Since your here maybe you can answer this for me?
How will the 64mb + 32m zip in the Neo-Max MK3 be of any use for most of the roms that will be too big for it?From what I'm told the chip actually has 128Mbit available (even though it says 64), and aside from a tiny few commercial ROM's and whatever comes from the coding compo I doubt it actually will be used for anything (and I was
damned choked when I saw the post edited on the neomax final specs from 256 to 64) That said, the zip RAM has the
potential to be a prefetch cache (although it would take some seriously excellent programmers to finagle this one into the boot menu/patching wrather than using it as a transparent read ahead cache at the hardware level). Your impression is far from mistaken in that light.
I personally never took a liking to the NeoFlash carts based on my poor experience with the XG cart they were based on, although I can say the NeoMax is constructed much better it appears to be a minor revision of the XG2005 512 I have here. Your review is extremely negative, but from my point of view and with the testing with current software that I have done across a few different carts it is completely valid - if XG's software is the basis for updates it could be a looong while before the planned features are put into NeoMax and I doubt slumping sales due to poor software will help this along at all (just gives more incentive to carry on with the "sell the next thing" mentality).
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Releasing carts at almost only beta stage is really poor IMO.Releasing them at a beta stage and never going much beyond that is even worse IMHO
(-cough- xg software -cough-) - wait and see I guess.
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Dr. Neo did say that only the MK3 will load games perfectly...I hope that was a misunderstanding though.
I dont think it is an understatement. The NeoMax cart is operating at about the same speed as NeoFlash/XG carts (so little hope of perfect from the serial flash cart), and with their GST patch methods it doesnt even hold a candle to the SuperCard SD as it has slowdowns, rare updates and such. The built in ROM area of the MK3 is extremely fast (once written to) and as far as I can tell is capable of outstripping the DS slot's speed (max ~4mb/s) - and wont rely on GBA bus patching methods, making it alot more capable than current GBA carts.
At any rate, I have all the MKs here now along with the NeoMax kit, and I expect to do my own review (probably skipping the pics and such) when I have something good to say about the products and their software (beyond what I know now which is: that the MK's are built sturdy and from looking at the internals they didnt skimp and get cruddy components, and whoever is in charge of manufacturing NeoMax cart did a hell of alot better of a job with the soldering than the XG2005's had). The biggest boon to these MK/Neo carts is that there has been at least some info let out (be it source code/hardware specs) that can help the developer.
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* Includes Mini High-Speed USB Slim Loader III