32MB SD or microSD card can easily fit every ROM ever made for the 2600, but you can use far larger cards.  If you buy a 2600 at a garage sale or on Craigslist just to play games, save the money you would have had to spend on cartridges and just buy this instead.

The Harmony Cart can be navigated with a joystick, paddle or driving controller.  This is slightly annoying for the few games that principally use the Keyboard or Kid's Controllers because you will have to plug in a joystick to select the game and then replace it with the Keyboard or Kid's Controller.  It also works with Sega Genesis gamepads, but you should hold the B button when you turn the power on so it is properly detected.

BIOS updates used to be accomplished with a miniUSB cable and software available for Windows, Mac and Linux.  The software will load an updated BIOS, downloaded from AtariAge, to the cart.  The BIOS, v1.5, was last officially updated in 2010.  However, as of v1.5, the USB method is no longer required, you can update the BIOS just by selecting it in the menu.  There is a v1.6 beta BIOS available. 

At least 80% of all Atari 2600 games ever made were released in 2KB or 4KB cartridges with nothing special inside them.  Many later games use extra hardware to add bankswitching to get around the 4KB cartridge ROM limitation and memory to the paltry 128 bytes inside the 2600.  Anything known to require no more than 32KB of ROM is supported.  Here is a list of the bankswitching schemes each cartridge supports :

Cuttle	Krokodile	Harmony
2K	2K	2K
CV (2K ROM + 1KB RAM)	CV (2K ROM + 1KB RAM)	CV (2K ROM + 1KB RAM)
4K	4K	4K
F8 (8KB)	F8 (8KB)	F8 (8KB)
F8S (8KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)	F8S (8KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)	F8S (8KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)
F6 (16KB)	F6 (16KB)	F6 (16KB)
F6S (16KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)	F6S (16KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)	F6S (16KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)
F4 (32KB)	F4 (32KB)	F4 (32KB)
F4S (32KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)	F4S (32KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)	F4S (32KB with 128B SARA Super Chip RAM)
FA (12KB with 256B RAM+ RAM)	FA (12KB with 256B RAM+ RAM)	FA (12KB with 256B RAM+ RAM)
E0 (8KB)		E0 (8KB)
E7 (up to 16KB of ROM with or without 2KB of RAM)		E7 (up to 16KB of ROM with or without 2KB of RAM)
FE (8KB)		FE
3F (up to 64KB)	3F (up to 512KB ROM and 32KB RAM)	3F (up to 32KB ROM and 4KB RAM)
F0 (Megaboy 64KB)
Starpath Supercharger (direct load from audio file)		AR Starpath Supercharger (binary conversion)
	UA (8KB)	UA (8KB)
	EF (64KB)
		DPC (Pitfall 2)
		0840 Econobanking
		Custom (DPC+, Star Castle, Chetiry)

One important original game that the Harmony cart supports it Pitfall 2, which used a complex bankswitching chip that allowed for more complex sound and was not emulated in the earlier flash carts.  For this and the sheer number of bankswitching schemes supported, and the ease of putting games on the cart and the number of games you can have on the cartridge, the Harmony cart has essentially made the older carts almost completely obsolete.  The Harmony's firmware can be reprogrammed to support new bankswitching schemes.  

In 2014, the maker of Harmony Cartridge, batari, released an updated model of the cartridge known as the Harmony Encore.  The Encore can support games with a chip that can be configured as 512KB of ROM, RAM or any power of two combination.  It costs $25 more, but the number of additional games it can play is severely limited at the moment.  It adds support for the F0 Megaboy 64KB cartridge, the only cartridge released during the 2600's lifespan that reached 64KB in size.  However, the Encore makes the serial-port based Krokodile cartridge totally obsolete.

The Harmony Encore can play several advanced homebrew games and demos, such as Boulderdash (3E, demos only, full game ROM not released) and Stella's Stocking (X07, ROM not released) and Zippy the Porcupine (demo only, full game ROM not released) homebrews.  It also supports new bankswitching schemes, EF (64KB), DF (128KB) and BF (256KB), all with or without a 128B SARA chip.  However, in my opinion there is precious little software for it to be worth the extra $$.  In a year or two, my opinion may change.  Moreover, you can upgrade your Harmony to a Harmony Encore for $25 by sending it back.  

In conclusion, should you buy a Harmony Cartridge?  If you want to play 2600 games on real hardware and don't want to go through the hassle of tracking them down, then absolutely.  

Everdrive N8 - A Most Worthy NES Multicart

Early in 2013, Krikzz released his Everdrive N8, the latest in the famed Everdrive series.  Unlike most of his Flash Carts, the Everdrive already had serious competition from the NES PowerPak, released in 2007.

Advantages compared to the NES PowerPak :

The Everdrive N8 has several advantages over the PowerPak.  First, it uses SD (NES version) or microSD (Famicom version) cards.  SD cards are cheaper and easier to find then the Compact Flash carts that the PowerPak supports.  They do not connect to a pin connector, so it is much less likely you will damage the connector.  SD cards are supported up to 32GB and it supports FAT16 or FAT32.

Second, it comes in a Famicom variety, which is awesome for those of us with a Famicom AV.  Krikzz even sells translucent Famicom cartridge shells.  You can see the LED showing the cartridge's operation.  The Famicom version supports mixing external audio emulated in the cartridge with the Famicom's internal audio.  Krikzz sells a 60-72 pin adapter that will allow you to use the Famicom version inside a NES.  You will only need to slightly modify a standard NES cartridge shell to make the two boards fit.  You can get the best of both worlds here.  If you wire Famicom connector pin 46 to NES front loader pin 51 or NES top loader pin 54 and solder the appropriate resistor to your system, you should be able to obtain expansion audio from your NES.

You can use the PowerPak on a Famicom or Famicom AV, but all the 72-60 pin converters I have tried are very poor.  The best one is too thick for the cartridge connector, and the rest use the cheapest plastic covers, have no supporting cover, and do not connect all the necessary pins or their edge pins are too short.  Krikzz's 60-72 pin converter is excellent and fits inside a NES cartridge shell very well.

Third, the Everdrive N8 has an advantage in picture quality over the PowerPak.  With the PowerPak, there are faint jailbars present whereas on an Everdrive they are much less noticeable. I can see faint jailbars (sitting three feet away from a 19" CRT TV) in the blue background of Super Mario Bros. (real cart) on a front loader, but I can barely notice them on the Famicom AV with the Everdrive loading Super Mario Bros. With the PowerPak the jail bars are quite noticeable, although it is not as bad as a NES Top Loader.

