Anyone received theirs yet?

[Muzer]

I am debating over waiting for the batch that properly handles the SNES lockout chip or get a new one for my cousins to use.

Sorry to disappoint but for that one you may have to wait forever

Out of interest, does anyone know how the pirates dumped the game in the first place? They must have had some method... perhaps that could lead to a solution for the Retrode?

[Matthias_H]

I know of at least one case where games were dumped by unsoldering the ROM chip, which may be hard to emulate in firmware

[Teancum]

The two I ordered finally arrived today! Very excited to check them out when I'm done with work.

[Muzer]

BTW, have you shipped out first of the non-preordered ones, or are you still busy with those?

[Matthias_H]

BTW, have you shipped out first of the non-preordered ones, or are you still busy with those?

Nothing other than the pre-ordered units has gone out yet. I'm still in the process of setting up a smooth order fulfilment pipeline, hence the projected shipping date of Jan 23.

[Muzer]

Ah, fair enough, makes sense. Sorry if I'm being a bit impatient; I'm just too excited

[JonY]

Mine arrived yesterday, am very pleased with it, much more professional looking than version 1!

[Muzer]

Just reporting in to say I got mine today, and it's looking lovely. Thanks a lot! I'll give it a go a little later...

[Muzer]

Just tested my rather modest collection of SNES games. All seem to work fine:

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNSP-NX-UKV): 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Donkey Kong Country (SNSP-8X-UKV): 32Mbit, 16kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
F-Zero (SNSP-FZ-UKV): 4Mbit, 16kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Family Dog (SNSP-D8-UKV): 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Krusty's Super Fun House (SNSP-FH-UKV): 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Lamborghini American Challenge (SNSP-L8-UKV): 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Mario Paint (SNSP-MP-UKV): 8Mbit, 256kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Nintendo Scope 6 (SNSP-LR-UKV): 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Starwing (SNSP-F0-UKV): 8Mbit, 256kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (SNSP-S2-UKV): 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Street Fighter II: Turbo (SNSP-TI-UKV): 32Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Super Gameboy (SNSP-A-SG(UKV)): 2Mbit, Checksum fine; OK (but obviously doesn't actually work).
Super Mario All-Stars (SNSP-4M-UKV): 16Mbit, 64kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Super Mario Kart (SNSP-MK-UKV): 4Mbit, 16kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Super Mario World (SNSP-MW-UKV): 4Mbit, 16kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Super Metroid (SNSP-RI-UKV): 16Mbit, 64kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare (SNSP-BN-NOE): 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Yoshi's Safari (SNSP-RH-UKV): 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.

[Matthias_H]

Thanks for reporting!

[Muzer]

One thing I did notice but forgot to mention is that hotplug seems VERY sketchy. I rarely got a case in which I used hotplug and the cartridge was detected as being the correct size/type even - very frequently they were detected as being double or half their actual size, and also as Atari 2600 games. After a reset it always worked fine. This is on Linux. Not a big deal, I just replugged it every time, but reporting it in case it's important.

I wasn't unmounting in between, though - were you supposed to?

[Muzer]

Now done the Mega Drive games. Most of these I've picked up along the way - I didn't choose them, don't judge me . If you don't want to read through the whole list, I'll summarise the (all minor) issues I found:

Firstly, Kega Fusion would only accept saves with the 16-bit mode enabled, as I explained in the other thread, I personally think this should be enabled by default.

* Sonic 3 & Knuckles's SRAM (well, FRAM) did not show up, presumably meaning you'd have to put just Sonic 3 in, copy the save, put it in your emulator's save directory, rename it, and then put Sonic 3 & Knuckles in, and point the emulator to that save directory. Which seems like a bit of a pain. I don't know whether it's actually possible to access the save, but if it is, it would be nice
* A few games had checksum errors I couldn't get rid of. Then I noticed, so did the online dumps (marked [!]), so it's probably an error in the cart itself.
* EEPROM doesn't work, which we already know about of course - I included every game I noticed should have had EEPROM, but I might have missed/misidentified a few, as I only briefly turned them on, and I'm not familiar with many of these.
* Micro Machines 96 has no name, so the name just appears as a dot, which makes the file hidden on Unix (meaning it only shows up in ls -a). Obviously impossible to correct the no name thing (unless there's a third, hidden, name field somewhere), but perhaps have the Retrode detect when a file would begin with a dot, and insert "UnnamedGenesisGame" before it or something.
* I assume the controller ports on J-Carts don't work, though I haven't tested it (there was talk about that earlier, and I linked to docs, but presumably that's quite low down on priorities so I assume it hasn't been done - at any rate, I can't see anything in the readme).


No games failed to work completely, it was just the above minor issues.


Altered Beast: 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Earthworm Jim: 24Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Ecco the Dolphin: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Ecco the Tides of Time: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
F-22 Interceptor: 6Mbit, Checksum error; seems OK (online dumps also have incorrect checksum).
Game Genie: 512Mbit, Checksum error; menu works, but no game will start.
Jack Nicklaus' Power Challenge Golf: 8Mbit, 8kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
LHX Attack Chopper: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Mick & Mack Global Gladiators: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Mega Games I: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Mega Games 3: 16Mbit, Checksum error; seems OK (online dumps also have incorrect checksum).
Menacer: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Mortal Kombat: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
PGA Tour Golf III: 16Mbit, 64kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic & Knuckles: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic 3: 16Mbit, 4kbit SRAM, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles: 32Mbit, SRAM NOT PRESENT, Checksum fine; Game OK, but no SRAM.
Sonic the Hedgehog: 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic 1 & Knuckles (Blue Spheres Game): 24Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic 2 & Knuckles: 26Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Stargate: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
T2: The Arcade Game: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Taz in Escape from Mars: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Theme Park: 16Mbit, EEPROM NOT PRESENT, Checksum fine; Game OK, but no EEPROM.
Micro Machines '96: 8Mbit. Name not present, just a dot, so shows up as hidden file on Unix-based OSes, much to my confusion. EEPROM NOT PRESENT, Checksum error; Game OK (online dumps also have incorrect checksum), but no EEPROM or name. Also, J-Cart ports presumably don't work.
Worms: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
California Games: 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Super Hang-On: 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
After Burner II: 4Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Urban Strike: 16Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Zool: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.
Desert Strike: 8Mbit, Checksum fine; OK.