FAQ
Q1: When more enhancement chips get implemented in the future, does that mean a necessary hardware upgrade?
A1: Hardware upgrades might happen if any “physical” problems become known or some end-of-life parts have to be replaced. However the capabilites of the hardware will remain roughly the same. Some improvements in performance or capacity are probably inevitable since parts are becoming cheaper and more powerful all the time.
Q2: Game XY doesn’t run properly.
A2: Check the compatibility list for known issues. If the game is listed it is known not to run on the sd2snes.
Q3: Mario Kart/Pilotwings/other DSP games just lock up immediately.
A3: DSP games require the DSP ROMs to be present in the “sd2snes” folder on the SD Card. You can get them here. For sd2snes you need the *.bin files, NOT the *.rom files.
Q4: Satellaview games just drop to a black screen.
A4: The BS-X BIOS is required to run Satellaview games. Find the BS-X BIOS ROM (there’s a good chance it’s already in your ROM collection), rename it to “bsxbios.bin” and put it in the sd2snes folder on your card.
Q5: My sd2snes doesn’t seem to run reliably. A large number of games crash at random, or the sd2snes doesn’t boot up at all.
A5: One of the following could be the case:
- Weak capacitors in your SNES: The sd2snes draws more power than a normal game cartridge (and the Super Everdrive or Powerpak, for that matter). Weak capacitors in the power section of the SNES may cause the console to crash. Try another SNES or, if you feel like it, have the caps replaced.
- Faulty power brick: The external power supply of the SNES doesn’t provide properly stabilized power, or the voltage has dropped. Try using a different power brick.
- Dirty slot contacts: The sd2snes is more timing sensitive than a normal game cartridge. If the slot contacts are dirty it might introduce enough resistance to delay the signals coming from the SNES, or going to the SNES, enough to make it crash. Clean the slot contacts on the SNES and the sd2snes thoroughly and retry.
- Freak SNES: Some consoles exhibit strange timing behaviour or excessive address line noise. Try another console.
- Freak SD Card: Some SD Cards might draw excessive power or exhibit other strange behaviour. Try another card.
- Faulty SNES: The SNES itself might be at fault. Verify that original game cartridges run properly on your SNES.
- Firmware: There have been reports that some sd2snes firmware versions don’t work properly with some consoles. Try using a different (older) firmware version and see if the problem persists. If this fixes the problem, please report.
If you have tried different consoles, different SD Cards, different power bricks, and cleaned the contacts, the sd2snes itself is probably at fault (e.g. a bad solder joint or component). Please run the diagnostic firmware and send me the output, preferably a zip file of the entire sd2snes folder.
Q6: Can you sell me an sd2snes?
A6: No. I do not manufacture or sell the hardware.
Q7: Where can I buy sd2snes?
Q8: Will there be SuperFX overclocking support?
A8: RedGuy’s SuperFX core supports something akin to overclocking, namely the reduction of memory access latencies that were present with the original SuperFX. As a result the core can be made to run faster.
Q9: Will there be SPC7110/ST-011 support?
A9: Quite likely.
Q10: My sd2snes doesn’t save.
A10:
- MSU1 games cannot autosave because access to the SD Card is reserved exclusively to the MSU1 features. It must be ready to serve MSU1 requests at any time. Therefore, to save your .SRM file with MSU1 games, a soft reset (hold reset button / use in-game button combination) must be carried out.
- If you use v0.1.7-v0.1.7b you must make sure that the sd2snes/saves folder exists on card. Otherwise the migration code to load+move the SRM file will bail out and not even load the save file. This will be addressed shortly with a maintenance release.
- Saving on the sd2snes works by constant monitoring of the save RAM area while the game is running. If a change is detected, a .SRM file is written out to the SD Card while the game is still running. There is no real-time “save state” feature like the Mega Everdrive has, for example. You must still save in-game for the sd2snes to write out a save file.
- Check that the write protection slider on your SD Card is set to off, i.e. not in the “LOCK” position.
- Wait 2-3 seconds after saving in-game for the sd2snes to detect the SRAM change and save to card.