Fourth, the Everdrive supports automatically backing up saves to its RAM.  It has a replaceable coin battery to allow this function to work.  The PowerPak requires a reset to the menu.  If you do not reset, you lose the save.  Also, the PowerPak used to (and may still) require that the user create a blank save file, the Everdrive creates a new file automatically.  One exception is FDS games, both flash carts require pressing reset to save data onto the .fds disk images.

Both the PowerPak and Everdrive N8 support the entry of five Game Genie codes, but the Game Genie functionality does not work with every PowerPak mapper set.  The Everdrive supports Save States officially, whereas the PowerPak's save state support only comes with 3rd party mappers.  In order to play the two MMC6 games, Startropics and Startropics 2: Zoda's Revenge, the save state feature must be turned off in the options menu.

The Everdrive N8 supports file sorting without using a program, the PowerPak requires a program like DriveSort to accomplish the same thing.

BIOS updates for the NES PowerPak require the cartridge to be shipped back to retroUSB.  BIOS updates for the Everdrive can be performed with an SDHC card.  Only Everdrives shipped in the first two weeks would need a BIOS update.

The NES PowerPak costs $135.00 from retroUSB, the Everdrive N8 costs $119.00 from retrogate (including a is with a shell), so it is a bit cheaper.

The NES PowerPak has been around longer, and it has had mapper contributions from several people, loppy and thefox in particular.  On his own, Bunnyboy's PowerPak mappers never implemented FDS functionality, MMC5 or any of the expansion audio chips.  Krikzz's Everdrive has not had any mapper contributors other than Krikzz, even so he has still has implemented an impressive number of mappers.  There is little of importance, mapper wise, that is implemented in the PowerPak that is not in the Everdrive.  His mappers support games like Salamander, which is superior to its NES counterpart, Life Force but is the only game using its mapper.  Krikzz's mappers also support proper saving for the official Final Fantasy I & II combination cart, even though that is outside the iNES specification.  In fact, judging by the mapper support grid, every official Japanese game, excluding MMC5 and VRC7 games and some really weird stuff, is supported (it won't play sampled sound from games like the Japanese Bases Loaded series, nor will the PowerPak but most emulators don't bother with that either.)

Because there is only one source, you don't have to play the game of find a mapper file that will make your game work with an Everdrive.  Things are much easier as a result, and rarely has there been a mapper regression, which cannot be said about the PowerPak mappers.  In the seventeen months between the earliest and the latest OS versions, the Everdrive has come a long, long way.  I could not get every important MMC3 games that used the scanline counter to generate an IRQ (split screen effects) to work properly in the PowerPak, regardless of mapper I tried except by using thefox's original save state mapper.  I have no such complaints for the Everdrive.

The Everdrive does not have the issue of corrupt background tiles in certain games like Noah's Ark, which may be an insolvable problem with the PowerPak.  I could never get FDS Metroid to work in the PowerPak, but it plays fine in an Everdrive.

Disadvantages compared to the NES PowerPak :

While the Everdrive N8 supports some expansion audio chips, the resulting audio is sometimes less than ideal. It supports the FDS, Namco 163 and Konami VRC6 expansion audio.  It does not support MMC5 expansion audio (MMC5 works pretty much only for Castlevania III).  Note that the working MMC5 mapper (loopy's) for the PowerPak does not support its expansion audio either.  :

Loopy's Sunsoft FME-7/5B's PowerPak mapper supports Gimmick!'s expansion audio, the save state mappers cannot due to lack of space on the FPGA.  Recently, a user on Krikzz's forums named Necronomfive made a Sunsoft FME-7/5B mapper which supports expansion sound, and it sounds really good.  Get it here : http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=3245.msg31931#msg31931

Neither flash cart supports the VRC7 mapper or its sound.  The PowerPak mappers have more accurate expansion audio.  The PowerPak FDS support will also let you delay the automatic disk swapping to allow the introductions of Zelda no Densetsu and Doki Doki Panic to work. However, the Everdrive can set its emulated audio output mixing to low or high, which may be useful for late Famicoms and all Famicom AVs, which supposedly have quieter internal audio output.

The PowerPak is compatible with a CopyNES add-on, in fact it can use CopyNES to update its bootrom.  retroUSB sells both.  The Everdrive N8 refuses to work in a CopyNES-modded system.  On the other hand, the Everdrive is more friendly to clone systems than the PowerPak.

The PowerPak can play NSF audio files, the EverDrive requires them to be compiled into a ROM, and that is not easy to do.

Games Currently Not Working as of OS v13 (USA/Europe, Japanese Games not included) :

Too Large:
Action 52 (1.5MB of PRG-ROM + 512KB of CHR-ROM, Everdrive and PowerPak only support 512KB of each, will never work unless broken up)

Unsupported Mappers :
Racermate Challenge II (Mapper 168)
Death Race (Mapper 144)
Nintendo World Championships (Mapper 105)
Super Mario Bros + Tetris + Nintendo World Cup (Mapper 37, PAL Only, play separate releases)

The PowerPak supports Death Race and will play the Nintendo World Championships cart, but the timer can only be changed by using an alternate MAP069.MAP file.

Unsupported Mapper Feature :
Bandit Kings of Ancient China (MMC5 EX-RAM not supported, too glitchy to play)
Gemfire (ditto)
L'Empereur (ditto)
Nobunaga's Ambition II (ditto)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (ditto)

Uncharted Waters (ditto)

Laser Invasion (MMC5 game, glitchy graphics during takeoff sequence, works properly on PowerPak with loopy's mapper)

Mickey's Safari in Letterland (MMC3 Acclaim clone, status bar shakes)

All the above work on the PowerPak without glitches except for Mickey's Safari in Letterland, Uncharted Waters and Bandit Kings.

Using Game Genie codes requires a bit of explanation.  First, you must select the ROM you want to play.  Do not use the Select + Load option.  Then go into the cheats menu by pressing select.  In the cheats menu, you hold down B and use the D-pad to select a letter.  If you have swapped A/B in the options menu, you must use A instead.  The on-screen instructions do not change to reflect this change.  When you have entered all the codes, you exit out of the cheat screen using select and then A or B.  When you get back to using a cursor to select a ROM, press start to load the game and the cheat code will be applied to it.

