Evercade CFW and adding ROMS without EverSD?

Fazley · Sep 5, 2021

Hi All.
Just wondered if anyone knows anything about this?
From various looking around I can see a few people have managed to add ROMS to the official Evercade carts and add launchers to run them from the stock UI.
One guy used a Rasp Pi and a butchered Gameboy connector (same connector as EC carts apparently) but someone had managed to boot the Evercade in firmware update mode and use Android ADB to query the file contents of the cart and seemed to have put Zero Wing for the Megadrive on.
So the question is, does anyone know how to do this or whether anyone is looking at it?
Please don't tell me that there are loads of other handhelds to do this as I have an RG351P with a 256gb card but I would specifically like to add games to the empty space of Evercade carts if it is possible.
Thanks in advance...

esmith13 · Sep 5, 2021

Evercade carts are essentially just SD Cards in a cart shape.

With the cart slot from any model of broken Game Boy (including advance), some wire, and one of the free adapters that make microSD cards fit in a full size SD slot, you can make a "Cartridge Reader". Essentially an adapter to convert the Evercade cart back in to the SD card form-factor so you can read it on any PC with an SD slot or using a USB SD reader.

Once you have this, you can read/write the contents of any cart Which have all been no bigger than 512MB in size.

Using the same concept, you can also butcher a retail cart and de-solder the SD memory chip from it and replace it with a microSD slot to build your own "Flash Cart" - not that it's fair to really call your frankenstein a flash cart since like I said a cart is just an SD card anyway.

Just realize that a 100% stock evercade on current firmware won't read anything larger than 512MB, so if you try to build your own "Flash Cart" you need to use the EverSD software flasher to unlock your Evercade's size limits.

To use the stock UI to load games with extensions not officially supported by Evercade, you WILL need my scripts or to write your own similar ones yourself. The Evercade's UI is hardcoded to handle certain extensions in certain ways - hell, on one of the more recent carts Blaze themselves had to "fake" the file extensions for GB games as .bin files (Genesis/MegaDrive) and in their launcher script changed the handling of those specific .bin files to open with their GB emulator.

ruffnutts · Sep 6, 2021

Fazley said:
Hi All.
Just wondered if anyone knows anything about this?
From various looking around I can see a few people have managed to add ROMS to the official Evercade carts and add launchers to run them from the stock UI.
One guy used a Rasp Pi and a butchered Gameboy connector (same connector as EC carts apparently) but someone had managed to boot the Evercade in firmware update mode and use Android ADB to query the file contents of the cart and seemed to have put Zero Wing for the Megadrive on.
So the question is, does anyone know how to do this or whether anyone is looking at it?
Please don't tell me that there are loads of other handhelds to do this as I have an RG351P with a 256gb card but I would specifically like to add games to the empty space of Evercade carts if it is possible.
Thanks in advance...

I've been looking into this myself, they say you can replace the chip inside with a bigger one, it is just a SD on a chip or even solder a SD breakout board to the cart it's formatted in FAT16 I found a few articles on the net, there's a problem with my Evercade, this why I've not tried to do any of this yet, you can use RetroArch with it too

Fazley · Sep 26, 2021

Thanks for your reply @esmith13 do you know how the pin-outs are set out for the connector? I've found a few youtube videos of people who have done it but nobody seems to be giving instructions out. I'm a soldering noob so it would be a bit of a challenge for me! Has anyone else found any other ways of adding roms to existing carts? Can anything be done by putting it into firmware update mode and connecting to a PC? I don't really want to spend £40 on an EverSD and there are no local sellers to me. And before anyone jumps in, I have bought 6 official carts already and plan to buy more, it's not about ripping off Evercade it's about getting more enjoyment from it. The D-Pad is one of the best I've used and it would be great for so many older games.

esmith13 · Sep 27, 2021

Fazley said:
Thanks for your reply @esmith13 do you know how the pin-outs are set out for the connector? I've found a few youtube videos of people who have done it but nobody seems to be giving instructions out. I'm a soldering noob so it would be a bit of a challenge for me! Has anyone else found any other ways of adding roms to existing carts? Can anything be done by putting it into firmware update mode and connecting to a PC? I don't really want to spend £40 on an EverSD and there are no local sellers to me. And before anyone jumps in, I have bought 6 official carts already and plan to buy more, it's not about ripping off Evercade it's about getting more enjoyment from it. The D-Pad is one of the best I've used and it would be great for so many older games.

