Evercade cartridge reader to USB

[kjetil_f]

A while ago I saw someone on YouTube who made a USB adapter for the Everdrive cartridges to access the included ROMs. Do anyone know how to make one. Or is it maybe possible to use a Gameboy cart reader like the GB Operator, Retrode 2 or maybe the Save The Hero Project one?

deleted link:

 

[SylverReZ]

@kjetil_f The Evercade cartridge can be easily read by an SD card reader, the flash chip in the cartridge uses the same SPI protocol as a microSD card.

 

[esmith13]

^^^ This.
It's easy peasy.
Then you end up going down the rabbit hole and wind up with a bunch of them like me.

 

[kjetil_f]

A while ago I saw someone on YouTube who made a USB adapter for the Everdrive cartridges to access the included ROMs. Do anyone know how to make one. Or is it maybe possible to use a Gameboy cart reader like the GB Operator, Retrode 2 or maybe the Save The Hero Project one?

@kjetil_f The Evercade cartridge can be easily read by an SD card reader, the flash chip in the cartridge uses the same SPI protocol as a microSD card.
View attachment 376511View attachment 376512

@kjetil_f The Evercade cartridge can be easily read by an SD card reader, the flash chip in the cartridge uses the same SPI protocol as a microSD card.
View attachment 376511View attachment 376512

Thanks for the detailed information.

Post automatically merged: Jun 8, 2023

^^^ This.
It's easy peasy.
Then you end up going down the rabbit hole and wind up with a bunch of them like me.

View attachment 376627View attachment 376628

Post automatically merged: Jun 8, 2023

Looks really nice. Do you by any chance sell these?

 

[esmith13]

Looks really nice. Do you by any chance sell these?

I do not. I am building them from cheap ebay and aliexpress parts that take forever to get and are probably of questionable quality. For it to be worth my time and materials (as inefficient as I am at this) I would have to charge more than I am comfortable with for the quality of the product. I wouldn't want to be a customer of my own work so I'd rather help others work it out for themselves for free then have them pay me a likely unreasonable price for what a total n00b could do in an hour or two on their own.

Should you need any assistance in making one yourself I'd be happy to help any way that I can either here or on the EverSD Discord (in my signature). You can literally make this for $5-$10 at most assuming you have to buy everything you need except the soldering iron and solder. Literally a $5 soldering iron is good enough to make this. It's super basic work - even for someone new to soldering.

 

[kjetil_f]

Fair enough. No problem. I did have my first try at a soldering iron and a Atari Flashback a couple of months ago with great success, so I'm down for a new project. If you can point me in the right direction on the parts I need that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[esmith13]

Fair enough. No problem. I did have my first try at a soldering iron and a Atari Flashback a couple of months ago with great success, so I'm down for a new project. If you can point me in the right direction on the parts I need that would be greatly appreciated.

ebay.com "Game Boy 32pin slot" - Search results
AliExpress"Game Boy 32pin slot" - Search Results

If you want to make the version that results in an SD Card connector you will also need 8pcs of wire and a free mSD to SD adapter that comes with a mSD card.

If you want to make the USB version, you need a SD and/or mSD to USB card reader to sacrifice. You would desolder the SD or mSD card socket from the reader and solder your 8 wires there.
It doesn't matter which adapter you buy, but for reference when I made my 3D printed version I went with these cheap readers since they were very small but still easy to solder. They are the ones that usually come free with Chinese emulation handhelds.

Spoiler: Click here for picture of SD Reader I used

Neither version of the cart reader is superior to the other since at the end of the day the cheaper version with the free SD adapter still plugs into an SD slot on a computer or a USB adapter anyway.

If you wanted to go all out and 3D print a shell and require the use of a USB cable to hook it up, you would basically be making the USB reader version and also desoldering the USB-A male connector off of the adapter as well and using 4 more wires to instead solder to a female Micro USB-B or female USB-C breakout board.

I used this one from Amazon to make mine: Amazon.com - Micro USB to DIP

 

[SylverReZ]

ebay.com "Game Boy 32pin slot" - Search results
AliExpress"Game Boy 32pin slot" - Search Results

If you want to make the version that results in an SD Card connector you will also need 8pcs of wire and a free mSD to SD adapter that comes with a mSD card.