Most people today use the No-Intro set for the basic set of properly dumped ROMs.  However, even with this set there are games that will not work.  Some do not work properly in emulators or flash carts because they lack headers.  If the game's size is an even number like 24KB, 32KB, 40KB, 48KB, 64KB, 80KB, 96KB, 128KB, 160KB, 192KB, 256KB, 320KB, 384KB, 512KB, 640KB, 768KB or 1,024KB, then it will appear as a bad ROM.  Every NES ROM file should be 16 bytes larger than the pure dump, thus appearing as 25KB, 33KB, etc.  Adding a NES header is easy enough.

Other games do not work properly, or at all, because they have the wrong information in their headers.  The header format flash carts support is the iNES 1.0 format, established back in the late 1990s when so much was yet to be learned about NES and Famicom cartridge hardware.  A header tells the emulator or flash cart how much PRG-ROM, CHR-ROM (if any), and PRG-RAM (if any) the cartridge has.  It will also tell the emulator whether the PRG-RAM is battery backed and the mirroring scheme the cartridge uses if hardwired or special (horizontal, vertical or four-screen).  It also has some useless and unsupported bits to inform an emulator whether the game is an NTSC or PAL game, if it is a Vs. System or Playchoice-10 game and whether it contains a pirate trainer.

Often, if a game does not work on an accurate emulator like Nintendulator, it will not work on the flash carts.  Sometimes this is because the header has the wrong mapper number assigned to it or has the wrong mirroring information.  The NES Cart Database has the appropriate information fort almost every NES and most Famicom games.  You should always use it, (Panesian games all use Mapper 3, with Bubble Bath Babes using Vertical mirroring and Hot Slots and Peek-A-Boo Poker using horizontal mirroring) except for the following :

Mapper 71 Camerica/Codemasters Games

Many of these games will experience severe glitches.  Examples include :

Big Nose the Caveman (major graphical glitches on left side of screen, should not see any)
Micro Machines (substantial graphical glitches for standalone cart version, Aladdin Deck Enhancer version just shows a gray screen)
Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy (standalone cart version crashes in seconds of starting gameplay)
The Ultimate Stuntman (severe graphical glitches, similar to Micro Machines)

Today, all Camerica/Codemasters games, with four exceptions, use Mapper 71.  They used to use Mapper 2 and the extra bits of Mapper 71 are really not important for emulation or a flash cart (with one exception). These problems will go away if you change the mapper to Mapper 2.  Fire Hawk is the sole exception, it must be Mapper 71 and appears to play fine.  The Quattro games (Action, Adventure, Sports) use Mapper 232.

Game Patch Required

Cheetamen II - Use Mapper 228 to Mapper 1 patch here : http://thegaminguniverse.org/ninjagaiden4/mottzilla/mapper.html to get this game to work
Cybernoid - Use or permanently patch the ROM with Game Genie code SXZNZV to get the game to work properly after you change the sound mode from sound effects to music.

These games work OK on the PowerPak without patches.

Four-Screen Mirroring Games

With the current OS, the two US four-screen mirroring games must use Mapper 04.  This is always the case for Rad Racer 2, but Gauntlet ideally uses the less advanced Mapper 206.  Change it to 04, which will harm nothing as far as Gauntlet goes.

Third Party Mappers

A few individuals other than Krikzz have released mapper files for the Everdrive to improve expansion audio and allow games to work, see here : http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=3405.0

VRC6 Expansion Audio Improvement
Akumajou Densetsu
Esper Dream 2
Madara

Sunsoft 5B Expansion Audio Support
Gimmick!

VRC7 Functionality :
Lagrange Point

Mapper 31 Support
NSF Carts

Mapper files use the RBF extension and always use three digits, hence 033.RBF, 249.RBF.  Each file may contain the configuration information for more than one mapper, unlike the PowerPak.  A file called MAPROUT.BIN assigns each iNES mapper to a RBF file.  This file is a 512 byte file and each value in the first 256 bytes corresponds the relative position on the iNES mapper grid here : http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Mapper#iNES_1.0_mapper_grid

Mapper files usually contain mappers with similar functionality, so many of the Konami mappers will use 022.RBF.  Here is a list I made of the RBF files and the mappers they support :

RBF  - iNES Mapper #

000 - 0, 3, 7, 11, 13, 15, 34, 36, 38, 66, 70, 71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 79, 87, 89, 92, 93, 96, 97, 101, 113, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 164, 184, 185, 202, 212, 219, 227, 232, 234, 241, 242, 243
001 - 1
002 - 2, 40, 41, 42, 57, 58, 61, 86, 91, 94, 99, 107, 133, 178, 180, 188, 193, 200, 201, 203, 231, 240, 246
004 - 4, 220
005 - 5
009 - 9, 10
019 - 19
022 - 21, 22, 23, 25, 85
024 - 24, 26
028 - 28
031 - 31
032 - 32
033 - 33, 48
064 - 64
065 - 16, 18, 65, 67, 68, 73, 76, 80, 82, 88, 95, 112, 154, 206, 207
069 - 69
085 - 85
090 - 90, 211
118 - 12, 41, 47, 74, 115, 118, 119, 158, 182, 189, 191, 196, 205, 245

If the value for the mapper is FF, then it is unsupported.  If you want to add a mapper, you must convert the decimal number into hex, then enter the hex value in the appropriate byte in the MAPROUT.BIN.

Japanese Game Support :

As of OS v13, the following games have issues :

Incomplete Mapper :
Lagrange Point (game is playable but VRC7 expansion audio not yet implemented)

No PowerPak mapper supports the VRC7 games at all.  If you have a HiDef NES mod, you can use it to emulate the VRC7 audio for Lagrange Point.  You will have to revert to OS v3 for the EverDrive to work with a HiDef NES mod.

Glitches :
Fire Emblem (MMC4 game, glitches on right side of window borders)
Fire Emblem Gaiden (MMC4 game, glitches on right side of window borders)

Nonworking :
No Famicom MMC5 game can be expected to work correctly.
Any game using the Bandai mappers 153, 157 and 159 will probably not work.
Study Box will never work properly on any Flash Cart because it embeds a cassette deck.

Fix Required :
Galaxian - Must be an overdumped 24KB ROM, real cartridge is only a 16KB ROM, which is outside the iNES specification.  GoodNES's [!] rom will work.  Also has a Rev. A.  Same fix required for PowerPak.