I'll take mine apart and snap some pics for you tomorrow, about 12hrs from the time of this post.

While you COULD source a bigger chip and put that in, you would also need to create a "Cart Reader" of sorts out of both a GB/GBC/GBA cart slot and a MicroSD to SD card adapter (I made one of these too) just to read and write to it. It would cost less and be easier to just replace the 128MB-512MB stock SD memory chip with a microSD socket. You don't need a "proper" sd breakout board with any resistors or logic on them since those are typically meant to convert SPI communication devices to accept SD storage. The Evercade cart you'd be sacrificing is already a purely SD storage device. If you are decent at soldering and have something broken with a SD slot you could just use that. For that matter you could technically take a free microSD to SD adapter that came with a card you bought and use just that and some bits of wire. Then you can use whatever SD cards you want and wouldn't need to build a reader unless you wanted to dump a retail cart.
All that said, a retail cart is just roms, images for the UI to display, and a linux script that is run once a rom is chosen from the UI that tells the Evercade what emulator to launch and where it is.
If you are on firmware 1.2.0 or older you can use whatever SD card you want formatted to fat32 and you're good.
If you're on a newer firmware (or even if on older fw but you want retroarch), you will at least need to use the EverPatcher to "Jailbreak" the Evercade. Basically it unlocks the software limit restricting carts mounting if they have above 512MB of storage, as well as adding exfat support and an updated "retroarch proper" to the Evercade. It will also change the bootup splash and video to an EverSD logo as well.

esmith13 · Sep 27, 2021

ruffnutts said:
I've been looking into this myself, they say you can replace the chip inside with a bigger one, it is just a SD on a chip or even solder a SD breakout board to the cart it's formatted in FAT16 I found a few articles on the net, there's a problem with my Evercade, this why I've not tried to do any of this yet, you can use RetroArch with it too

Just take note of what I replied to @Fazley . You can us a SD breakout board just make sure it doesn't have added logic or resistors like they typically would for other uses - you technically just need a way to add and remove a card and could even use a throwaway free microSD to SD adapter. Also FAT32 is natively supported, not just FAT16. Any firmware newer than 1.2.0 and you'll need EverPatcher software regardless to see anything larger than a 512MB SD memory chip, and no - partitioning a larger device won't fool the Evercade.

esmith13 · Sep 27, 2021

Here are pics of my custom cart and cart reader. The cart pic is labeled so you know how to wire everything up.

And FYI, the script I did for EverSD linked in my signature will work on ANY cart for Evercade - EverSD, Custom SD cart, Modded Retail Cart or factory fresh retail cart (if you're willing to work with only 128MB-512MB size limit of a retail cart then more power to you!)

Fazley · Sep 28, 2021

That's a ton of info, thank you so much. Might try carving up a micro SD adaptor and the Atari 1 collection cartridge as it's absolute junk!

esmith13 · Sep 28, 2021

Fazley said:
That's a ton of info, thank you so much. Might try carving up a micro SD adaptor and the Atari 1 collection cartridge as it's absolute junk!

Hey now! The Atari carts contain some of my most cherished childhood memories!

EDIT: Wait a sec! I'm only 4mos older than you!!! Now I'm even MORE upset you feel that way!!!!
(LOL)

Fazley · Sep 28, 2021

I really tried to like them but they have just aged too badly, any other 8-bit stuff I can cope with but not that!

MiCv2 · Oct 4, 2021

Hi, I'm new here

and a big Evercade fan.
I would like to play my purchased game "vvvvvv" on Evercade, is it possible? One did it, but how?
(EverSD is available). Regards

ruffnutts · Oct 20, 2021

esmith13 said:
Just take note of what I replied to @Fazley . You can us a SD breakout board just make sure it doesn't have added logic or resistors like they typically would for other uses - you technically just need a way to add and remove a card and could even use a throwaway free microSD to SD adapter. Also FAT32 is natively supported, not just FAT16. Any firmware newer than 1.2.0 and you'll need EverPatcher software regardless to see anything larger than a 512MB SD memory chip, and no - partitioning a larger device won't fool the Evercade.

