Before February ends I should hurry to write an article here ... it's not like I'm forced to write things here, but as I'm paying to make my homepage being publicly available, it would be a good idea to put some contents on it from time to time
So, today topic is Gamer's Cartridge : few years ago I announced the end of their production, basically because I was lacking of free time to assemble new ones and also because I was lacking of a good plan to get cartridge shells.
Free time is still a problem, but as Gamer's Cartridge have the advantage to be easy to assemble, it is possible to produce some cartridges ... at a limited speed, but possible anyway.
The problem of cartridge shells is solved thanks to 3D printable case designed by zone66x : for a long time, Gamer's Cartridge was relying on Action Replay shells but now it uses original (and classy !) shells
I plan to open back Gamer's Cartridge sales around March 12th at the usual place, so please stay tuned until that time
2023 March 10th update : some cartridges are added on Mercari Japan. Please wait for a few days until I make available them from my homepage too.
Don't hesitate to write a comment on this article in the case of any question regarding Gamer's Cartridge or when they will be available back in stock etc.
2022/11/16 update : Orders are closed for this sale. Thank you everyone and happy playing ! In the case you arrived too late, another batch of cartridges will be available at the end of this month
2022/11/16更新 : 完売いたしました。今月末に販売を再開する予定♪
Last time I mentioned Gamer's Cartridge in this blog, it was the matter of selling last carts I had at that time and to eventually assemble new carts at the conditions of finding appropriate shells for them.
This was nearly one year ago and after writing this article I went bored of not assembling cartridges. So I gave a try in "That's It Guys" 3D printing service ! In addition of being able to assemble Gamer's Cartridge, it is also possible to take a look to videos of the shells being printed !
Next batch of Gamer's Cartridge will be available on my homepage at the end of this month. But before that, some carts whose 3D printing didn't went well are for sale here.
As this sale is about cartridges whose shells are in "outlet" condition, the price is lower than usual.
So if you are on a low budget, this is a good occasion to get a Gamer's Cartridge. And if you want a regular cartridge, then please wait for around two or three weeks until next batch is ready.
BTW, 3D print files for Gamer's Cartridge shells are open source. So if you want to try to print a better shell for your cartridge, this flash sale is for you ! Thingiverse page : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3684074 The page contains several variations of STL files and printing of the following ones is recommended : - gamers_cart_front.stl - gamers_cart_back_mascot.stl
As only 4 outlet cartridges are available and that all of them have unique features, it is required to publicly specify which cartridge to purchase by posting a comment on this article.
Also, it is necessary to indicate an email address in the appropriate field when writing the comment so that I can contact you back to continue the ordering of the cartridge.
Rule to be selected for the ordering of a cartridge is "first-come first-served" so if someone wrote a comment with the ID of your favorite cartridge, please select another cartridge or wait for next regular or flash sale.
List of cartridges available : (please click on the pictures to see them in details)
- "Blue" : blue shell, USD 61 + shipping
As shown on the picture, the letters as well as the logo are poorly printed.
-
- "Grey #1" : blue shell, USD 61 + shipping As shown on the picture, the surface of the case as well as letters are poorly printed. Also, one side of the shell bent during the printing, which caused the cartridge not fitting into its slot. This was fixed by manually filing the edges of the shell.
- "Grey #2" : blue shell, USD 61 + shipping
(Same condition as "Grey #1", hence not taken in picture) As shown on the picture, the surface of the case as well as letters are poorly printed. Also, one side of the shell bent during the printing, which caused the cartridge not fitting into its slot. This was fixed by manually filing the edges of the shell.
- -
- "Transparent" : half-transparent shell, USD 53 + shipping As shown on the picture, the 3D print result is in poor condition and may break easily. This is a good deal if you are ready to print another shell by yourself, or to take extreme care of this cartridge.
-
Cartridges support in-game backup memory access to SD card, Pseudo Saturn exploit (play games copied onCD-R), cheat codes and smooth support of Rhea/Phoebe and Fenrir ODEs. On the other hand 1MB/4MB expansion RAM, CD-ROM emulation or any other advanced features are not supported.
Pricing of the cartridge is as indicated above and shipping is described in EMS homepage in "Up to 500g" row. So for example of blue cartridge ordered from USA, the total is USD 61 + JPY 3900 (around USD 28) = USD 89.