Conclusion

The Everdrive N8 is an excellent product that has been well-implemented and boasts a very impressive array of mapper support.  With the proper ROMs, it will make your NES or your Famicom work with well over 1,000 games.  It has given the NES PowerPak serious competition and may yet completely eclipse it.

The Everdrive GB Review - Game Boy and Game Boy Color Fans Rejoice : Your Prayers Have Been Answered!

Last year, Krizz released his long-anticipated Everdrive GB.  The Everdrive GB is a flash cart that supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROMs.  It is extremely important for two reasons.  First, it is a modern cart that uses removable micro SD cards to hold ROMs.  Earlier cartridges relied on flash memory built into the cartridge itself, which limited the number of games that could be stored on the cartridge at any one time.  The use of an SD card means that you can use any device that will write to an SD card to load games onto it.  The EMS Smart Cart 64M(egabit), probably the most widely available older-style Game Boy/Color flash cart, only supports two 4 Megabytes banks for games.  It also requires the use of software to load games.  This software uses an unsigned driver and intended to work with Windows XP.  Getting it to work on Windows Vista, 7 or 8 is an increasingly annoying hassle.  The Everdrive GB supports up to a 32GB microSD card, formatted with FAT32.  A 2GB or better card can easily hold every ROM you would ever want to play.

Second, unlike the other flash carts currently on the market, including the EMS Smart Cart, it is designed to play games, not for music creation.  The Everdrive does not need any configuration files or mapper files.  Out of the box it supports the MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 and MBC5, which encompasses virtually every licensed Game Boy and Game Boy Color game.  It also of course supports no-MBC cartridge ROMs like Tetris (32KB).  The EMS Smart Cart only supports MBC5, which virtually all Game Boy Color games use but no pure Game Boy game needed to use.  Unfortunately due to differences between the MBCs, this caused many issues with Game Boy MBC1, MBC2 & MBC3 games.  Also, there are Game Boy and Game Boy Color games that, intentionally or inadvertently, do unusual things with the Game Boy hardware that screws them up when playing on an old-style flash cart like the Bung GBXchanger or the EMS Smart Cart.

The Everdrive GB does not have these problems.  The Everdrive also supports Super Game Boy features and also allows the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance to display custom color palettes for recognized monochrome Game Boy games.  You can still change the palette used for Game Boy games in a Game Boy Color or Advance using the d-pad and buttons.  This is why it starts twice (except for Super Game Boy, see below), once for the menu and then a second time for the game.  This ensures maximum compatibility.  As of this writing, there are no OS updates, all you need is a formatted microSD card and you are all set.

Compatibility is the key here.  When I purchased the EMS Smart Cart, there was always a possibility that Game Boy games would fail to work for some reason or another.  This would require the game to be patched.  I contributed a few patches myself, but even so, issues still crop up from time to time.  With the Everdrive GB, you won't have to worry about your game suddenly crashing or failing to save.  I have tested many of the games that required patches with the EMS Smart Cart and all worked without any problems on the Everdrive GB.  It supports entering sixteen Game Genie codes, but this feature is somewhat hit or miss. You can change the type of MBC emulated if you wish, but no game needs this feature.

Whereas the EMS Smart Cart would load all games onto its internal memory and allow instant access to whatever games it could hold, the Everdrive GB must write a game stored onto the microSD card into its internal flash memory.  There is 8MB of flash memory, most commercial Game Boy Color games maxed out at 4MB, and there is only one licensed game, from Japan, that uses 8MB.  The Flash is written to in 64KB blocks, and each period you see after Write, which corresponds to an LED pulse on the cart, means it has written a 64KB block.  A 4MB game, the largest typical commercial Game Boy Color game, would take sixty-four periods.  Each block can be written to in less than a second, which gives less than a minute for the largest Game Boy Color game to load.  Note that Game Boy Color, Advance and Player systems have a CPU that is twice as fast as the CPU in the Game Boy, Pocket, Super or Light, so they will write ROMs much faster.

While this is slightly less convenient than the EMS Smart Card's instant access, you can restart the game that was last written into the Everdrive GB by pressing start when you next turn on the system.  This save you from having to wait while the game is rewritten.  There is a coin-style battery used to store the contents of the battery backed S-RAM when the system is turned off.  The cartridge will write the contents of RAM to a file automatically when you start another game.

Everdrives run off a menu system that displays a page of a folder at a time.  Each page on the Game boy can show twelve files or folders at a time.  The first twenty characters of the file or folder's name will appear in the selection area.  There is also a three row shaded area on the bottom of the screen that will show the first sixty characters of the currently highlighted folder or file.  This should be sufficient to identify most games without having to eliminate too much of their file name.  It is a very convenient system to use.

Despite the currently-available cartridges using a Game Boy Color-shaped translucent cartridge shell, it will fit and work inside an original DMG Game Boy (original off-white and "Play it Loud" colors).  There is a plastic corner cut into the back that allows the power switch tab the appropriate amount of room to allow the switch to move into the ON position without any problems.

Things it does not support (does not encompass Japanese hardware) :

MBC3 Real Time Clock

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial - Digital Companion
Harvest Moon GBC
Kate and Ashley - Pocket Planner
Pokemon Crystal
Pokemon Gold
Pokemon Silver

Patches exist for the Pokemon games to allow you to set the clock before running the game or loading a game, but the clock will not change while the game is playing.  Games should work otherwise.  The RTC functionality in Harvest Moon is pretty limited, so you won't miss it.

MCB5 Rumble Pak

10-Pin Bowling
3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrillride
Disney's The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy
Hole in One Golf
Missile Command
NASCAR Challenge
Perfect Dark
Pokémon Pinball
Polaris SnoCross
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
Rhino Rumble
Star Wars: Episode I - Racer
Test Drive Off-Road 3
Tonka Raceway (US Only, European version did not come in a Rumble Pak)
Top Gear Pocket
Vigilante 8
Zebco Fishing!

Games still work and some came with and without the rumble feature.  The rumble feature is only slightly missed.

Game Boy Camera

ROM may work, but functionality will be severely restricted.

MBC7 Tilt Control

Only used with one Game Boy Color game, Kirby's Tilt 'N Tumble.

