Sick of having to use your inconvenient mouse and keyboard to do "internet searches" for ROMs of your favorite retro games? Well a gentleman named Matthias might just have the answer to your prayers -- a USB
SNES cartridge adapter. The enterprising DIY'er has created a combo hardware and software solution that allows you to plug in your dusty carts directly to your rig, and see the ROMs appear as standalone files which you can then load into the emulator of your choice. Apparently there are still some kinks to work out (like getting data rates up for larger games), and Matthias already has plans underway for a multi-system solution. Still, this is impressive stuff, even if it means we'll have to repurchase any titles we're missing from
reputable online auction houses. Hey, at least it'll cut down our visits to "Russian porn sites." Check out the video of the whole thing in action after the break.
posted Jun 21st 2009 10:02AM
i wonder how the adapter is able to make the cartridge itself appear automatically as a rom file....
they say it's a "hardware and software solution", so presumably drivers
I doubt this thing needs drivers. it looks like the microcontroller is emulating a mass storage usb device. so the uc identifies itself as a mass storage device, the pc requests a directory listing, the uc tells it there is a file there, then when the pc calls goes openfile() / readfile(), it dumps the rom... i guess.. at least thats how i'd do it. nice idea.
there always has to be someone that tries to sound smart by denying the claims of the article. Seriously, you are doubting this guy for what reason? What reason does he have to lie about his creation? How would he benefit in any way to lying about this?
Levi, they weren't questioning the validity of the device, just puzzling over the technical details.
There's always someone that will try to make other sound dumb so that they seem smart.
They always uberfail.
@levi
what the f are you talking about. first of all, i said it was a nice idea. thats called a compliment. second, I was addressing the confusion that the software he referred to was running on the PC. I was trying to explain that the software he refers to is the code running on the atmel microcontroller. thats why this is an elegant solution, there is no software needed on the PC to dump roms. you moron.
Levi, you FAILed.
jimmy, yeah, if you see the article, talks about hand-hacking a FAT16 header to put on the image so it can appear as a filesystem.
The only thing I would say is that mass storage devices are block devices, not file devices and thus the atmel code never sees "readfile()", it sees "get block N". He surely made his image so that the cartridge rom starts at block X and runs to block X+N-1 so he can just figure out which bytes in the cartridge the host wants by subtracting X from N and then multiplying by 512 (block size).
@vance
Nevertheless, there is always a possibility that in the other end of one messy entanglement of cables lies, in fact, a regular flash drive with a ROM dump on it.
What... he didn't blow on the cartridge.... ponderous.
hmmmmmm...
This makes me really jealous!
I know next to nothing about electronics and I really want to learn!
can anyone please recommend a book or guide I could read? :)
You could start experimenting on your own...
search for art of electronics by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill.
Or go to http://www.electronicarts.com
"Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims
Once you have a book or two, this is a great place to find projects, hacks, moding, etc
http://makezine.com/
A great place to start is by taking hold of a red wire in your house walls, then touching any metal wall plate. You will experience firsthand the effects of current and heating up via resistance. Good starting lesson.
Brian, just so you know, you should review your knowledge of wire colors before opening up junction boxes in your own house. In the US at least, the hot wire is black.
Thank you very much everyone!
You've all been most helpful! :)
awesome.
i'd like it for the original nes too, with maybe a usb nes controller! not sure of the legalities, but this guy can sell these things easy!
Controllers are nothing new:
http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?cPath=21
Wow, this is pretty great. I know that my SNES took a trip to the dumpster a long time ago and I have a box of SNES games sitting around gathering dust, like he mentions... I would love something like this for sure.
I still have my NES, not one but 2 SNES, N64 and DreamCast around, along with the current gen systems of course. I Just love Donkey Kong Contry.
"aww. crud." priceless!
thats pretty good and makes me wonder why some unheard of chinese company has not already been making them:L
Yeah I mean cool... but just to rip carts to ROMS? Sorry guys, the more practical solution to me is just to download a bigass ROM library off of Bittorrent (no Russian porn sites for this guy), copy the games out that you do own, and kill the rest. Call me crazy.
yeah no shit sherlock
Hey shitlock this gives legitimacy the to the issue of legality of roms. The emulation side is legal, the way one obtains the rom image is the issue. It has been a long time since cart rippers have been available. Now people can use their own carts and legally play them with emulators. Downloading a rom is not legal.
Awesome, my Nokia N800 has USB host capability and I'm pretty sure there's a SNES emulator for it somewhere, I need one of these adapters.
....test
didn't work.
did so!
ha?
why not just buy one... http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/retro-gaming/b76e/
why buy something when you can build it yourself
This was even cooler two days ago before Engadget swiped it from Hack-a-Day...
http://hackaday.com/2009/06/19/usb-reader-for-snes-game-carts/
Build your own, it's easy.
There's nothing wrong with that at all. Engadget does this a lot, and it's perfectly acceptable. The read link directs to Hack-a-Day, and not everyone who reads Engadget reads Hack-a-Day. You don't think blogs and news sites get all of the news by themselves, do you?
I agree with BSW. If you're an RSS subscriber of hackaday and engadget then it is quite boring to get the same story from another site. I prefer content be original. Engadget seems to be doing too much of scraping the web for interesting articles already written up elsewhere.
@ monkfishbandana I find the fact that news and blog sites DON'T get their own material very disturbing.
It's an alarming trend among the corporate news media to use someone else's feed and not do the investigative journalism themselves.
