Adaptors

[Muzer]

Received my adaptors, some thoughts:

* Only tried the SMS one so far. It works beautifully
* Took the SMS one apart, and there is indeed space for a GG slot. I'll have to try this... it's slightly annoying that the holes were pre-filled with solder, as it obviously makes it harder to add on, but hey.
* Took the Game Boy one apart, was surprised to find the N64 slot still there! Is it functional? Is there a mod I can perform to make the cartridge detect switch work? I do like the inset cartridge socket, though, makes it look like a small Game Boy player for a Mega Drive
* No surprises under the case of the N64 adaptor, though of course, it's still well-labelled and good-looking.
* The build quality is amazing. Only Matthias could have done it this well, with this much attention to detail down to the Retrode engraving on the back. I do love the economical plastic bags with manual in which they came, as well; they seem to be just the right size - I like minimalistic packaging.

I only think it's a shame the N64 one couldn't have had a bigger label - I have the same qualm about official Mega Drive J-Carts though; something about carts with controller ports on them just seems intrinsically unofficial to my brain. No way it could have been improved

[Pickle]

Just received my adapters last week and thing look good. I was able to tryout the gb/n64 but not the sms.
It took a couple tried with the N64 to get the dumo right, maybe the cart.
The quality appears very good.

On a side note i was messing around with my sonic2 genesis cart and i was pulling it out and the retrode did something to actually cause my laptop to shutdown hard. It even reset the BIOS timer.
Nothing seemed damaged, just had to reset the time and reboot and all was fine. The usb port still worked, but very strange. I plan to never hotswap anymore and reconnect the usb before any cart swap.

[Muzer]

On a side note i was messing around with my sonic2 genesis cart and i was pulling it out and the retrode did something to actually cause my laptop to shutdown hard. It even reset the BIOS timer.
Nothing seemed damaged, just had to reset the time and reboot and all was fine. The usb port still worked, but very strange. I plan to never hotswap anymore and reconnect the usb before any cart swap.

Perhaps you tilted it when pulling out and somehow shorted a line at 5V to one at 0V, causing a short on USB power to which your laptop was (rightly) sensitive? Just a guess.

[Seik]

Got both the N64 and GB plug-ins in the beginning of the months!

Both works perfectly, my only nitpick is that my GB adapter have a little bit of chipped off plastic that wasn't cut properly near the cartridge port, but I don't mind, as long as it does its job I'm a happy man!

[Pickle]

Perhaps you tilted it when pulling out and somehow shorted a line at 5V to one at 0V, causing a short on USB power to which your laptop was (rightly) sensitive? Just a guess.

Quite possible, I also assume some kind of short had occurred.

[jabara_sun]

Hi,

SMS-Adapter will support Japanese SMS & SG-1000 Series Cartridge with Converter?
They have different pitch and pinout order.

[Matthias_H]

Which converter are you referring to?

[jabara_sun]

Well...I have tried to find JP to US SMS converter but I can't find any merchandise.
So,I can make that by comparing JP and US SMS pinouts.
But maybe that's not the point.

[JonY]

Well...I have tried to find JP to US SMS converter but I can't find any merchandise.
So,I can make that by comparing JP and US SMS pinouts.
But maybe that's not the point.

You should indeed be able to build an adapter with a suitable cartridge socket. As you say, the pins are in a different order, but route them through to the correct pins on a megadrive edge connector (no point making a JAP > US/PAL master system adapter, it would probably be a bit unstable), and the retrode should be able to read it.

Some useful links:
Various Sega pinouts
where to connect the signals to on the megadrive cart

If you build one, let us know

[shybry]

Requesting once more now that the hiatus is over...

Out of curiosity, you said on Twiter that in order to get MBC3 and MBC5 working you will need to cut and re-route a trace. Does this mean that it's either/or, where by doing so you can dump the Pokemon games, but not other games?  And if not, will the newest batch of adapters be able to dump these games also?

The modification will do no harm to other games. It concerns the clock signal on the GB port with is wired to ground in the old version but connected to Retrode I/O in the new version.

Is this modification documented somewhere? I've got the old GBx/N64 combo adaptor and would like to try my hand at adding MBC3/5 support, but my Google-fu is apparently too weak to find the details.

Looking at http://old.pinouts.ru/Game/CartridgeGameBoy_pinout.shtml and the schematics on http://www.retrode.org/plug-in-adapters/ I'm guessing it's GBx pin 2 that needs to be cut and re-routed, but I'm not sure where to connect it to...?

[abferm]

I would like to request a plugin to read/write PSX memory cards and possibly memory cards for other systems that load games from disks. This would be useful if someone was trying to build an all in one game system like I am.

[tysontomko]

Sorry if this has been covered several times but I haven't been able to find conclusive info searching.

Using the GBx adapter, does the Retrode currently support writing saves back to game boy games? I'm specifically wondering about Pokemon blue for all it's worth.

Thanks!

[tysontomko]

FYI I got this email from Matthias which further proves his awesomeness. Thanks again man!

Hi,

Writing GB saves (not GBA, mind you) is in preparation and will be included in the next firmware update.

Cheers,
Matthias

[c704710]

Matthias, There may be a way for you to bypass the complexity of most NES mappers while still providing an NES plugin. Make the plugin adaptor programmable with programmable flash memory. Of course this would increase cost. But, as long as you can match (or beat) the cost of a CopyNES, it will be a marketable product. It would come preloaded with the simple mappers (the work already done). The rest of the mappers would be outsourced to the community.

What port of your computer does the Retrode connect to?:
The front port of course

[Pickle]

c704710, check out the kazzo information at nesdev, its a low cost solution that works well.