HuC-3

Only used outside of Japan with Robopon - Sun Version, supports an RTC, an Infrared Port, Battery Backed Save RAM and has a speaker that can make some simple sounds when the cart is off.  The physical cartridge is oversized and has a compartment for a user-replaceable battery and also has an internal save battery.  The game will not go past the Hudson Soft Logo on the Everdrive GB.  The Japanese only mappers HuC-1, TAMA-5, MMM01 (and MBC4 if it exists) are not supported.  Nor are the :

Unlicensed Games :

Wisdom Tree
Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land
Joshua & the Battle of Jericho
King James Bible For Use On Game Boy
NIV Bible & the 20 Lost Levels of Joshua
Spiritual Warfare

You aren't missing much with the lack of support for these unlicensed games.  Graphics will be too garbled to play, just like most emulators.  The great bgb emulator does support these games, if you feel compelled to try and read the bible on a 160x144 screen.  These games will work in a real Game Boy but not in an Everdrive GB.

Rocket Games
ATV Racing
Full Time Soccer
Hang Time Basketball
Karate Joe
Painter
Pocket Smash Out
Race Time
Space Invasion

These were unlicensed Game Boy Color games by Rocket Games, a label from Datel and InterAct, makers of the GameShark and Pro Action Replay cheat devices.  They also issued some multi-carts with these games.  I assume these games will work in a real Game Boy Color.  They do not work in an Everdrive GB.

Sachen and Gowin also released unlicensed Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but they are too obscure and awful to be worth mentioning.  They will not work in an Everdrive GB.

Mortal Kombat I & II

Uses the MBC1 chip in an unusual way, trying to select a game will just go back to the menu.  Play the standalone releases instead.  Typical MBC1 games have a maximum 512KB ROM, if the ROM size is 1MB like Mortal Kombat (and there are a few Japanese games like Genjin Collection that are that large) it will not work in an EverDrive.

Transfer Pak

The N64 Transfer Pak, used for Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mickey's Speedway USA and Perfect Dark will not work with the Everdrive as it would with a regular Game Boy or Game Boy Color game due to its menu.  However, there is a way to get the transfer function to work if you have an EverDrive N64 and are willing to mod your Transfer Pak : http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1780.0

The EMS Cart may work if only one game is on it, but the Everdrive GB will not.

Nanoloop and LSDJ

These music cartridge programs are not fully supported on the Everdrive GB.  Nanoloop uses custom hardware and saving songs does not work in the Everdrive GB.  LSDJ requires 128KB of RAM available to it.  The Everdrive GB only makes 32KB of RAM available, which is all that virtually any Game Boy and Game Boy Color game would ever need.  Only individual songs can be saved.  The EMS Smart Cart is a better choice for LSDJ.

Game Boy Pocket

The Game Boy Pocket may not be able to provide sufficient energy to run the Everdrive GB or the EMS Smart Cart on batteries. Reports have been hit or miss as to whether it works.  I would suggest finding the strongest AAA batteries you can find.  Rechargeable batteries tend to not do well because they are nominally 1.2v, whereas alkaline and lithium batteries are nominally 1.5v.  I would suggest using Energizer Ultimate Lithiums or the Duracell equivalent.  I have had success with Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable batteries and my Game Boy Pocket, so it can work.  While eventually the voltage tends to even out over time, it is when you start up that the extra little bit is most needed.  See here for some advice : http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=1972.15

All other official Nintendo Game Boy systems will work, including those that take batteries.  This includes the DMG Game Boy, the Game Boy Light, Game Boy Color, Super Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP (front lit and back lit) and the Game Boy Player.  They have no problems with good rechargeable batteries like the Eneloop.

Minor Issues :

Please do not be alarmed by the above list, it is really only a small fraction of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color experience.

R-Type DX will not work properly until you perform a soft reset using Start + Select + B + A.

Shantae will write a save file which cannot be copied or deleted in a card reader.  The game will save and load games just fine.  This could be an issue with my micro SD card.

The Everdrive GB certainly works on the Super Game Boy.  It will support games with Super Game Boy features like Donkey Kong and Kirby's Dreamland 2.  It will work just fine with Space Invaders, including the part that transfers control to the SNES to play The Arcade Game.  However, 24 of Nintendo's games had a predefined palette, and when inserted in the Super Game Boy, the hardware would default to the specified palette.  When you first load a game with the Everdrive GB, you will see the default palette.  You can change it manually to the correct palette, using the information from here : http://tcrf.net/Super_Game_Boy_1_and_2, or you can push the reset switch of the SNES.  When the Super Game Boy boots back up, you will see the predefined palette.

One minor complaint I have is that the button to select a game or an option is B and the button to go back is A.  This just feels wrong on a Nintendo system with two buttons.  This can be changed on the Everdrive N8, but not here.  I do not have a problem with this scheme on the Mega Everdrive because a Genesis controller uses three or six buttons.

With GBOS v2, you can now swap A & B buttons so that A does the selecting and B goes back/cancels.  Just put it in the GBOS.GB file in your EDGB directory on the SD card and that is it.  It adds a half a second to the startup time because it has to load the file into RAM rather than have it embedded on the FPGA.

The Everdrive GB saves games in 32KB files.  Typically only the Pokemon games used battery backed save RAM that large.  Most Game Boy and Game Boy Color games used 8KB and some used 512 nibbles to save.  Editing save game files will require an extra step.

The Everdrive GB will not sort files alphabetically, you will need a program like DriveSort for that.

Conclusion

The Everdrive GB, while a bit more expensive than previous Game Boy flash carts, is a steal at $88.00.  I cannot recommend it highly enough to all fans of 8-bit handheld Nintendo games.

The Everdrive 64 - The only N64 Flashcart you will ever need

Continuing in my series profiling various flash cart devices, I turn to that incredible device known as the Everdrive 64.  This cartridge loads N64 ROMs off an SD card and lets you run just about every Nintendo 64 game on the Nintendo 64 game console as they were meant to be run.  No need for emulators of varying quality.  No need to hunt down expensive cartridges.

