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 June 21st 2009 10:02AM
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