- There are occasions where games use the battery SRAM area as work RAM. In this case the contents change continuously and the sd2snes will not save every change in order to reduce wear on the card but instead save the SRAM contents periodically every 15-20 seconds. The red LED (Write) will be permanently on if such a case is detected. To minimize the risk of data loss (due to powering off the SNES while a periodic save is in progress) please reset the sd2snes by holding the RESET button on the SNES until all three LEDs light up before turning off the power.
- After loading a saved game, some games – notably Zelda – don’t put you exactly where you left off so it might appear that your progress wasn’t saved.
If you still feel the sd2snes isn’t saving when it should, please report.
Q11: Can’t enhancement chip XY be realized using a pass-through adapter with the original enhancement chip on top?
A11: The only enhancement chip where that would work is the DSP series (DSP1-4, ST0010) which are already supported natively. All other enhancement chips have the game ROM “behind” them and control access to it, which a cartridge plugged in parallel to the sd2snes cannot do.
Q12: Will the sd2snes eventually support every game of the SNES library?
A12: Most likely not. Some enhancement chips are too powerful to be supported by the onboard FPGA, and for some others I can only say I don’t know before I’ve tried. See http://sd2snes.de/blog/status#enhance for the current state of enhancement chips.
Q13: My sd2snes keeps telling me to set the clock.
A13: The battery is probably empty. You can replace it with a very common CR2032 cell.
Q14: I put everything in the right place on SD card but it’s still telling me “m3nu.bin not found!” or “menu.bin not found!”.
A14: Make sure your card is FAT32 formatted. Cards 64GB or larger usually come factory formatted to exFAT which isn’t supported (yet). Unfortunately, Windows won’t allow you to format any card larger than 32GB using FAT32. There’s a number of tools to do the job for you. To name a few:
FAT32Formatter
Verbatim FAT32 tool
Rufus
“GUI Format” and “HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool” do not seem to work properly anymore on recent Windows 10 builds.
Logical volumes in an extended partition are not supported. Please make sure that the FAT32 file system is located either directly on the card or inside a primary partition. Only the first file system/partition found is considered.
I’m having freezing problems only on Actraiser 1, 2, and 7th Saga. I tried many SD card’s, rom versions, firmware 1.5, 1.4a, 1.4, and only 1.3 will play them. I have an almost new SNES so it’s not the console or power supply, the originals work fine with no freezing or glitchiness.
It is an original design NTSC (SNS-USA/CAN-1, UN16677537).
Not sure what to do. I see you say to “Please run the diagnostic firmware(in preparation) and send me the output.”. Where is the tool to test it? Also, what are your suggestions?
Thanks,
For that much effort I’d suggest buying those games at this point. Novel idea, isn’t it?
Thanks for the work. I am currently studying the possibility of adding to the sd2snes firmware support for super gameboy [SGB]. Did you use Xilinx´s ISE WebPack?
Cool! Yes, I use ISE WebPack.
Although after trying Altera’s Quartus II IDE I kind of regret choosing Xilinx. 😀
http://fr.scribd.com/doc/39999184/GameBoy-Programming-Manual
chapter 6
I think you know yet…..
This is what I have been doing all along when my sd2snes doesn’t work, as outlined in this article. I have to clean it once in a while. I am unsure why but probably the deck itself isn’t clean enough for some reason. The sd2snes looks fine.
It’s good to finally see an update on this site and yes I agree about dates, not necessary.
Thanks
Totally satisfied with the product, but i have a little problem :
I have my games in different directories, and when i change a folder name (on the SD card from the PC), and put the SD back in teh SD2SNES, the directorires don’t “update”, and keep the same names as before… which prevents my games from lauching, since the directory SD2SNES shows does not exist anymore… any ideas? Thanks!
(just to be lear, i’m not talking about the SD2SNES folders, but the folders that contain the roms)
Good find, thanks. It’s a bug indeed. I’m generating a footprint (CRC of all file names concatenated) to determine whether a database rebuild is necessary but don’t take into account the directory names.
If you change (add/remove/rename) any ROM file (not directory) on the card it should detect the change and rebuild the database.