Nintendo 64 cartridges ranged in size from 4MB to 64MB.  They had various methods to save games, including 32KB or 128KB of battery-backed static RAM, a 4Kbit or 16Kbit EEPROM, or 128KB of Flash Memory. Some games did not allow games to be saved on the cartridge, instead you had to purchase and insert the Controller Pak into the port on the N64 controller to save a game.  There are games that can use both the internal saving cartridge hardware and a Controller Pak.  Additionally, five different lockout CIC chips were used in the cartridges, and the games expected the exact CIC chip in order to bypass their security check and play the game.  These are the CIC-6101, 6102, 6103, 6105 and 6106 chips (NTSC cartridges and machines) or 7102, 7101, 7103, 7105 and 7106 chips (PAL cartridges and machines).  A mostly-comprehensive list of the games and the CIC chips and the saving hardware they use is available here : http://n64.icequake.net/mirror/www.elitendo.com/n64/usa_boot_save_list.html

Making an all-encompassing Nintendo 64 flash cartridge is not an easy task.  Krikzz, a developer from the Ukraine, decided to make a cartridge that would eventually work with any game regardless of saving mechanism or lockout chip.  Thus the Everdrive 64 was born.

The Everdrive 64 has just been released with v3.  v1 does not support games using Flash RAM saving (Jet Force Gemini, Legend of Zelda : Majora's Mask, Megaman 64) without a firmware upgrade via a special programmer.  The v2 can update the firmware without needing a special programmer and loads faster, but the last firmware update was in 2011.  v2 is what I have and is identical, feature-wise to the current v2.5 version still being sold.

The SD card must be formatted in the FAT16 or FAT32 formats.  SDHC cards are supported, so you can easily put a 32GB SD card in the Everdrive 64 formatted with FAT32 in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 & 8.  A folder called ED64 must be created in the root of the drive and the current OS file, OS64.v64, must be placed in it.  That is all that is required for the card to work.  An 8GB card should be sufficient to hold all the ROMs you would want to play.

Official Nintendo 64 ROMs need a CIC chip installed in the Everdrive 64 to work at all.  The most common CIC chip, by far, was the CIC-6102/7101.  A working CIC-6102 (NTSC models) or 7101 (PAL models) must be desoldered from a Nintendo 64 Game Pak and put in the socket inside the Everdrive 64.  The Everdrive 64 can now use the 6102 or 7101 to emulate all the other CIC chips, including the more advanced CIC-6105 chip.

Look here for the latest incompatibility list, as you can see it is a short list (nine games max) :

http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=147.0

Of course, to play all Nintendo 64 games (except as noted in the last paragraph), you will need the right peripherals.  This means you may need up to four Nintendo 64 Controllers, a Controller Pak for games that do not save to the cartridge (the Castlevania games for example), a Rumble Pak is recommended for games that support that feature (the Zelda games, Star Fox), the Expansion Pak to add more RAM to the system (Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Legend of Zelda : Majora's Mask, Banjo-Tooie), the Transfer Pak for the Pokemon Stadium games, and the VRU Voice Recognition Unit for Hey You, Pikachu!.

The Everdrive 64 will sort ROMs alphabetically and create save files automatically as a game would have saved its game to a cartridge.  However, you must press reset before turning the system off or the save will be lost!  v3 has a battery, so this will no longer be an issue.  The cartridge now supports Gameshark codes, but will not emulate a Controller Pak or support save states.  However, with the most recent OS it can switch Controller Pak save files in and out of the Pak.

I ordered my Everdrive 64 directly from Krikzz.  He had options to add a cartridge shell with a nicely cut slot for the SD card and a CIC-6102.  I highly recommend this cart, especially the new v3 version with a real time clock (Animal Crossing) and its socketed battery which eliminates the need to press reset to save a game.

The NES and the Powerpak - An Oldie but Goodie

Once upon a time, if you wanted to play a game on the Nintendo Entertainment System, you needed the cartridge of that game.  The idea of a flash, programmable or rewritable cartridge, either with a single game or a multi-cart, was something strictly in the domain of hackers and pirates.  Unlike other cartridge systems, where the internal hardware inside the cartridge rarely varied, there were enormous numbers of different cartridge hardware for the NES.  While the basic NES cartridge could support either 16KB or 32KB of game code (Program ROM) and 8KB of graphics tiles (Character ROM), anything beyond that required hardware to implement a bank switching scheme to allow the game to overcome those limits.

When a NES or Famicom cartridge uses extra hardware, that hardware is called a mapper.  With the Japanese Family Computer (Famicom), Nintendo created several methods, some using simple glue logic, others using custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) which it termed Multi-Memory Controllers (MMCs).  It allowed its initial partners, Namco, Konami, Sunsoft, Irem, Bandai, Jaleco and Taito to make cartridges and whatever hardware they could put on them.  Later partners had to use Nintendo's boards almost without exception.  Some Famicom mappers supported additional sound channels.  Many games used battery backed static RAM (S-RAM) in the cartridge to save games, and a few used EEPROM to save.

When the Famicom came to the USA and became the NES, Nintendo implemented stricter controls over cartridge manufacture.  Almost without exception, it manufactured all cartridges and its partners had to use the hardware Nintendo offered or their game would not be released.  The number and variety of different mapping schemes was greatly reduced compared with the Japanese cartridges.  This situation carried over into Europe.  However, all versions of the NES added a lockout chip, one region for the US and Canada, a region for the U.K., Italy and Australia (PAL-A), a region for the rest of Europe (PAL-B), and even a region for short lived Hong Kong version of the NES.

Still, when unlicensed third parties entered the scene, they quickly devised their own mapping schemes, although sometimes their schemes function identically with a Nintendo mapper.  Unlicensed manufacturers were Tengen (began as a licensed third party), Camerica/Codemasters, Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree/AGCI/Bunch Games, SEI/American Video Entertainment, Racermate, Inc., Panesian, Caltron/Myriad and Active Enterprises.  These cartridges contain various methods to defeat the lockout chip in the NES.

In Japan the Famicom had an add-on peripheral called the Famicom Disk System.  This allowed the users to load games off special, 3" floppy disks into a special adapter cartridge containing 32KB and 8KB of RAM and an ASIC containing the logic and code necessary to control the disk drive and provide an extra sound channel.  Disks were much, much easier to manufacture than ROM cartridges and far cheaper to make. Nintendo considered releasing it in the west, but the disks did not have a great profit margin, were easy to pirate, not very reliable and the peripheral was not a smash success in Japan.  Because of all those issues it was never released overseas.  Still, several of Nintendo's classics like The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Doki Doki Panic and Konami classics like the first two Castlevania games were released first for the Disk System.

