Everdrive-MD Flash Cart

[Chilly Willy]

After reading about the Everdrive-MD in this thread, I decided to get one. It came in yesterday, so I've been trying stuff out on it.

We've seen the pics on KRIKzz's web page (which is down right now), so I won't bother with photos on the cart itself. Let's start with a picture of how you chop up an old case for it.



Use a drill to make a hole through which you can use something to press the Master System button (it's not long enough to stick out through a standard case). Use a file to make a slot for the SD card.

After that, it will look like this when plugged into your MD.



Switch it on and the menu pops up. Note this is v3 of the Everdrive-MD OS on v2 hardware.



The way the Everdrive-MD works is interesting - it has 8MBytes of flash on it. The OS runs from the first 4MB. You select a game to copy from the SD card into the second 4MBytes of flash. Choose "select new game" in the menu to go to the SD card browser. There you can select a game to burn to flash. Note that SD cards must be FAT16 formatted. FAT32 formatted SD cards will show an error when you try to use them. It DOES support long file names, so that's a good thing. It does NOT sort the file names, which is a bad thing. You'll be hunting through pages of files looking for the game you want (and Murphy's Law states it will ALWAYS be on the last page you check). After it is burned to flash, you can play it from the top selection of the main menu.

It takes about 20 seconds to erase 4MBytes of flash... less for smaller games. Then the game is read from the SD card and burned. This is rather fast, taking only 24 seconds for 4MBytes. The combined erase plus burn time of just over 43 seconds is almost half the 79 seconds it takes the Neo Myth MD to load a 4MByte file off SD card into PSRAM. At the moment, the speed of the Everdrive-MD is offset by the time it takes to locate the game. I look forward to a revision of the menu that sorts the file names.

MD games ran great on my CDX - no troubles on anything I've tried. When his web site says it doesn't work with 32X games, what it means is it doesn't work with the 32X. While the menu starts, it won't properly erase the flash, nor does it burn the game to flash. Even MD games don't work with the Everdrive-MD through the 32X. You HAVE to run this directly on your MD. Also, while SMS games are supported, I was unable to get any to run on my CDX. They DID work fine on my Nomad, so this is again probably a hardware issue of the Everdrive-MD REALLY wanting to work on just a MD. Use anything else and it may or may not work.

So what are you getting for your money? A flash cart that handles nearly any MD or SMS game, but only on plain MD consoles or the Nomad. Any other Genesis model or compatible (it didn't work at all on either the RetroGen or the GenMobile) probably won't work with it. However, if what you have is a MD or Nomad and all you want it to run games from an SD card, this is probably the cheapest way to do so.

EDIT: v4 of the OS is out and fixes the issue with SMS games on the CDX. SMS games work fine now. Also, you can burn a 32X game to the flash on a MD/CDX/Nomad, and then play it on a 32X. That works fine. The issue with the 32X is being looked into.

[Sektor]

Flash is faster to write than the Myth RAM? I guess both are limited by how fast the MD can read the SD card. The Myth can do some things this can't but a Myth + Neo2 SD costs $189 and this only costs $65.

[Chilly Willy]

Flash is faster to write than the Myth RAM? I guess both are limited by how fast the MD can read the SD card. adapter. The Myth can do some things this can't but a Myth + Neo2 SD costs $189 and this only costs $65.

The flash isn't faster, the SD interface is. The Neo2-SD uses the 4 bit SDIO parallel interface to read/write the SD card, but it's completely driven by the 68000. It takes two reads, a shift, and an OR to read a byte of data from the SD card. The Everdrive-MD uses a high-speed serial transceiver in the ASIC to read/write the SD card serial. It may be serial as opposed to parallel, but it operates at a high frequency, meaning data is read much faster. The cpu just reads it a complete byte or word at a time from the serial register.

It's rather limited compared to the Neo Myth, but you can't beat the price. This is an excellent deal for people who need a "no frills" flash cart for their MD.

[Sektor]

Would a CF adapter be faster since it's parallel? I managed to fit a GBA CF flash cart (with the case removed) into my Neo Myth but of course without software support it won't do anything.

[Chilly Willy]

CF uses a "standard" ATA interface, so it has some overhead, but it probably would be faster than SD. What would be fastest is XD - that uses a NAND memory style interface. It's pretty much a bare flash rom on a card. I don't know if they made any GBA card with an XD interface.

[TmEE]

flashcart using CF would be interesting (...one could use HDD or CD/DVD drive instead of the CF card too ^^)...

[mrbigreddog]

Playing some unreleased 32x games would be the biggest part of me getting a FlashCart... So no go on this one for me!

[promking]

So how does it work? You just put Genesis ROMS on it, their bootable and play?

[Sektor]

Yes.

[retrospiel]

Also, while SMS games are supported, I was unable to get any to run on my CDX. They DID work fine on my Nomad.

I assume your Nomad was modded for SMS compatibility ? since as far as I know any stock Nomad lacks the required connectors on the cartridge port so that it could be booted in SMS mode.

Thanks a lot for your analysis btw.

[TmEE]

I did the SMS fix for his Nomad, aswell as few other things ^^

[retrospiel]

I see...

[Chilly Willy]

I did the SMS fix for his Nomad, aswell as few other things ^^

And you did an excellent job.

They make CF to 2.5" IDE adapters. I use one on my SBC to use a CF card as the boot volume.

[fuzzybam]

This is interesting. Thanks for the quick review

Been looking at the Neo Myth for myself recently... I want to pick one up for my Genny, SNES, and N64, but that's mega bucks!

[Chilly Willy]

Yeah, getting all three is a big chunk of change. If you can afford it, I highly recommend it. The problem is being able to afford it.