Payment method is Paypal only. Shipping method is EMS only, so please verify if it can be delivered in your country. If you live in a country not (yet ?) covered by EMS, the only alternative is surface mail, which takes an eternity to deliver (well, I exaggerate, but three months is quite long for a small package to arrive) and not super well tracked too.
(Lower half of this article in same as above but in Japanese. All your bases are belong to us)
Update
2021 Dec. 12th : Orders are closed for this sale. Thank you everyone and happy playing
Good news for everyone looking for a Gamer's Cartridge : 4 more cartridges are available for sale
As the title suggests, this is the last occasion to purchase a Gamer's Cartridge in 2021. So if you want one that's a good timing but if you're hesitating then don't feel obliged to order one. (There may be few Gamer's Cartridges available for sale in 2022, maybe not. It depends on my free time, if I can find cartridge shells etc)
So
in order to order a cartridge, please post a comment with the ID of the
cartridge you want to purchase. And please don't forget to indicate
your email in the appropriate field when writing the comment so that I
can contact you back to continue the ordering of the cartridge.
Rule
to be selected for the ordering of a cartridge is "first-come
first-served" so if someone wrote a comment with the ID of your favorite
cartridge, please select another cartridge or wait for another flash
sale ... if any.
List of cartridges available :
- #03 (b) : white & glow in the dark shell (details)
- #12 : White & glow in the dark shell + Dezaemon 2 label (details)
- #13 : White & glow in the dark shell + Dezaemon 2 label (details)
Cartridges
support in-game backup memory to SD card, Pseudo Saturn exploit (play
CD-R backups), cheat codes and smooth support of Rhea/Phoebe and Fenrir
ODEs.
On the other hand 1MB/4MB expansion RAM, CD-ROM emulation or any other advanced features are not supported.
Pricing is the same as before : USD 77 for the cartridge itself and shipping price is described in EMS homepage in "Up to 500g" row.
So for example of an order to USA, the total is USD 77 + JPY 2000 (around USD 17) = USD 94.
If
you live in a country not (yet ?) covered by EMS, the only alternative
is surface mail, which takes an eternity to deliver (well, I exaggerate,
but three months is quite long for a small package to arrive) and not
super well tracked too.
Payment method is
Paypal only : sorry but I don't accept any electronic currency as well
as barter economy as well as anything else than Paypal.
(Lower half of this article in same as above but in Japanese.
Update 2021 Nov. 30th : I received more orders than expected ^^; Please wait until current orders are processed so that I can re-open this article.
Good news for everyone looking for a Gamer's Cartridge : 4 of them are available for sale
As in previous flash sale, these cartridges use 3D printed shell whose shape and color may vary.
So in order to order a cartridge, please post a comment with the ID of the cartridge you want to purchase. And please don't forget to indicate your email in the appropriate field when writing the comment so that I can contact you back to continue the ordering of the cartridge.
Rule to be selected for the ordering of a cartridge is "first-come first-served" so if someone wrote a comment with the ID of your favorite cartridge, please select another cartridge or wait for another flash sale ... if any.
Cartridges support in-game backup memory to SD card, Pseudo Saturn exploit (play CD-R backups), cheat codes and smooth support of Rhea/Phoebe and Fenrir ODEs.
On the other hand 1MB/4MB expansion RAM, CD-ROM emulation or any other advanced features are not supported.
Pricing is the same as before : USD 77 for the cartridge itself and shipping price is described in EMS homepage in "Up to 500g" row.
So for example of an order to USA, the total is USD 77 + JPY 2000 (around USD 17) = USD 94.
If you live in a country not (yet ?) covered by EMS, the only alternative is surface mail, which takes an eternity to deliver (well, I exaggerate, but three months is quite long for a small package to arrive) and not super well tracked too.
Payment method is Paypal only : sorry but I don't accept any electronic currency as well as barter economy as well as anything else than Paypal.
(Lower half of this article in same as above but in Japanese.
This is with the pride of a job finally being done to announce the public release of Pseudo Saturn Kai v6.483 ! As usual, it can be found in the download section of Pseudo Saturn Kai page.