The NES hardware found its way into the arcades.  The Playchoice-10 was an arcade machine that allowed people to play NES games for as long as they had quarters to buy time in the machine.  The games themselves were on PCBs that inserted into special slots on the arcade PCB, but the code was little changed from the consumer cartridge and can easily be run with the appropriate NES cartridge.  This was the only exposure The Goonies had in the West.  The Vs. System was an arcade machine dedicated to playing an adapted NES or Famicom game like Duck Hunt or Super Mario Bros.  The game would usually be more challenging for the arcades and often have some additional graphics.  The NES hardware would still be the basis for the game, however the games started via coin slots and multiple, incompatible PPU chips were used with the games.

Most licensed NES games use only a few mappers.  0, 1, 2, 3, 4 & 7 are the most popular.  5, 9, 13, 34 & 66, 69, 105, 118, 119 & 206 are also used by NES games, although often only one to five games may use a mapper.  Unlicensed NES games use several more mappers, including 11, 34, 41, 64, 68, 71, 79, 113, 144, 158, 168, 228 & 232

As anyone might observe, this dizzying array of hardware would have made anyone wary of trying to make a cartridge that could play multiple games as a multi-cart.  Early copiers are very obscure nowadays and never covered a complete variety of hardware.  Emulators began to be able to play a large number of games and the ability to dump games was focused on in the mid-to-late 90s.  Not until 2007 was a cartridge released that allowed people to play a wide variety of games on a real NES or Famicom.  That cartridge is called the NES PowerPak, and it revolutionized the way multi-carts were made for retro-systems.  It was released by RetroZone, which had previously offered USB converter kits and adapters for NES, SNES and Genesis controllers.

There had been multi-carts before, but they used odd methods to transmit games (the Atari 2600 Cuttle Cart required the game to be converted into an audio signal) or only had a fixed and relatively small amount of memory (Tototek) to hold games.  The PowerPak's chief innovation was to allow removable storage in the form of easily available Compact Flash cards to hold games.  Thus the number of games that the cartridge could access at any one time was only limited by the size of the card and the file system.  The result was that the whole NES library could easily be fit within a 1GB Compact Flash card.

The PowerPak required a second innovation to work particularly with the NES.  Since the NES contained so many mappers, few of which could co-exist with each other, each had to be emulated by the cartridge. Bunnyboy, the inventor of the cartridge, used a large Field Programmable Grid Array (FPGA) chip that would be programmed to emulate each game's mapper as they game loaded.  The FPGA is RAM based, so it can be reprogrammed long after you and I are dead, in theory.  Other programmable logic chips may be flash memory based and have a finite number of rewrite cycles.

I was a very early adopter of the NES PowerPak, and there were some growing pains with the device. Early cartridges required a resistor pack soldered to the data pins of the video bus to avoid graphical tile corruption. I had to send my cartridge back for the modification.  The mod instructions are here for anyone who has not had their early device modded : http://www.nespowerpak.com/powerpakmod.html  In the beginning some NES games did not read the joystick properly loaded from the PowerPak, and a BIOS update, which had to be done with a Flash Programmer, was needed to fix these games.

For Famicom users, the PowerPak will require a 72-to-60 pin connector, and they are hard to find.  You will also need to make sure that the converter does not tie pins 48 and 49 on the Famicom connector.  Many, many games do tie these pins together, but some games do not and the PowerPak needs them separated to work properly.  Also, you need to consider a housing for the converter to add stability to the setup.  The PowerPak must face the rear of the Famicom when inserted into the adapter.

The PowerPak can support the expansion audio of games that use VRC6, N163, Sunsoft-5B chips and the Famicom Disk System.  If using the cartridge on the Famicom with an adapter, a 10K resistor will need to be run from pin 54 on the NES side of the connector to pin 45 of the Famicom connector, and another 10K resistor needs to be run from pins 45 to 46 on the Famicom connector.  The resistor values may need to be changed for a Famicom AV, because those resistors make the system audio virtually inaudible on the AV unit.

To obtain expansion sound on a Front Loader NES, you will need to solder a 47K resistor from pin 3 to pin 9 of the expansion connector.  To obtain expansion sound on a Top Loader, you will need to solder a wire connecting pins 51 and 54 in the PowerPak.  Next you will need to solder a 1.2K resistor between pin 51 and the audio out pin on the NES PCB.  See here for details : http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7880&hilit=top+loader+expansion+audio

The PowerPak can have a bit of trouble with some Compact Flash cards.  I would use genuine Sandisk CF cards and they should not be especially fast.  There are fakes floating around, see here for more details : http://www.ebay.com/gds/FAKE-SanDisk-Extreme-Compact-Flash-Cards-Exposed-/10000000001456539/g.html

The card requires a set of files to be put in a PowerPak directory to instruct the cartridge how to program the FPGA for each mapper or feature.  Mapper support was a bit weak at first, but it eventually improved. Also, programmers other than Bunnyboy began making their own mappers to add features beyond the intended scope of the NES PowerPak like Famicom Disk System support.  This is how the PowerPak supports mapper 5 games, which use the most complex Nintendo MMC, MMC5 at all.

In my experience, the PowerPak requires mapper files from a few sources to ensure that almost every non-Famicom game will play correctly on it.  Here is my mapper mix :

Start with the lastrelease of the official PowerPak mappers, found here : http://www.retrousb.com/downloads/POWERPAK135b2.zip.  Place those mappers into a directory labeled POWERPAK in the root of your CF card.

Next download loopy's latest PowerPak mappers, found here : http://3dscapture.com/NES/powerpak_loopy.zip.  You will also need to download his mapper 5 file separately.  They will overwrite the older mapper files (also from loopy) from the official set.

The most frequent issue with games is that they have wrong or missing headers.  All NES ROMs require a 16-byte header (iNES) for emulators to make them work.  The actual ROM in a GoodSet or No-Intro set may be perfectly dumped, but information in the header may be wrong.  Pay close attention to the mapper number, the mirroring and the battery backed flag.  I used to see a warped racetrack for Mach Rider for years in emulators and I erroneously believed it to be due to poor emulation when it was due to the wrong mirroring being set in the header.  Super Cars has a similar issue.  The NES Cart Database will give the proper mapper, mirroring and battery backed memory settings for every US/European game.  Alien Syndrome and all the Mapper 206 games should be set to Mapper 4 for the PowerPak.

At this point, you may be able to enjoy fully glitch free NES games and many Famicom and Famicom Disk System games.  Some games, like Gimmick! and Akumajou Densetsu, (the original version of Castlevania III) use expansion sound that their NES ports cannot.  Famicom Disk System games need the 16-byte header before the disk code, the crucial byte informs the PowerPak how many sides the disk is supposed to have.  FDS image = 65,500 bytes, one sided disk; FDS image = 131,000 bytes, two sided disk.  (The mapper could have determined this easily enough by the file size alone).  The PowerPak does not support two disk games.