Will there ever be an update so that games made for flash players will work on the sd2snes? Such as Megaman x corrupted or Megaman x Eclipse
Sure, right after support for running Crysis 😉
Sorry if I seem too pushy or anything but I have two questions, one does that mean it can also play .exe files? And two what would be the estimate for when you would start working on something like that?
What are you currently working on and what would be your next goal to implement into the next update?
What is crysis? And is that what you are currently working on?
Not sure if you guys are trolling. 😛
The thing about Crysis was a joke obviously, it’s impossible to make it run on the sd2snes. cf. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/can-it-run-crysis
Likewise it’s obviously IMPOSSIBLE to run PC games on the SNES!
I’m doing some refactoring work for the menu (at least I’m planning on doing so) to facilitate the general requesting of file lists from the SD Card. This will aid in implementing the cheat storage feature that I have in mind.
I had no idea of that joke. I feel stupid now. Well thanks for the reality check. -.-
So far this has been awesome so my thanks to ikari for such amazing work and donation of his time. It’s a shame that the SuperFX chip isn’t supported, but then I guess if I wasn’t so lazy at university and paid attention in my programming classes I might have been able to help out on projects like this one! Ikari, what skills would be required to reverse engineer the SuperFX chip / SA-1 chips and incorporate them into sd2snes? I only ask as I do a lot of work with contractors on ELance and if it’s a case of… Read more »
Occasionally my SD2SNES doesn’t save the .srm, eventhough the red LED came up and I saved regularly.
I’ll only notice it when coming back to the game later (SNES turned off in the mean time) and the .srm doesn’t have
any of the progress of the last session. There were at least 10 occasions to write it out then but apparently it didn’t?
Firmware 1.6 (but had it on 1.5 as well).
That sounds like a very annoying problem. 🙁
For the upcoming release I’ve put in LED error codes for file operations that will hopefully help track the cause of the problem.
Ah great. That will help track the problem down, I’m sure 🙂
I’ll say that the module is perfectly stable otherwise and the save bug is pretty rare.
I’m thinking it might be the SD card (32GB Samsung, a good one) since a cheaper one wasn’t able to save even the game database file.
Maybe my module has a weak SD card power supply? I’ll know more with those debug capabilities 🙂
Hi, we bought your product and have one specific problem that I wasn’t able to find in the FAQs. The main menu is scrambled, being composed only of artefacts/random numbers/letters. However, going through the list of roms still appears to be working (you can see that you’re moving through the list, without being able to read it). Launching any game we randomly tried so far worked perfectly, so basically, the main menu doesn’t work, but the games do. Is this some known glitch? We thoroughly cleaned the contacts, but it didn’t help, and the device works normally with other game… Read more »
Can you take a picture of it? I suspect your SNES has a broken DMA channel so it fails to switch to the hi resolution mode for text display. Is the sd2snes logo at the top clearly visible?
Thanks for your reply! The logo is usually not visible at all. Sometimes, the upper part of it can be seen, but that’s all. We’ve tried more games recently and also found some problems, such as with TMNT 4, the game apparently working, but the characters/enemies being invisible. So the game was running and reacting to inputs, but the playing field was empty (visually), even though you could see from sounds and scores that something was going on. I’d assume it might be down to the same problem of certain graphics data not being loaded correctly (or at all). Will… Read more »
Sorry for the delay, here’s what the menu usually looks like: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17167332/IMG-20140908-WA0003.jpg
Wow, that’s rad! Are there ever any real crashes? Do you have another SNES to test on, that would really be helpful. The sd2snes menu makes heavy use of the SNES’s HDMA capabilities to render the screen, more so than games. Do Mode7 games like F-Zero or Mario Kart look correct? Also, if you have any game that glitches on the sd2snes where you have the original cartridge it would be helpful to see if the original cartridges glitch in the same way. Another possibility might be that the menu ROM is simply broken 🙂 Try re-unpacking the firmware to… Read more »
I have acquired two more SNES units so perhaps that will solve the problem. x) Will test it during the weekend. Mario Kart when loaded from the SD2SNES wouldn’t work, it shows the Nintendo logo and freezes. Other games (forgot which one) didn’t react to controller inputs. Haven’t tried F-Zero from the ROM collection yet, but the original game (cartridge) works on this unit. So until now, I haven’t seen any glitches with original cartridges. I tried different firmware versions and different SD cards, all had the same problem, so I’m guessing the SNES itself is somehow borked. I’ll let… Read more »
Hello again, I tested the cartridge with two other consoles, and could get it to work with both of them, so the previous problems with the scrambled menu were indeed caused by a faulty console. Interestingly, with one of the two “new” consoles, the device won’t start up normally at first, with one of the LEDs blinking after powering on, the screen receiving no signal. I think it’s the yellow one (bought a SD2SNES that was already installed in a cartridge, so hard to tell), with the problem solving itself after turning the unit on and off a few times.… Read more »
Will the SD2SNES work with repro consoles such as RetroN?