The pitiful coverage of 9/11 was a perfect example. Not only were news companies using each other's video feeds but the bad information was spread among them all like a disease as well. For an example, look online to find how many live recordings were made where there were eyewitness reports of people hearing explosions within the buildings and then see how much of that showed up in the final story and final news coverage.
@ Amerist
This isn't the same thing. In emergencies, news companies rush to get the story out. If the first news station on the scene grabs footage that doesn't show the whole story, or the information they give isn't complete, they and the other news stations will still run it in a bid to keep up appearances that they can give the news as it happens. In this respect, I completely agree with you that the way this is handled is wrong.
However, Engadget is a blog. A technology blog. I don't see the invention of this SNES USB bridge as an emergency, and like I said before, not everyone reads both sites. You've said that you do, but I hate RSS feeds, and although I only check Hack-a-Day maybe once a week, I check Engadget several times a day. I don't read Wired, I very rarely visit Ars Technica, I rarely visit New Scientist, I don't read Gizmodo and I don't roam around for other technology websites. Engadget provides me with interesting stories from these websites that I wouldn't ordinarily see, and I'm sure this applies to a major percentage of their readers.
That is awesome; a great elegant solution.
Presumably being a Mass storage device this will also work on consoles too (e.g PS2 w/SNES emulator, Wii etc)
Don't lie Joshua, this will just give you more time to browse Russian porn sites because you won't have to spend time searching for ROMs.
Is there a USB cartridge aswell?
I have the console and can't find some games to buy :(
Card readers/dumpers have been about for a while now. Usually they are Serial or Parallel based.
I am glad to see USB ones out in the public eye now.
There is a flash cart for the NES:
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=34
Just upply a CF Card and NES Roms, and your old NES can be up and running with every game out there... And no need to remove the cart ever again!
There are many various devices available for the SNES as well...
http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_8
Enjoy!
This was SUSPOSED to be @Markus!
FIX THE $&#^%$#* COMMENT SYSTEM ALREADY!!!!!
That flash cart is sweet. Kind of expensive for me though.
Yea, the NES one is expensive too.
They are probably expensive because there is not a huge market for them.
Nintendo should sell USB adapters for all of its cartridge types for the Wii's virtual console. One console for every old Nintendo game? Hell yes.
Most Wii homebrew emulators can load roms from USB storage devices, so this would actually work perfectly that way.
why not just go here http://retrouprising.com/
The dude has too much time on his hand, too many easier solutions already available.
"Hey, at least it'll cut down our visits to "Russian porn sites." "
Is this why you can't afford to fix the comment system?
sweet
Always happy to see the SNES in the news but I fail to see how this is anything special. Isn't it just a ROM dumper in USB form? As far as I know, that's how all those ROMs circulating the net are made, so this is just a homebrew version. Cool, yea. But not entirely super special or anything. Plus, isn't the whole point of playing your old school cartridges to play them on the original hardware so that you get the original experience? By converting it to a ROM and playing it on an emulator it's no different than going on a torrent and downloading it. Except maybe the legal issue, but even then I imagine it's not legal to dump your own ROMs.
Yup, that is how they were made, except most ROMS out there were ripped using a floppy drive/cart reader attached to the SNES. I have two of 'em (now broken). The roms would transfer to partitioned files onto 3.5" disks. A 32megabit game would fit onto 4 disks.
Some had parallel or serial port attachments so you could connect to a PC for data transfer as well.
They were very popular in southeast Asia until the days of PS1 pirating. When I had mine, I'd go to Blockbuster and rent like 3 games per weekend and copy them. It got pretty ridiculous. Then the internetz got big and it became even crazier, everyone like me was putting the files online (you'd use a program like SNEStool to combine the partitioned file into the .SMC files you see out there today).
This is, however, a very noble effort. The more ROM dumping equipment out there, the better. You never know what sheltered person will one day leak a very rare or unreleased game...
Nintendo, of course, would rather you buy a Wii and download every VC title, even if you legally own the damn game that you paid $50 for each of them twenty years ago.
You "legally own the damn game" in its original form. You're free to transform it yourself via a ROM dumper. But if Nintendo's doing it for you, I don't think it's unfair to expect you to pay for the privilege.
still prefer "russian porn sites"... porn and rom just go hand in hand.
This guy can clearly buid an atom bomb, I mean who just says I bought this board and you know in between I just wrote a little firmware for the micro controller.
This is a cool idea! But I still think it is more convenient to just google your rom and download the mere 256kb in size.
http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_8_11&products_id=39
Doh, I started my comment with a symbol that made the text not show up, here is the text that was suppose to follow. "for those who lack technical knowledge. Be forwarned though, that this solution involves having access to an old school printer port which is becoming harder and harder to find on newer machines/motherboards." There are a handful of games that won't play via this solution because of add-on chips on carts, check their forums for more details. Also try and buy games you enjoy, although there is a slim to none chance that the original developer/publisher will see that money, it's just the right thing to do ;).
Can't believe he died right there!
I was surprised to see that he didn't have to write any software to obtain the file. I work with micro controllers a lot and they don't do much without some front end to save data to a pc.....
When will this be available for the iPhone?
It's Engadget it must be about the iPhone some how
it took me a few hours to download a torrent of every single SNES game ever made. most of them actually work pretty well. this adapter wouldn't be worth it to me.
how much will this cost? any copyright infriging laws?
the Great eBay Solution
what is the great ebay solution for this