The Dangers of 3.3V Flash in Retro Consoles

Very interesting link, OP. I always assumed Everdrives were well designed and Krikkz knew what he was doing, when in reality he was cutting corners the entire time. I'm honestly shocked he's using resistors instead of proper level shifting for so many of his flashcarts.

Krikzz already responded to this.
krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=6614.msg51195#msg51195

If you read the whole thing you'll see that the poster mentions that lots of modern everdrives are heading in the right direction design-wise so it's likely Krikkz just wasn't aware but now is learning. Most of the latest models of everdrives are listed as fine on the page, and Krikkz also made the SD2SNES which the page gushes about how great it is.

Yes, I did read it. "He wasn't aware but knows better now" still doesn't fit his reputation of being a flash cart god. Also SD2SNES wasn't designed by Krikkz, it's an open source design that he (as well as others) have manufactured.

Little bit more from the next page:

Honestly after reading and seeing that the guy didn't even notice the grounds on the cards I doubt the whole article. I'm gonna trust Krikkz. I think saying he doesn't know what he was doing because of one article is a bit hasty on your behalf.

kek

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Emulators lol
EMULATORS RULE ORIGINAL HARDWARE DROOLS

Emulation is for those who don't have the ability to play on the actual systems for one reason or another, for instance, being surrounded by hipster faggots who ruined the classic game market with their trust funds and no understanding of the value of a dollar, never having had to work their asses off to buy anything. Emulation on a phone is a novelty, lower in value than emulating one game system on another system made by a different company, like Neo Geo emulation on the original DS, or NES emulation on the Dreamcast. Playing games on their original hardware is ace.

Your whine must surely be made from the most sour of grapes, monsignor.

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Pics or it didn't happen

Original hardware sucks shit. You have to haul it's big ass out. It's so much better just to have all the systems you ever want on one computer.

why no archive?
ʕ•ω•ʔ✧

If you don't live in your parents house in a single room you should really have the space to put out dozens of consoles user.

If it were really that much of a system killer don't you think a lot of people would have complained about Everdrives killing their systems? No though, let's just trust the guy who didn't even see the fucking massive grounds on the carts, he knows what he's talking about for sure.

Call me when you can emulate an emulator, summerfag.

i know you were joking, but there were many years when mainframe and minicomputer manufacturers kept releasing new machines with different architectures and this happened.

companies would be running their applications in an emulator of the previous architecture rather than have to rewrite all their software, a new machine would come out, and they'd load their previous environment on the new machine in an emulator. Sometimes you had harware running an emulator running an emulator running an emulator running the software.

I have an NES, SMS, multiple SNES's, Saturn, PS1, PS2, 2 gamecubes (1 modded), an MVS cabinet, Dreamcast, NGPC, GB, DS, GBA etc and i still just emulate coz it's way easier and better.

The primary reason is still space. All consoles packed into a single machine is the way it should be. Having multiple physical entertainment devices taking up space is just a waste.

but you can

Most people are a waste of space. I have almost every game system released in the United States, and they all fit in a box in my closet, not counting the many duplicate systems I have.

I personally prefer the hardware over emulation simply because some games bug out in ways not possible on the original hardware. But as time passes, I really wish SEGA would come back, drop an official Dreamcast and Saturn SDK/emulator and then die again. Because life is suffering trying to get Zombie Revenge to work.

Cool story time

Back in the '90s there were some weebs at my school who didn't know shit about where to buy games other than the mall EB. I managed to sell one of them a new copy for Xenogears for $80 and went right back to the music store to get another new copy for $30. Some years later I got all four .hack games for about $90 total. I still have the full set in good condition, plus another complete set I haven't sold off.

These people don't exist. Hipsters play emulators with horrible filters.

Everdrive GBA & N64 reporting in, got mine on black friday and had no power failures. If anything, I'm still waiting for the battery save fix so I can start installing pokehacks without tweaking…and that game boy emulation on GBA doesn't support saves, so you'll need a separate flash cart for those.

Oh my sweet summer child, you haven't been to a retro game store lately.

Even if you DO live in a single room, there's no fucking excuse.

I heard them talking about this during the last retro roundtable podcast, it's important to keep in mind. It may be a small issue like, your piece of hardware that could have listed 55 years will now only instead last 54 years - there aren't really any long term results to bank on just yet.

Still, staying in specification is very important. Good idea to avoid chinese shit and make sure hardware you get from "reputable" sources like krikzz are following the spec of the console.

Odd to see emulators being brought up in this thread, this is a technical discussion, you people don't belong here.

Well why don't you assholes just pick a multimeter and probes and measure proper operating voltage for a cart? I'll spare you the hassle, it's 5 volts, low signal threshold is 0.5 volts or lower, high signal threshold is 2.7 volts or higher. You can directly operate 3v3 circuits in there, they can take up to 5 volts no problem on one hand and they produce sufficiently high signal level to be detected by console hardware on the other hand. You can't fucking damage electronics with LOWER voltage and current than in its specs.