Was just playing Super bomberman 2 and noticed some significant slowdown. I was wondering if that is normal for the game or is related to the sd2snes?
I also notice slowdowns when playing capcom games, concreteky Megaman X, Demon’s Crest and Magical Quest. They happened when more sprites appeared on screen.
Thanks for all the great work on this, first of all! I’ve been playing Treasure of the Rudras, and I’ve noticed some odd behavior on boot. If the system is cold, just having started, I have no issues getting past the AGTP logo, but after it’s been running a while, a reset will cause it to hang most of the time. If it ever gets past the logo, it works great from there on out. I tried in another SNES, and it seems to be okay in that one. It’s a 1CHIP Model 1 SNES that works, and an older… Read more »
I have experienced a similar issue with an old SNES of mine – it seemed to be related with the APU (sound unit) not booting up correctly every time. Does the hang happen where the first sound of the game should be played?
Could you try using the SPC player in the sd2snes menu intensely and see if you experience problems there, too? (no sound, lockups…)
It usually hangs right in the middle of the added AGTP logo. Sometimes it will almost finish, then hang before getting to the SquareSoft intro, sometimes it’ll barely fade in and lock up (within fractions of a second). I don’t think there’s any audio associated with that logo, but I could be wrong. Given that I haven’t had much trouble with other games, I’m guessing I’ve just got a slightly funky console. I was worried it was my SD2SNES, but it doesn’t seem to be that. And, of course, cold boot gets there every time. I’ll try playing around with… Read more »
Haven’t had a chance to play with the SPC player, but I ran into a crash in one of the shops of Treasure of the Rudras, one that was pretty reproducible, and swapped to my other SNES again. No issues at all. Definitely something funky with that SNES, and not the cart or firmware. Thanks for the help!
Well, strangely enough, my other SNES started manifesting the same behavior, so I’m starting to lean towards something weird with the hack + the strain that the SD2SNES can put on the system. Just as a check, I swapped back to my “troubled” SNES, and updated to the newest preview build. So far, even after running for a long time and doing a reset, I haven’t had any issues with lockups this time. So perhaps my system is just a bit noisy on the address lines, and somehow my other one developed noise after being used for a bit? I… Read more »
Does anyone notice that the music tempo in the game Lost Vikings is slow in either menu, intro or in game music?
SOLVED :
Downloaded another (european) version. (*.sfc) and sound is ok now.
I suspect it was an ntsc version (*.smc) playing on my PAL snes which caused the problem.
Hi. Question directly for the creator from an user: I have a SD2SNES and need to ask one question only and you probably have had it already thousand of times. No need to tell you about the SuperFX 1 or 2 but I need a clear answer if you are willing to answer of course. I know many people if it is not everyone expect to play the SuperFX because the best games are using it of course. My question is this: your hardware (SD2SNES) will be able to handle the SuperFX or not ? (Is it a hardware problem… Read more »
Push-Over starts up and then freezes on a black screen, with the music still playing.
Seems to be fixed already, Push-Over works fine with the current development state.
I wonder if there could be an option to disable auto-saving for games that use SRAM as work RAM, and patch those games to somehow notify when SRAM should be written to SD card (i.e. when they actually save).
