USB dev cart status (2022/05/29)
- Back shell #1 : reserved → sent
- Black shell #2 : reserved → sent
- White shell : reserved → sent
All carts are sent. Sorry if you arrived too late !
Long time no see ! Thank you for still keeping an eye on my blog
As the title suggests, I have some
USB dev cart available for sale.
Quantity is an amazing three cartridges, but hopefully it should be enough to satisfy the Saturn homebrew developers in the need of such kind of item.
USB dev cart trio
These carts use more or less the same design as
original version by antime, which is not bad for a project launched in 2012, i.e. one decade ago.
This batch of cartridges was assembled basically in order to get rid of the small stock of electronic components specific to USB dev cart I was still keeping for several years.
Because of that and also the fact I'm now really low on Action Replay shells (I still have a couple of black shells, but I keep them as a souvenir), this is the very last occasion to get an USB dev cart using Action Replay shell and design similar to the original one from 2012.
If after that I really need to assemble new USB dev cart, this will probably use a 3D-printed shell and all discrete logic would be packed into a
CPLD, but to be honest, there's no plan to assemble more USB dev carts in a near or middle-term future.
Because of limited quantity, ordering is done by posting a comment with the color (white or black) of the
cartridge you want to purchase. Apart from the color, 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 all three cartridges are reserved, then you're free to post a comment anyway (it's free, I don't beg for your personal information, and sometimes I even reply to comments) but unfortunately this won't grant you a ticket to order an USB dev cart.
(If you really need one but arrived too late, then please drop me an email and explain me why you need an USB dev cart)
Pricing for one cartridge is as indicated below :
- USB dev cart (x1) : USD 65
- Shipping to USA or Europe : JPY 2400 = USD 18
- Total : USD 83
Shipping method is EMS, whose availability is "random" : if there isn't Buk missile system between your country and Japan, and also if your country is not closed because of a pandemic then you have a chance to be eligible for parcels being delivered by EMS from Japan ... but don't be too optimistic and please check the
EMS availability page in order to be sure that delivery can be done.
If EMS is not available, then B-plan is surface mail which takes around three months to arrive and cost more or less the same as EMS. This expensive and slow shipping method sounds like a fraud but it's a thing (by the past I send cartridges via surface mail, and their owners are now happy to play Saturn games), and this will be an unique occasion for your cartridge to enjoy a cruise in the middle of all the oceans of this planet without any tracking information being updated during that period.
Modern shipping is fast, scanned, tracked and always connected like the average
salaryman on a business trip, but on the other hand surface mail is like enjoying a digital detox during a 100 days cruise and making ties with other parcel friends in the meanwhile. The more I write about surface mail the more I am jealous about it and want to retire my work of IT, take a backpack and enjoy to be alive
As a consequence, shipping fee to USA for one cartridge will change from 2400 Yens now to 3900 Yens on next month.
Back in 2015, the cost to send one cartridge was 1200 Yens (roughly USD 10), and then EMS discretely "revised" it to 1500 Yens on June 2016, and then the lowest weight range was "revised" from 300 grams to 500 grams and consequently shipping fee jumped to 2000 Yens.
In 10 years, shipping fee to send one cartridge tripled ... I wished the same performance boost for my salary but I miserably failed. Dear EMS, you won the race and congratulate you for that.
Trivia about EMS price chart : did you know that price changes according to the language the price chart page is displayed ?
EMS price chart in Japanese.
Fun fact : total shipping fees to send 5300 Saturn cartridges
EMS price chart in English.
Proudly fixed by myself to adjust language barrier 
I suppose that the folks behind EMS have a special excuse to justify that ... maybe because of the cost it required to translate the page, or more probably because pricing is decided by throwing darts on a calendar, then multiplying all numbers being hit until getting a result higher than previous one.
If this guess is right, then maybe the person in charge of deciding the price to put on Japanese page hit 6, 25 and 26 (6*25*26 = 3900) and that the the person in charge of deciding the price to put on English page hit 5, 25 and 28 (5*25*28 = 3500). Each respective darts were quite close but unfortunately both prices don't match
TL;DR
- There are three USB dev cart for sale
- USB dev cart is a cartridge for developers on Saturn game console
- Fast shipping is not available for a majority of European countries
- Slow shipping is available almost everywhere, but it takes three months to arrive
- Fast shipping will cost even more from next month.
- According to Japanese post home page, shipping cost depends of your mother tongue
Read more USB dev cart Flash Sale (2022/05/17)
I was away from keyboard (and fortunately away from shopping malls too) during this
Black Friday, so I am a bit late to celebrate this marvelous commercial event.
But any date isn't late to celebrate something, so let's tweak a little the event name and officially open the ...