This release was heavily tested by privateye and in fact it couldn't be released without his extensive help. Thank you very much !!
Rare footage of privateye and me uniting forces during
Pseudo Saturn Kai development and testing
There are many changes not only concerning ODE support so that every Saturn worshiper may appreciate this release.
Game and Saturn hardware compatibility improved
So far JHL loader wasn't supporting some Japanese grey Saturns but this is now fixed so that it's finally possible to play Panzer Dragoon Saga with Pseudo Saturn Kai on all known Saturn hardware revisions
This fix doesn't removes the need disc image before burning it. This concerns few games indicated as requiring usage of Pseudo Saturn patcher utility in Pseudo Saturn Kai compatibility page.
Additionally to hardware compatibility improvement, graphical issues are also fixed in some games. This concerns Croc, Slam 'n Jam '96, MechWarrior 2, Need for Speed and Space Hulk so if you were waiting for an update of Pseudo Saturn Kai to play these games, it's (finally !) the right moment to update your cartridge
Save Data Manager for Satiator ODE
As indicated in the title, Save Data Manager now supports Satiator ODE.
Supports include the export and import of save data to/from SD card, the access to all known backup devices (including Saturn floppy disk drive), so if you have important saves from your favorite games and don't want them to become lost or corrupted or want to share them with Saturn friends, you don't have any excuse to do it right now
Save Data Manager and Satiator access emulated in Yabause
Additionally to Satiator ODE support, many small details were fixed or improved, for example file browsing now uses a better font, comments written in Japanese are now correctly written in save data dump report file etc.
All these fixes and improvements were made in the hope everyone (and not only ODE users) will take benefit from Save Data Manager : if you want to import a pre-recorded save for a given game then SDM may be useful for you, if you want to copy saves recorded on a floppy disk then SDM may be useful for you, and so on
Support for latest (2021/07/02) Fenrir firmware
In regard of the stream of the "why Pseudo Saturn Kai doesn't works with Fenrir ?", or "when will Pseudo Saturn Kai will support latest firmware of Fenrir ?" or all the similar questions asked here and there on the internet, that's probably a super awaited feature ! And finally it is here
So, latest firmware (2021/07/02) is supported, and consequently nested folders feature too.
However, display of game cover/screenshot is not supported, so even if it is enabled nothing will be displayed on Pseudo Saturn Kai. This shall be added in a future release, but as other features may take over the priority, ETA regarding this feature is not decided yet.
Fenrir nested folder example under Yabause
As I like to improve things whenever it is possible, I caught the occasion of the development of nested folder feature to do cosmetic enhancements to disc image selection menu.Majority of these enhancements won't be noticed : for example slight changes regarding width of some letters, or making menu title not flickering during initial display.
On the other side, Rhea/Phoebe and Fenrir users now may appreciate the addition of font selection on disc image selection menu ! I like default one but as it may not be the taste of everybody, it's now possible to select an alternate font
Font selection in disc image selection menu
Development and testing of this version was quite exhausting because of unexpected troubles here and there. For example, Satiator didn't always wanted to provide access to the CD-ROM it is emulating when SD file access is enabled, which was fixed simply by ... directly reading disc image file contents instead of data sectors from emulated CD-ROM
On Fenrir side, reading of save data files whose size is not a multiple of 2 KB isn't working correctly, so the simple workaround for this problem is to add a padding at the end of save data files to make their size being a multiple of 2 KB Remaining problem with this workaround is that save data exported with older version of Fenrir firmware may not be readable now and unfortunately it's impossible to fix that only with Pseudo Saturn Kai.
All of that to say we may take a well deserved rest for a small while. I don't know how situation is exactly on privateye side but personally I would like to recover back sleep time lost during the last four weeks
Please wait for 30 minutes (a dozen of episodes) for
privateye and me to return back to full power
Next goal for Pseudo Saturn Kai is to support disc image selection for Satiator ODE. Development pace until this milestone as well as additional support for Fenrir ODE depends on everyone supporting Pseudo Saturn Kai on patreon, so don't hesitate to contribute there if you're interested
Remaining problem with this workaround is that save data exported with older version of Fenrir firmware may not be readable now and unfortunately it's impossible to fix that only with Pseudo Saturn Kai.