I have a problem with my SD2SNES I recently purchased. Some ROMs I try to play (I.e. Link to the past, Darius twin) have a few issues. On LTTP, I can start the game fine, but I cannot open the chest at the beginning of the game, I cannot pull up the bushes, etc..on Darius twin, the game starts fine and then once I get the first upgrade, you cannot see the bullets you are shooting. Also, on the mega man X series (X, X2 and X3) I can move around but none of the buttons (A,B,X,Y) seem to register.… Read more »
1. Do original games work on your SNES? (could be a CPU/RAM failure in your SNES)
2. Have you tried a different SD card? (could be card read errors)
3. Are the errors reproducible and consistent? (ruling out bad contacts)
If 3x yes, the sd2snes probably has faulty RAM and I’d suggest contacting your dealer or krikzz for a replacement.
In Tetris Attack, in 1 Player Stage Clear mode, there is a wild flickering while you play, it’s strange, ’cause some foreground elements stay normal, while the background and other parts flicker. Only happens in this 1 Player Stage Clear.
All other modes look fine.
It’s reproducible.
I don’t have a real Tetris Attack cart to compare.
Seems strange, this is the only game I’ve play on SD2SNES that has weird flicker issues.
Are the in-game reset functions active? I’ve seen graphical corruption from time to time in games from that. I know it happened with Chrono Trigger in the menus, and it goes away when you disable the hooks (L+R+Start+Y, I think).
Also, it might be worth checking it out in bsnes / higan, just to see how the real ROM behaves. It might be something that’s in the real cart. I have no idea, though!
hello, when power on or Reset to sd2snes menu the system clock restart to last set, someone help me?
Maybe you Battery is empty. It is a CR2032 cell, easy to find in any bigger store or electronic shop/ebay….
Hi, did you solve it?
[[[Dirty slot contacts: The sd2snes is more timing sensitive than a normal game cartridge. If the slot contacts are dirty it might introduce enough resistance to delay the signals coming from the SNES, or going to the SNES, enough to make it crash. Clean the slot contacts on the SNES and the sd2snes thoroughly and retry.]]]
Is this why original SA-1 games are so sensitive to physical contact with the console or cart while the game is on??
as in… the slitghtest pull of the cable MAY crash the game.
That’s certainly a possibility, the SA-1 pulls some mean timing hackery on the bus to allow shared memory access 😉
when i use the sd2snes it works but cause an awful flickering on the screen, it happend since the menu, my snes works fine with original games. i tested it with firmware 0.16 and 0.17. how can i fix it?
“Rewind feature” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSLMPnVZITM Es ist möglich nur in Emulatoren, oder?
Das ist korrekt 🙂
Und Overscan/Underscan kann man auch nicht mit sd2snes einstellen? Nicht alle Fernseher haben bedienerfreundliche Overscan Einstellungen.
Does this stuff mean that emulated enhancement chips don’t work (the speed is off?) like those within original carts? Is it not possible to have cycle accurate emulation then?
“Slow down DSPx a bit to better match original speed (should have no noticeable effect)”
“Cx4: Add a switch for original/fast mode. “Original” mimics the Cx4 timing better (Megaman doesn’t die in MMX2 attract mode) whereas “Fast” uses a single CPU cycle for every instruction, improving frame rate when drawing polygons (rotating head in MMX2 intro).”
DSPx emulation is cycle exact – each instruction takes exactly one cycle anyway. What can be a bit off is the actual clock speed of the core. Master clock is currently at 88MHz (in the latest release build) and I can only divide by an integer number of substeps. This works well for DSPx (88/11 = 8MHz) and sufficiently well for ST-010 (88/7 = 12.57MHz). Cx4 emulation is a bit of guesswork and its internal workings are not fully documented. Emulators do not handle ROM caching (because they don’t need to – the emulation core can access all of ROM… Read more »
Thanks for the detailed reply! 🙂 So I guess Cx4 support is still WIP. But when it comes to other supported chips, does the fact that the clock speed can be “a bit off” might negatively affect speedrunning or cause some in-game elements to be drawn too fast/too slow, etc.?
Keep up good work!