If you want to make the USB version, you need a SD and/or mSD to USB card reader to sacrifice. You would desolder the SD or mSD card socket from the reader and solder your 8 wires there.
It doesn't matter which adapter you buy, but for reference when I made my 3D printed version I went with these cheap readers since they were very small but still easy to solder. They are the ones that usually come free with Chinese emulation handhelds.

Spoiler: Click here for picture of SD Reader I used

View attachment 377353

Neither version of the cart reader is superior to the other since at the end of the day the cheaper version with the free SD adapter still plugs into an SD slot on a computer or a USB adapter anyway.

If you wanted to go all out and 3D print a shell and require the use of a USB cable to hook it up, you would basically be making the USB reader version and also desoldering the USB-A male connector off of the adapter as well and using 4 more wires to instead solder to a female Micro USB-B or female USB-C breakout board.

I used this one from Amazon to make mine: Amazon.com - Micro USB to DIP

I'm gonna see if I can make an Evercade cartridge reader PCB. This will definitely help many people out instead of wiring the cartridge.

 

[esmith13]

I'm gonna see if I can make an Evercade cartridge reader PCB. This will definitely help many people out instead of wiring the cartridge.

Go for it! I'll buy one if you sell them!

 

[SylverReZ]

Go for it! I'll buy one if you sell them!

Thanks. I appreciate it if you did. Its gonna be open-source so anybody can fabricate one themselves.

 

[esmith13]

Thanks. I appreciate it if you did. Its gonna be open-source so anybody can fabricate one themselves.

Sounds awesome! Even if you don't plan to sell them directly, I'm sure you'll have a minimum requirement to order and test with. I'd be happy to buy one or more of those to help offset your out of pocket and get a chance to get in on them early and help with testing.

If you're interested, hit me up when the design is ready and you have a cost per board that would help you out. I'll happily paypal you $$ for some pcbs plus shipping. I'm located on the east coast, USA - should that weigh into your decision.

P.S.: Would REALLY be awesome if the PCB included an "Activity" LED like many sd card adapters have. I've modified my EverSDs to have them so when I'm working on bash scripts for Evercade blind I have an idea of what's going on, tho I admit their less important in this application.

 

[SylverReZ]

If you're interested, hit me up when the design is ready and you have a cost per board that would help you out. I'll happily paypal you $$ for some pcbs plus shipping. I'm located on the east coast, USA - should that weigh into your decision.

You can easily get a pack of 5 in bulk from JLCPCB or PCBway and build them yourself. The chips and other components are not hard to track down either.

P.S.: Would REALLY be awesome if the PCB included an "Activity" LED like many sd card adapters have. I've modified my EverSDs to have them so when I'm working on bash scripts for Evercade blind I have an idea of what's going on, tho I admit their less important in this application.

Oh, it sure will have an activity LED if I can.

 

[esmith13]

You can easily get a pack of 5 in bulk from JLCPCB or PCBway and build them yourself. The chips and other components are not hard to track down either.


Oh, it sure will have an activity LCD if I can.

Fair enough.

 

[kjetil_f]

ebay.com "Game Boy 32pin slot" - Search results
AliExpress"Game Boy 32pin slot" - Search Results

If you want to make the version that results in an SD Card connector you will also need 8pcs of wire and a free mSD to SD adapter that comes with a mSD card.

If you want to make the USB version, you need a SD and/or mSD to USB card reader to sacrifice. You would desolder the SD or mSD card socket from the reader and solder your 8 wires there.
It doesn't matter which adapter you buy, but for reference when I made my 3D printed version I went with these cheap readers since they were very small but still easy to solder. They are the ones that usually come free with Chinese emulation handhelds.

Spoiler: Click here for picture of SD Reader I used

View attachment 377353

Neither version of the cart reader is superior to the other since at the end of the day the cheaper version with the free SD adapter still plugs into an SD slot on a computer or a USB adapter anyway.

If you wanted to go all out and 3D print a shell and require the use of a USB cable to hook it up, you would basically be making the USB reader version and also desoldering the USB-A male connector off of the adapter as well and using 4 more wires to instead solder to a female Micro USB-B or female USB-C breakout board.