The event is open all year, so everyone including latecomers should get their 80% off on first download
Read more Pseudo Saturn Kai - Black Saturday !
Long time no see ! It's a super long while I wanted to write about several kinds of Pseudo Saturn cartridges (other than the usual Action Replay/Gameshark couple) but as a lot of things in this blog, always postponed it.
But recently I discovered a cartridge that breaks all records in term of extra cheap design and appropriation of other people's work that now I really want to terminate this article
(Note : it's already
10 13 14 29 days after the creation of this article, and it is still not published yet ... but I do my best to finish it
)
Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with the designers or developers or sellers of the cartridges below. The reviews below are just my personal opinion and may not reflect the exact contents or behavior of the cartridges. And in case of questions regarding theses cartridges, please contact their sellers instead of me.
Also, please try theses cartridges at your own risks : whatever it may be, I'm not responsible about any damage caused to your Saturn, your cartridges, your dog, your house or anything else !
And let it be clear : the first purpose of this article is to inform users that such kind of not so usual cartridges exist, so that potential users can consider about theses cartridges for their own usage.
But if a cartridge deserves to be flamed, then I don't refrain about that, especially when it concerns the appropriation of other's people work.
Saturn NinjaDrive
From what I could see, that's an Action Replay cartridge with custom label and Pseudo Saturn Kai pre-installed. The "deluxe" edition features a stylish box for the cartridge.
It probably would had been appreciated to indicate that Pseudo Saturn Kai is installed rather to rebrand everything under a different name ...
Pros :
- The price without stylish box is not that bad
- Pseudo Saturn Kai is pre-installed
Con :
- It would had been fair to indicate that cartridge is made from Action Replay cart
- There's no indication about which firmware is installed
Saturn Unlocker
That's in the same range of contents (and price) as NinjaDrive : Action Replay with Pseudo Saturn Kai pre-installed. At least there's no attempt to hide about what is installed.
A description video at the lower half of the cartridge's page shows that Pseudo Saturn 0.832 is installed, which doesn't works at all on some Japanese model 1 Saturn
The video itself is quite old, so let's hope that latest version of Pseudo Saturn Kai is installed on the cartridges now
Pros :
- Classy box and label, a must have on your collection shelf
- Pseudo Saturn Kai is pre-installed
Con :
- It would had been fair to indicate that cartridge is made from Action Replay cart
- Maybe a bit expensive ?
All in One RAM Backup Cartridge
All in one cartridge, front side.
I couldn't find an official homepage for this "all in one" cartridge, but this is paradoxically the most valuable cartridge in this article
This cartridge model features both Action Replay support (boot ROM and 1MB/4MB expansion RAM) and 512KB backup memory storage. In simple words, it is the result of Action Replay and official memory cartridges blended together.
The backup memory is implemented with its own flash ROM chip, in the fashion as official backup memory cartridges, thus shall provide a 99% compatible (I keep the last 1% just in case of any eventual picky game that would cause problem, but this would be surprising such one exist) and in-game support for cartridge backup memory.
Using dedicated flash ROM for backup memory unfortunately means that it will be corrupted and finally no longer accessible after many write cycles, but ... this is how official cartridges worked too
However, since boot ROM and backup memory are stored in physically different flash ROM chips, the cartridge will still boot Pseudo Saturn Kai even if backup memory chip is damaged, which is one point over Action Replay where damage of backup memory ROM means the loss of nearly all other features.
Regarding firmware installed, the ebay pages selling this cartridge model I could see so far clearly mention that latest Pseudo Saturn Kai version (v6.074 at current time) is installed, and even explain the basis regarding cartridge usage such as loading a game, or accessing Save Data Manager, etc, which is quite a fair and remarkable way of doing
A review with only praises may look a bit biased (and no, I didn't received any money nor even any email from seller of this cartridge), so I would like to critic about the electronics parts used in this cartridges : theses are the same as used in Action Replay or official backup memory cartridges.
As a consequence, the technology used is no longer produced, thus probably coming from shady old stock, or counterfeit chips factory, or recycled from vintage devices. In each case, this means that in the long term, quality may not be at the meet.
An interesting related question is "Why releasing such cartridge around 20 years late ? This could exist at the time Action Replay cartridge development was still active !".
My guess about this question is that Action Replay development and/or sales team wanted to put everything (boot ROM and cartridge memory) in a single flash ROM chip, giving birth to the "if a ROM feature breaks, the whole cartridge is bricked" cartridge architecture used in Action Replay carts.
I personally like to write to flash ROM only when upgrading cartridge firmware, so that I dropped backup memory support on Pseudo Saturn Kai lite.
So my second guess is that it motivated someone to finally merge Action Replay and backup memory cartridge in a single one ? If this guess is right, then I'm glad to have indirectly contributed to the development of this cartridge
As an extra note, I could notice that several hardware variation for this cartridge model may exist, so anyone interested in purchasing such "all in one" cartridge should carefully verify it's item description page as well as features list indicated at the back side of the cartridge.