More information about the mappers the PowerPak supports can be found here : http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/PowerPak

Fixable Issues with Games

I had some issues with certain NES games after the PowerPak folder had been setup in this way.  Here are my solutions :

Mapper 4 Games (used by many, many games, best candidates are ) :

Crystalis
Mega Man 3
Kirby's Adventure
Startropics 1-2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Mickey's Adventures in Numberland

Issue : Portion of Screen Shakes uncontrollably

Solution : These games use the MMC3's IRQ Scanline Counter to change tilesets.  On real hardware you may notice one scanline flicker a bit before a status bar, this is normal.  However, the portion of the screen after the line should not shake (with the exception of some games like Zombie Nation).  On the robot master screen of Mega Man 3, the scanline counter should cause the top line of Shadow Man's box to flicker back and forth.  I found that the save state mappers from thefox, available here : http://kkfos.aspekt.fi/projects/nes/powerpak/save-state-mappers/  make the scanline counter behave in every game.  Thefox has save state mappers for Mappers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 69 (except for Japanese Gimmick!), which encompass 95% of all Licensed NES games.  Use v1.6 and turn off the save state support.  His later NES PowerMappers are not as accurate with the MMC3 scanline counter.

Four-Screen Mirroring Games :

Gauntlet
Rad Racer II

Issue : Tile Corruption or Wrong Tiles

Solution : The use of the save state mapper breaks these games.  Use MAP04.MAP from loopy's latest PowerPak mappers and rename the file to MAP06.MAP.  Set the mapper from 4 to 6 for both games in the ROM header.  I would recommend the Nintendulator emulator to change the mapper number in the ROM header, which can be found here : http://www.qmtpro.com/~nes/nintendulator/, ROMs must have four screen mirroring set in the header for these games to work correctly.

Nintendo World Championships :

Issue : While the PowerPak supports this game, the official mapper does not support the dipswitches to change the time allowed for the game, and acts like no dipswitches are set, giving the player just over five minutes.  The official competition time was six minutes and twenty-one seconds.

Solution : Join Nintendoage.com, download the file MAP695.MAP attached to this thread http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=97798, rename it to MAP69.MAP and overwrite the official MAP69.MAP.  This mapper file will give you the official competition competition time of six minutes and twenty-one seconds.

Broken, Buggy, Incomplete or Non-working Games :

Incomplete MMC5 Emulation : 

Bandit Kings of Ancient China - Severe Graphical Glitches due to incomplete MMC5 emulation
Uncharted Waters - Severe Graphical Glitches due to incomplete MMC5 emulation

No Mapper Support :

Racermate Challenge II
Super Mario Bros./Tetris/World Class Track Meet (PAL only)

Game Size :

Action 52 - PowerPak not big enough to fit a 1.5 Megabyte PRG-ROM, so most games will not work

CHR-ROM/CHR-RAM Conflicts:

All games are still playable :

Noah's Ark (Konami PAL only) - Background tiles corrupted
Addams Family, The - Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt - Extraneous lines on text and menu screens
Baseball Stars II - Extraneous lines and moderate graphical glitches on menu screens, game is playable
Bigfoot - Extraneous lines on title screen
Krusty's Fun House - Extraneous lines on text screens
Fisher Price - Perfect Fit - Garbled Graphics at times

Acclaim MMC3 Clone :

Mickey's Safari in Letterland (shaking status bar)

MMC3B/C Behavior :

Star Trek 25th Anniversary (glitches when character text boxes appear on screen)
Kid Klown in Night Mayor World/Mickey Mouse III: Yume Fuusen (glitches in warping effect when beginning first level)

PowerPak Menu and ROM Naming :

The PowerPak does not sort files alphabetically, it displays them as they were copied to the card.  A program called DriveSort, available here : http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort.php can be used to sort the files in a directory or subdirectory.  It does not sort files in subdirectories automatically, you have to enter each subdirectory and click on Sort.  The resulting sort may not be ideal for games that start with the same word like Super.  Due to the way long file names in FAT works, each title will be truncated to an 8.3 filename, and after the tenth game with the same first seven characters, the names start to get weird.  The result is that the sort will not work properly unless you rename the 8.3 names into something sortable.

The PowerPak menu uses an 8x8 pixel fixed width font within a 256x240 resolution.  30 lines of characters can be seen on the screen, but the TV bezel may totally or partially obscure the first and last line.  For cosmetic purposes, I place a dummy directory named ! so it gets obscured.  The menu will display 26 characters in a file name.  For a clean looking menu, I recommend shortening names whenever possible.  You can use abbreviations like Adv for Adventure and eliminate unnecessary portions of titles.  For sports games I usually shorten the title to the name of the athlete or organization and the type of game (basketball, baseball, etc.).  Arabic numerals should replace roman numerals.

The PowerPak does support battery backed S-RAM games which use the RAM for saving games.  There has to be a file with the exact same name as the ROM, with the extension .sav instead of .nes, in the SAVES subfolder of the POWERPAK folder.  The PowerPak has the capability to save to the appropriate file automatically.  However, the user cannot simply turn off the NES, he must hold the reset button down until the PowerPak menu reappears.  Later multicartridges from Krikzz will automatically create save files and keep the save if the user turns the console off.  All NES games use an 8KB S-RAM except for Romance of the Three Kingdoms II, which requires 32KB.  If using the save state mappers, the .sav file must be 32KB to save the game's state.

Competitors :

While the PowerPak is currently available for sale, there is a similar device for the NES and the Famicom made by Krikzz called the Everdrive N8.  It comes in a 60-pin version for the Famicom and a 72-pin version for the NES.  Its support for Famicom games is may be better than the PowerPak's,  It uses SD cards, which are more common nowadays than CF cards.  It has a save battery socket on the PCB, so you don't have to press reset to save a game.  Firmware updates do not require a reprogrammer, and more mappers have support for save states.  It even has enough MMC5 support to play Castlevania III, but not enough for other MMC5 games like the Koei games, Just Breed or Laser Invasion.  Among the few other NES ROMs it does not support is Nintendo World Championships, Action 52 and Cheetamen II and Maxi-15.  However, it is somewhat cheaper than the PowerPak.