Was that a stupid question? :p
No 😀 But I don’t have a definitive answer. Cx4 support is “better” than what emulators do to date but likely still imperfect. Clock and cycles-per-instruction differences might have an impact on exact game timings. For DSPx this is less likely because to my knowledge there is no game that actually stalls waiting for the DSP.
My SD2 SNES keeps telling me to set the clock.
You suggest changing the battery but after removing the screws I can’t get the cart open.
Do I have a dud cart?
I have no idea what kind of cases every sd2snes ships in, it depends on the vendor too 🙂
The case may have extra plastic prongs that snap in place when putting it together. Some prying might be required.
Hi, did you solve it?
Hi, ikari! Are there different revisions of the SD2SNES? I want the latest one if I’m going to buy. Where can I get the latest rev.? Anyone feel free to answer. Any response is appreciated. 🙂
It would be best to ask KRIKzz about that because I have no idea what he has stocked at what quantity. 😉
Hi, I downloaded 0.1.7.b and my saves for my games wont load, am I missing something?
i have my sd2nes rev f i cant play super mario kart i already have the dsp files .bin on my sd card what im doing wrong and still frezzing on the screen
forget about it i solved thx
Hi Ikari,
I need your help, sorry my english is not perfect but I’m gonna try to be understood:
I Received my SD2SNES recently and when i4M playING for example zelda no densetsu, I save in game as intended, when I press reset button to come back to the intro of the game my save is still there, but when I power off the console, and power on it again, my save just disappeared each time with each game I tried…
Please help me 🙁
Hi,
what firmware version do you use? Could it be your card is write protected? Usually when saving fails, the red LED should give an error code by flashing a number of times (depending on the error cause) followed by a pause, then repeating. Does that happen?
Hi Ikari !
I’m currently using the 0.1.7c firmware. The SD i’m using is a micro SD into a SD adapter and its not write protected (i looked for the lock), maybe it’s too old: a Kingston 2Go SD-C02G.
Indeed my red LED is blinking 9 times (when game is launched) then it repeat again and again.
Hope you can tell me what to do 🙂
Hm, 9 times means “invalid file object” which shouldn’t occur unless I made some mistake in error handling. I’ll try some things with a 2GB card later, hopefully I’ll find something.
Can you try formatting your card (with FAT32)?
Yo ! To format with FAT32 is the 1st thing i did when i installed your firmware by looking on tutorials. I should have told you before. But I did it again if it was done wrong the 1st time. >>>Result is always the same problem (red LED 9x blinking). Then I tried with 0.1.7b which bring me back to the same problem again. So it’s >>>1/ from my micro-SD card which is not good (so I think it is the main problem here, as I said it is an old one) >>>2/ from my SD2SNES which was made wrong…?… Read more »
OK, two more questions for now:
1. What does the full path (folders and file name) for the ROM look like?
2. Can you check that inside the sd2snes folder, a “saves” folder was created? If not, can you create it and see if it helps?
The path is :
E: sd2snes
E: official ROMs Zelda no Densetsu – Kamigami no Triforce (Japan).sfc
E: translated ROMs Seiken Densetsu 3 (F).smc
I hope it is the piece of information you needed for the 1st question because I am not sure of my translation… And I am using the ROMs from the NO INTRO pack, not the translated ones which are from a lambda website.
And yes there is a “saves” folder, even a “cheats” folder into my “sd2snes” folder.
Yes, that is what I wanted to know, thanks 🙂 However nothing looks unusual… Does the blinking + non-working save also happen with Seiken Densetsu 3?
Yeah it is not working wih Seiken Densetsu 3 as with every other game I tried.
Hm, after some more checking with a variety of cards I cannot find any obvious problem… so all I can suggest at the moment is trying a different SD Card. I’m very sorry 🙁
I ordered a Kingston SD-C02G that will arrive in a couple of days, maybe I can find something then.
OK I will try with another one when I get the money for it.
I will tell you what happen.
Yo Ikari, I tried with a new sandisk Micro SD, and it doesnt work either, so is this SD2SNES cartridge broken because I spent 200 euros and I cant use it…
Kind of hard to tell, but not impossible. Maybe some contact is bad on the SD card slot. You may want to send it to your dealer for inspection or contact krikzz about it.