Fucking tech-inept plebs.

yeah what the fuck, you can damage it you put too many volts in but putting too little doesn't harm it
i can't believe people are getting tricked

You can clearly see the power rail on the left going directly to the voltage regulator block on the top right, from where on it goes to power the hardware. It has a voltage stabilizing bypass capacitor (bottom) and voltage reverse protection diodes (sides). It also has protection elements on each data track, something the carts back in the day didn't fucking had if I have to remind it. Can't see anything wrong with the circuit. Autorouting produced a bit messy tracks but eh.

I emulate.

Even if it is cute to have original consoles, it is more efficient to have a Raspberry set to emulate games, then connect it to your TV through the USB.

Read the article you fucking aficionados. It says how it happens right there you triple niggers

It's more efficient to emulate using the same computer you watch videos, read email, browse the web, write documents, or do anything else on, and giving money to the SJWPI group is a grave sin.

There's something to be said for not having shit to distract you and being on a comfy sofa. Fuck SJWpi though.

The very first paragraph of text and they already shat the bed three times.

Did they do something stupid like most people involved in tech these days?

They most certainly can be, hence the saying "little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

Just for the heck of it I skimmed through the article and they show boards with clearly visible voltage regulators and then say they don't have proper voltage control.

WHAT THE FUCK

It says the diodes purpose is small sudden uprises and not constant flow that generates also constant heat. Did you even bother to read all quad nigger or do you only want to sound smart

The CONleaks had Quinn and her faggots creaming themselves that they got RaspberryPi to go #stopgamergate2014

For fuck's sake. Why even the people who invented stuff that is so fucking convenient show that they are shit?

If you care so much about wasting space then why don't you kill yourself and burn your house down?

I think the majority of 8/v/ lives in 6'x8' manlet prisms with only their PC and a 1366x768 lcd to keep them alive.

Should've been "the dangers of badly designed 3v3 devices" instead

tl;dr: bad electronics design

I don't think you understand, and neither does that fuckwit.

Common static discharge voltage is 10 000 V. It can be as low as 5 000 V but can also go all the way up to 50 000 V in bad scenarios Breakdown threshold of 100-something volts on a rectifyer diode is gonna do diddly squat to stop it. For static protection you need a spark gap connected over directly to the ground. You can put a calibrated zener diode in reverse connected to the ground and it will do the job of clipping the voltage, but this use is reserved for analog signal clipping and if you do that for power supply voltage regulation you need to hang yourself from a power pole by the nutsack. You will not find a single certified electronic device that does this shit.

More importantly, the voltage drop from 5v to 3v3 is gonna occur in the everdrive cart, not in the console. This drop on a diode, which doesn't fucking exist if I may remind you, would be 0.2 watts or thereabouts, even diodes in tiny surface mount packages are spec'd to higher power dissipation than that and you wouldn't fucking use something that wimpy for any sort of electrical protection. So not only such drop is well within operating specs and cannot possibly cause failure, the would-be failure would only affect the everdrive cart - the system already works on 5v so it can't get busted if you feed it back that exact amount.

And that's not even going into any sort of thorough debunking, just highlighting that they use completely wrong premise and then proceed to straight up post false information which you can fucking verify is wrong right there from the pictures they posted themselves. The whole article is nothing short of a hit-piece, and blatant one at that, targeted at people who wouldn't know any better and just take their word for it.

Adding to that, the article reads like a car salesman saying that cars of XYZ make are bad because their transrumpers defraculators are poorly made and that impacts your mileage, and ZYX cars don't have this issue and are top notch.

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Are you retarded user?

Using 3.3 volts with 5v logic is bad design in default.

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Well yeah, that too. Also nice set-up user.

Bad design is the one that's prone to failure. There's nothing wrong with operating logic well within its operating limits, let alone simply because it's not the same as its operating voltage.

Super gameboy probably wouldn't work on a DOS snes emulator though, i remember SGB being a big problem for emulation for a long time because nobody but the hardest of hardcore spergs wanted to get it running.

Those are used on really old systems. People might as well chalk up failure to old age instead of attributing it to a flash card.

I used to rock CycloDS on my DS Lite but then I broke my piece of shit hinges fucking nintendium my ass

Bumping. What's the final verdict on this article? I recently bought a 161 in 1 MVS cart and I don't know if I should chuck it out in favor of one of those 400 dollar SDNeos.

An emulator for an emulator, inside an emulated system?!

What kind'a Christopher Nolan Inception-level bullshit IS this?

I see your logic, but you also have no evidence to back it up. Sorry, but if the guy writing the article knows so fucking little that he didn't even see the massive grounds on the carts then I don't trust his technical aptitude on anything else in the article either.

Maybe you should read actually read the thread instead of bumping it expecting someone to spoon-feed you.