I used this one from Amazon to make mine: Amazon.com - Micro USB to DIP

Thank you. I'll have a look. BTW. Do you know what format the C64 cartridge uses for games?

Post automatically merged: Jun 12, 2023

I'm gonna see if I can make an Evercade cartridge reader PCB. This will definitely help many people out instead of wiring the cartridge.

That would be awesome if you did. I'm interested.

 

[esmith13]

Thank you. I'll have a look. BTW. Do you know what format the C64 cartridge uses for games?

Well, Blaze was too lazy to teach their UX app the filetypes for some of the newly supported systems like C64 so the roms all have a *.cue file extension since their launcher allows you to add custom launch info on the fly for "universal" filetypes like *.cue & *.iso, among others.
That said, most if not all appear to be simply renamed disk images (.d64 likely) as well as matching starting save states so you can't see the cracktro's and trainers that you would see if the games did a full/proper boot up.
This applies to both C64 carts.

This is what you see if you boot their copy of Impossible Mission without the starting save state:

Spoiler: Impossible Mission on Evercade C64 Collection #1

 

[kjetil_f]

Well, Blaze was too lazy to teach their UX app the filetypes for some of the newly supported systems like C64 so the roms all have a *.cue file extension since their launcher allows you to add custom launch info on the fly for "universal" filetypes like *.cue & *.iso, among others.
That said, most if not all appear to be simply renamed disk images (.d64 likely) as well as matching starting save states so you can't see the cracktro's and trainers that you would see if the games did a full/proper boot up.
This applies to both C64 carts.

This is what you see if you boot their copy of Impossible Mission without the starting save state:

Spoiler: Impossible Mission on Evercade C64 Collection #1

View attachment 377577

Thank you for the info. Blaze seems to be using VSF (Vice Snapshot File) on their THEC64 Mini/Maxi, so a simple renaming of the file extension wouldn't do, if i have understand the VSF-format correctly.

 

[esmith13]

Thank you for the info. Blaze seems to be using VSF (Vice Snapshot File) on their THEC64 Mini/Maxi, so a simple renaming of the file extension wouldn't do, if i have understand the VSF-format correctly.

As taken from elsewhere online:
"THEC64 Mini/Maxi/VIC20/THEA500 Mini was designed by RGL(Retro Games LTD) and manufactured by Plaion(New Name for Koch Media UK & Ireland)."

I just tried renaming one of the ROMs from an Evercade C64 cart to *.d64 and it booted fine in Libretro Vice x64 on my PC.

Edit - Just to make sure Vice wasn't taking a file "named "*.d64" but loading it as a "*.vsf" anyway, I tried the same renamed rom in CCS64 (which does not support Vice Snapshots) and it loaded as a disk file and booted fine.

All of this makes sense, since Blaze has never protected any of the ROMs on their carts. They only hash them to make sure the Evercade itself can't load a modified or replaced ROM.

This is probably why Capcom only allowed Blaze to store their game ROMs internally on the EXP and not on a cart. The Evercade ecosystem is a buffet of legally and cheaply attainable ROMs that you can easily use anywhere without ever buying an Evercade console.

 

[kjetil_f]

I just tried renaming one of the ROMs from an Evercade C64 cart to *.d64 and it booted fine in Libretro Vice x64 on my PC.

Edit - Just to make sure Vice wasn't taking a file "named "*.d64" but loading it as a "*.vsf" anyway, I tried the same renamed rom in CCS64 (which does not support Vice Snapshots) and it loaded as a disk file and booted fine.

Interesting. Renaming the minis vsf to d64 doesn't seems to work with CCS64 and on Vice it just boots to the snapshot.

 

[esmith13]

Interesting. Renaming the minis vsf to d64 doesn't seems to work with CCS64 and on Vice it just boots to the snapshot.

That's my point. They aren't in vsf format. And Blaze didn't make THEc64 mini or maxi. They just licensed the game titles and likely grabbed the disk images from the internet. Cracked, trained and all.

If they were vice snapshots they wouldn't need the startup savestate files that also are on the carts, they would be combined into the image as a vsf instead of being a RetroArch savestate file.

 

[SylverReZ]

Nice job on your findings.