Hello Ikari! First off, thanks for all of your hard work. I bought a SD2SNES two weeks ago for my Super Famicom and have been loving it! Unfortunately, I ran into some problems today. I was trying to play Super Mario Kart, but it froze up at the nintendo logo. I had thought the in-game hook had something to do with it (i later read that there is a specific fix for this – doh!), so i turned it off and started the game again. It still froze, and upon power cycling, the SD2SNES menu doesn’t boot up anymore and… Read more »
Hi,
first off, the Super Mario Kart issue was most likely unrelated (you need the DSP ROMs so it can run correctly).
Regarding your main issue it sounds like the sd2snes isn’t powering up or bootstrapping at all… either way you are most likely looking at a hardware failure here 🙁 It would be best to contact your dealer for a replacement/repair. Might be a bad solder joint on the main voltage regulator or quartz crystal, or a short somewhere.
For the slim chance that the SD card might be shorted out, did you try running without a card?
oh no! i bought my sd2snes preloaded off of ebay from an individual, would you happen to know of people or services that would be able to take a look at it or repair it?
also, the SD card seems to be working just fine, i was able to connect it to my computer to load the diagnostic test onto it. running the SD2SNES without an SD leads to the same black screen. Thanks so much for your swift response!
These use sdram to load the games right? Is there anything stopping me from ripping out an sa1 chip or gsu2 chip from a game to hardwire into my sd2snes?
Ikari, have you considered creating a Patreon account to speed up the development/earn some more cash? Or you could use something like Bountysource. Thank you for your hard work!
Just that you know, some retro/emulation-related projects are already present on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/cemu
https://www.patreon.com/libretro
I ordered sd2snes from retrocables. Until now i have super everdrive v1. The faq and the compatibility is clear. But i have two answers. Sd2snes have PDF manual For first use?.(about files instalation i mean).
And i read the list to do in enhancement chips, But i not view in It the super gameboy. Is posible sd2snes can emulate super game boy and load Game boy ROMs in the future?. Or is discarted?.
Thank you.
Hi Ikari, MSU-1 games do not play music. Only sound effects, but no music.
You can help me? Please!
Hmmm. For the sd2snes to enable the MSU1 extensions and play audio, two criteria must be met:
– audio files must be present as “romname-trackno.pcm” in the same folder as the ROM
– “romname.msu” must be present in the same folder as the ROM. (it can be 0 bytes if the data extension is not used)
Can you try a number of firmwares (suggest 0.1.5, 0.1.6, 0.1.7c) and see if it helps?
What revision is your sd2snes? (It’s printed on the back of the PCB in the upper right corner)
Hello Ikari,
first of all, thank you for your job and effort on it. I bought a new SD2SNES but I can’t have access into directories, because I only see a line of strange characters. If I push X, I can see the menu correctly and all works well, except where I have to see the folder to choose a game, I only see strange characters (and I can’t do anything), any idea about the problem and how to fix?
Hi,
did you put all your files inside the sd2snes folder by any chance? It is considered a “system folder” and is not listed in the file browser. Additionally, there still seems to be a bug that causes the browser to display garbage when the root directory file list is empty. If that is the case, moving the ROMs outside the sd2snes folder should do the trick.
Hi Ikari,
yes, and I send the same content of my SD to the Dealer that sold me the Flash Cart, to test in his SD2SNES, and he doesn’t have any problem, so SD content is correct. I don’t have any ROM folder actually in the SD, but the garbage line is still there.
OK, can you make a screenshot of the card contents and upload it somewhere?
Yes, here you have:
http://s2.subirimagenes.com/privadas/previo/thump_2398641sd-content.png
My sd2snes is saving, but I can’t find where on the SD it’s storing the files. /sd2snes/saves is completely empty, and there are no saves in any of the folders containing roms either. I can save and load fine, so clearly it’s storing them somewhere, but where??
That’s… interesting 😉 Does it even load fine if you play a different game (that also uses saves) inbetween? Usually they should always be stored in sd2snessaves<romname>.srm.
