I found this link from hackaday. Are any of you responsible for this project? It looks like someone has been working on a USB device that is capable of dumping perfect ROMs of VB games. I’m not sure how any of this helps us, but it’s cool people are still working on this stuff.

Initial Testing
Final Testing

Hackaday Link (with comments)

Heheheh… that’s kinda funny… I can’t believe he individually inserted PCMCIA pins into the cart 😛 .

DogP

That’s weird, because I almost mailed the developer of the device about adding VB support, back when it was the “Snega2usb” (awful name :-P).

Nice! Hopefully there will be an adapter. The Retrode it pretty expensive though, 70 EUR. 🙁

Well, that’s still cheaper than the FlashBoy…

HorvatM wrote:
Well, that’s still cheaper than the FlashBoy…

Yes, but as far as I know it does not have the same function of the Flashboy. In fact, it is the opposite. It can make a .rom file from games you have so that you can later flash it on a chip/cart like the Flashboy.

[e5frog]

It’s cheaper to buy an eprom programmer and hook it up then…

I’m not the least impressed, others here have done the exact same thing, I don’t understand the problems with the hookup either, the available information is correct as far as I know, my home built eprom rom-cart worked right away and I don’t see how a reader would work any different.

”
Now that the cartridges can be easily dumped you have a chance to replay the titles using an emulator.
”

Yes, or if you have a thing called the internet you can download dumps of almost all commercially released games that the “Retrode” can dump… for almost nothing. 😉

• This reply was modified 14 years, 9 months ago by e5frog.

There are other advantages to this, though:

– Use official cartridges (meaning you play it legally) – no actual dumping required as far as I know.
– Save straight to the cart’s SRAM (if it has one).
– It’s simply a nifty device. Opinion, I know. But it’s kinda cool to be able to insert console carts into your PC, sort of. 😛

I really like what they’ve done. Makes the games at least a bit more accessible if you can’t find the console to play them on.