All in one cartridge : list of features available.
And finally, please enjoy a picture of each sides of the cartridge PCB
Theses pictures clearly indicate how the cartridge works, and were a great help when preparing this article.
All in one cartridge font side.
Left half : expansion RAM and glue logic for each chips.
Right half : flash ROM chips for cartridge firmware.
All in one cartridge rear side.
Flash ROM for cartridge backup memory.
Pros :
- Supports basically nearly all the Saturn games library
- Pseudo Saturn Kai is pre-installed
- There's no attempt to hide that Pseudo Saturn Kai is installed
Con :
- Cartridge backup memory may deteriorate after heavy usage.
Edit (2019/01/09) : there is also some kind of "dual boot" cartridge that seems to allow to select among two firmwares which one to boot.
Dual boot cartridge, front side
Thanks to toze3 for informing me about this cartridge
Dual boot cartridge, rear side
Thanks to toze3 for informing me about this cartridge
Saturn PASS
You're full of all theses cartridges to digest in a single article ? That's bad for you, because I kept the most greasy dish for the last time
Saturn PASS cartridge
This is a very simple cartridge with only boot ROM, and nothing else : no cartridge shell, and not even decoupling capacitors near the ROM chip ...
The decoupling capacitors protect neighboring components against voltage spikes : as theses apparently don't have any functional purpose, they are sometimes removed by cheap device cloners ...
Additionally, ROM chip used seems to be a
UV EPROM, easily identifiable with the small round window at the center of the chip.
UV EPROM chip detail
Yes, I did hit the snapshot key around 10 times to get
the right moment when UV window is visible
As a consequence, firmware update requires dedicated device to illuminate the chip with UV light prior writing of the ROM and basically can't be easily done on user side.
Additionally from being technically difficult to upgrade, Saturn PASS users will also have to enjoy the custom firmware pre-installed : apparently it's a stripped version of Pseudo Saturn (or it will be an huge coincidence that log message under "Loading CD" is the same in both firmwares) with only the bare minimum remaining :
- No boot menu
- "Pseudo Saturn" name changed to "Saturn PASS"
- Addition of URL to Saturn PASS homepage
- Removal of Pseudo Saturn credits
Saturn PASS boot screen
For unknown reason they left as-is the
Pseudo Saturn is open source, so anyone with enough skills is free to change things in the firmware to their preferences. But rebranding the whole thing and trashing credits to original development team is not how open source works.
So if someone wants to thank somebody for Saturn PASS to exist, they should refer to credits displayed in Pseudo Saturn :
Copyright 2011-2015 Pseudo Saturn Team
http://github.com/cyberwarriorx/pseudosaturn
At a glance, removal of boot menu and only keeping the Pseudo Saturn exploit sounds a good idea, because that's one step less to do on user side before playing a game.
But except that point, it's complete crap : extra features (to verify if cartridge is working correctly or not, or to verify version of Saturn internals, etc) are no longer available, as well as credits page too.
Personally, I derived
Kai from
Pseudo Saturn specifically for adding features other than Pseudo Saturn exploit :
memory cartridge support in previous releases,
cheat codes in next release(s), and probably
something more in future release(s). So removing all the menus and extra features just to spare the push of one button to play a game is "no, I won't do that"
Pseudo Saturn Kai credits page is probably just a feature to boost my own ego, but I am not the only one listed there, and everybody credited contributed for free : done on their free time and without financial compensation. So muting them is definitely not an option. Also, I made several graphic improvements when displaying credits, so I hope you will enjoy them in next release
To finish on a positive note about Saturn PASS, it should be mentioned that its price is relatively reasonable : 350 Thai Bath = around 10 US Dollars, which makes this cartridge affordable for Thailand users
Pro :
- Affordable for Thailand users.
Cons :
- Can't upgrade firmware.
- No credits to original firmware developers.
PS : I heard about this cartridge from
furrtek. Special thanks to him for the information
Read more Various Pseudo Saturn cartridges
In a random shop, I found a bin filled with coconut oil.
Why do I post this picture on my blog ? Because of the funny/wtf warning message on it :
"To people under disease treatment : please ask your doctor before using this product"
Wow, maybe it's like I should ask my doctor when choosing what to eat ? oO
Note if you don't know : oil that is solid at ambient temperature is filled with trans fat, and good for trash, or preparing Mc Donald's burger, but it's the same anyway
And, it's not even it's written "Organic" in big letters on a product's label that it guarantees this product will be healthy !
Read more Coconut oil ... "please ask your doctor before eating"
80% OFF on First Download 
Second Download Offered 