Thanks for the info, I've not logged in for a while.... great pictures btw, could you post the pic of the breakout board you used please, can't see properly on the cart pic thanks, goner look into modding this somehow

esmith13 · Oct 20, 2021

ruffnutts said:
Thanks for the info, I've not logged in for a while.... great pictures btw, could you post the pic of the breakout board you used please, can't see properly on the cart pic thanks, goner look into modding this somehow

Honestly, don't bother buying a breakout board. The one I used had some resistors on it which made it perform sub-par compared to the current build of my custom cart. I removed the breakout board and used a free mSD to SD adapter that comes with most micro SD cards instead. Just use the top half of this diagram for the pinout of the free adapter and solder the pins to the corresponding places labeled on my pic from earlier of the Evercade Cart PCB. It will fit exiting to the side still OR, out of laziness I went the extra mile and made it exit from the top (curved) edge of the cart so I can remove my mSD without removing the cart itself now. Night and day better IMHO and doesn't cost a penny to build if you already have solder and bits of thin gauge wire around.

SD & mSD Pinout

ruffnutts · Oct 20, 2021

esmith13 said:
Honestly, don't bother buying a breakout board. The one I used had some resistors on it which made it perform sub-par compared to the current build of my custom cart. I removed the breakout board and used a free mSD to SD adapter that comes with most micro SD cards instead. Just use the top half of this diagram for the pinout of the free adapter and solder the pins to the corresponding places labeled on my pic from earlier of the Evercade Cart PCB. It will fit exiting to the side still OR, out of laziness I went the extra mile and made it exit from the top (curved) edge of the cart so I can remove my mSD without removing the cart itself now. Night and day better IMHO and doesn't cost a penny to build if you already have solder and bits of thin gauge wire around.

SD & mSD Pinout

Sorry.... I though it was a breakout board as I could not see the top of the photo where the wires was soldered too, my bad

Thanks again.. any chance of a sneak peak at the new version you made

esmith13 · Oct 20, 2021

ruffnutts said:
Sorry.... I though it was a breakout board as I could not see the top of the photo where the wires was soldered too, my bad
Thanks again..

Oh, you're right - it was in that picture. The breakout had resistors and an LED on it that seemed to affect the performance of the SD card when compared to the EverSD. I gutted it out recently and replaced it with a free adapter instead as well as changing the insertion point from the side (like EverSD) to the top for easy access. If you REALLY prefer a PCB mounted mSD socket, this is the only cheap one I found with NO resistors, LEDs or level shifters on it to mess things up: Amazon US link
You can get this and just break it off where the white line is to use it as needed for Evercade.

ruffnutts · Oct 20, 2021

esmith13 said:
Oh, you're right - it was in that picture. The breakout had resistors and an LED on it that seemed to affect the performance of the SD card when compared to the EverSD. I gutted it out recently and replaced it with a free adapter instead as well as changing the insertion point from the side (like EverSD) to the top for easy access. If you REALLY prefer a PCB mounted mSD socket, this is the only cheap one I found with NO resistors, LEDs or level shifters on it to mess things up: Amazon US link
You can get this and just break it off where the white line is to use it as needed for Evercade.

Lol I was just looking at this on eBay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12490079...rentrq:9da2988417c0a9fa4d737a48fff7a7a2|iid:1

Nice one

esmith13 · Oct 20, 2021

ruffnutts said:
Lol I was just looking at this on eBay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124900790803?_trkparms=amclksrc=ITM&aid=111001&algo=REC.SEED&ao=1&asc=20160908105057&meid=ae1fce3b10f34ccd98f0df49aa1c1375&pid=100675&rk=1&rkt=15&sd=124900790803&itm=124900790803&pmt=1&noa=1&pg=2380057&brand=Unbranded&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci:b2ef96d9-319f-11ec-a6f4-3e08adac245f|parentrq:9da2988417c0a9fa4d737a48fff7a7a2|iid:1

Nice one

Perfect! Haha

ruffnutts · Dec 23, 2021

I see there's a new FW version out, worth the update?

esmith13 · Dec 23, 2021

2.0.0 and 2.0.1 both match the interface to what's on the VS console. neither prevents downgrading back to 1.3.1.
since there is no 2.x everpatcher yet, you can only use sd cards 512mb or smaller on 2.x, but there is fun to be had if you're ok with tinkering to figure out the new file system layout. if not, hang tight until a patcher is released by someone.

esmith13 · Dec 30, 2021

update to my previous post. EverPatcher is out for 2.0.1 - as are my scripts for both stock and libretro emulator use.

Evercade CFW and adding ROMS without EverSD?

Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Member

Well-Known Member

Member

Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Active Member

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

Similar threads

Popular threads in this forum