Hi tantan — my save files tend to reside in the same directory as the backup file.
It would be great if the save files resided in a generic location like “sd2snessaves”. This would definitely make it easier to place a single backup file in multiple places for more intuitive browsing:
1. — B — backup_file
2. \backup_file
3. \backup_file
sd2snessavesbackup_file.srm. <– used by any of the above three files
The second & third lines truncated…I suspect they were recognized as html tags.
1. _ordered by year_ — B — backup_file
2. _ordered by genre__some genre_backup_file
3._ordered by release year__some year_backup_file
sd2nessavesbackup_file.srm <– used by any of the above three files
Ikari, have you heard about the VeriSNES project (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRVRcXRQkGA)? Its goal is to recreate the SNES on FPGA, and the developer is actually using an sd2snes cart for development.
Support for expansion chips (including SuperFX and SA-1) is planned. Maybe you should join forces?
Yup, it’s a great achievement really. I talked to jwdonal a couple of times. He thinks SA1 is unlikely to fit on the sd2snes’s FPGA but I’ll try nevertheless. Moreover it seems that he has his own plans of potential commercialization so he’s not exactly eager to share his code.
“My goal is to get the entire SNES design and additional information open sourced.” jwdonal: https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15143&sid=7852f0076e9dfb0f29fd5280b09f61f3&start=210#p206104
BTW, did you know that kevtris used your cart during the devolpment of the Super Nt? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/242970-fpga-based-videogame-system/?p=3869431
And it looks like jwdonal may actually want to help you directly with SA-1 and SuperFX support. Someone asked: “what say ye about helping ikari implementing SuperFX and SA-1 on the SD2SNES?” and he replied: “Would love to. I think it makes a lot of sense, most especially if the VeriSNES is open-sourced.” Source: https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=15143&sid=772f08a181a129bcef4bf06d56accb0a&start=225#p207410
I just purchased a sd2snes and my only question atm is what is this port on top? Kinda looks like a phone charging port. Its right next to the sd card.
Hi, Some one help me!
I have 2 sd2snes, and the first was working, but the other was everytime asking to set the clock.
So I got the other battery that was good from the another sd2snes and I tried, but it didnot work,
and the worst I put the battery back in the cartridge that was working and now it’s happening the same thing with the 2 cartridges,
I’m very upset, will some solution. Thank you!
Why does SD2SNES it need a battery? In the modern day we live in with SD cards, why can’t the clock setting be kept on the SD card? Or how about a rechargable LiPo battery, and a USB port to plug in the charger? In this modern age we live in, there should be no need to change the “clock battery” in a computer or anything else. This isn’t 1990. It’s 2017.
Check inside that modern computer of yours and you’ll find that it has a CR2032 battery on the motherboard to keep track of time.
Does this cartridge support SuperFX (for Star Fox) and SuperFX2 (for Star Fox 2) enhancement chip emulation? If not, will it in the future? Star Fox is a pretty popular game.
Never. It’s been over 7 years and nothing’s been done. It’s an abandoned project.
SuperFX is done! (1.8.0)
SA-1 is in the air…
I’m curious what are the reset/freeze holes on the PCB. Are they inputs? Would hooking buttons up to them do anything useful?
Even though I set the clock correctly some time ago, no it’s off like 40 mins. Is this normal? Could it be connected with the fact that I did not use the device for like a month or so at some point? Would it be possible to implement some kind of a search/filtering feature (it could be useful if there are really many files)? Have you considered simple sound feedback for the sd2snes menu? Like when moving up/down, canceling, going back to the previous menu, etc. Many games have some kind of sounds in their menus, I think this make… Read more »
In the first sentence it should be “now”, not “no”. I really would like to know this. 🙂
Hello Ikari,
I just got my SD2SNES cartridge and downloaded it with my rom set and all the others bins and snes file.
In the menu I am unable to select a game and it randomly starts playing a game in the directory.
The A button seems to work fine in game but does not work in the menu.
Any ideas how to fix this?
That sounds strange… what type of controllers are you using? Do you have anything connected to controller port 2?