On the planet of retro gaming, a flash cart is a tool that mimics a local recreation cartridge. The console thinks it’s a normal cartridge with a static ROM chip, however the flash cart can truly retailer the ROM knowledge from a number of video games and serve it as essential to the console. This not solely lets gamers run downloaded ROMs, but in addition lets them carry a number of video games in a single cartridge. For those who’re a Sport Boy fan, Zeraphim designed an attention-grabbing flash cart constructed round a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller.
Most cartridges for older consoles saved the sport information on ROM chips that could not be modified after the unique knowledge was written. That was as a result of dependable rewriteable knowledge storage that did not require energy for persistence wasn’t obtainable within the early days. Then later as a result of it was costlier and builders had no purpose to offer customers the flexibility to rewrite knowledge. However trendy flash storage is reasonable and plentiful, so flash carts are very sensible — although the legality of sourcing ROM knowledge is kind of controversial.
This explicit flash cart makes use of a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller as a bridge between the ROM knowledge and the Sport Boy. It has 16MB of QSPI flash storage, which is sufficient for 2 8MB recreation ROMs. You may match extra if the video games are smaller. Nevertheless, the QSPI flash storage is comparatively sluggish and so this flash cart is not appropriate for video games that make the most of the Sport Boy Coloration’s double velocity mode.
You may additionally have points with energy in case your Sport Boy has an IPS display mod, backlight, or different mod that will increase the facility draw. This flash cart requires extra energy than an actual recreation cartridge, so it pushes the restrict of what a Sport Boy can provide and people mods might nudge it previous the restrict.
To make use of this flash cart, simply join it to your PC through a USB cable and use the WebUSB device to repeat the ROMs into the flash storage. Then insert the cartridge into your Sport Boy. Once you boot it up, you will see a easy interface that lets you choose any ROM in flash storage.
Zeraphim’s RP2040 flash cart is obtainable on Tindie for $30. It’s also open supply, so you’ll be able to construct your personal utilizing the information on GitHub.
