eightbit

\ Finally scored one of these for a reasonable (at least I think) price of $125. I have the SC-50 (which is basically an SC-55 without the MT-32 emulation...which sucks anyway) and now the MT-32 connected to my mixer. So now I can on the fly hear what a game or a MIDI music file sounds like through either device. I am quite impressed with the MT-32 for things that support it. I have already tested it with LSL6 and both Monkey Island I and II. Really awesome. I would have been king of my neighborhood had I owned this thing back when it was released. Love it!

The original VLM:

You know I just thought of something while sitting here listing to Night of the Living Dead. The sound is rather good. Maybe an idea for a future project can be a "Music Cart". Then you can make full length cartridge music albums and have similar controls to pause, rewind, ff, play, seek, volume control, etc. Just a thought as the sound quality is pretty decent. Would be cool to make some Pink Floyd cartridge albums

Never doubt yourself Joseph-San!

That one I have become kind of good with the dremel tool over the years. I cut my teeth making Everdrive shells with this thing way back when those were being sold as board only

Just one tool. My good old Wen knock off dremel When I purchased it YEARS ago it was $15, now its $19: https://www.amazon.com/WEN-2305-Rotary-Tool-Shaft/dp/B003BYRFH8 Not meaning to advertise for it, but it's really darn good. Much better than my real dremel!

On the topic of cutting the case for a microSD.... I received the Movie Cart today, thanks @rbairos! I decided to take a different approach because it is important to me to both keep the movie cart sealed in a case and be able to easily access the card. Only the top half of the case (front label half) needs to be modified. This is how I did it if anyone is interested... and I have no complaints.

That was a steal!

Another word of advice regarding changing the belt. Use the black rubber long lasting belts. Don't use those clear things you see everyone using unless you feel like doing this often Thankfully Console 5 has them back in stock: https://console5.com/store/famicom-disk-system-replacement-belt.html

That is the video I initially followed and it tripped me up, since it is not the proper way to align the head. The proper way was found from this video: Following this I got it working first shot. The other video with the "new method" yielded disk errors after following it to a tee.

I would suspect (at least I would hope at over $200) that the newer Everdrive Pro can handle FDS properly. I don't have one of those to test nor do I have the funds to pay for one...so this FDSKey is more than adequate

The belt is not hard to change...it just takes patience. It took me around 2 hours as I wasn't familiar with it. Then I found a video that cleared that up. I posted about that in another thread.

Well, I know when I owned an Everdrive for the Famicom previously it really did not do a good job of emulating the audio on FDS games. I can't say if that has changed with the Pro models as I do not own any of them at all so maybe someone with a Famicom ED Pro can chime in and let us know. All I can say is owning an actual FDS (Twin Famicom) and knowing how the games load, this is literally a "Gotek" of what that experience is. I think the Everdrive is emulating (excuse me if that is not the proper terminology) the FDS when it is loading games. All I know is that the older model I had was horrible with the sound...knowing what the FDS games should sound like. I'd expect that to not be a thing with the Pro versions especially at their cost. But if all you want to do is accurately play FDS images on a FDS system you own I can't imagine you are going to get any device at this price point that can do it. Under $50? Now isn't that nice If you already own a FDS it is for sure. My post is kind of pointing at folks who already own one like me and are looking for a cool device to use with it. BUT, that doesn't mean someone like yourself who doesn't own an FDS shouldn't seek one out. I am gauging my experience on an old Everdrive. Since you have an Everdrive can you confirm your FDS games don't sound as horrific as these did for me a few years ago by watching this video? And if not, what ED model are you using currently?

So, I recently replaced the belt in my Sharp Twin Famicom which was quite a major achievement...for me at least. Then I went out to try to get some of the games on Famicom Disk that I wanted to try. And then I realized something. Some of these games are ridiculously expensive, and that is if you can find them at all! I started researching if there were some sort of "Gotek" for the FDS and as it turns out there is. Probably nothing new to folks deep into the Famicom world, but I figured I would give it a try. I ordered these two items on Aliexpress and I thing it came up to around $45 total at the time of my purchase: First, a cable needed for the Twin Famicom in my case: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806564110548.html And then the unit itself: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805704857691.html After some time waiting they both arrived today and man am I glad I made this purchase. I did have to update the firmware for the key itself which was stupid easy. And then I was off to the races. Everything is controlled via the navigation on the stick, from navigating folders and so on to going in and adjusting settings. It is really quite advanced. Nice little FDS animations when things are loading and flipping sides on disks. The screen is MIGHTY small which is really my only complaint since I am getting old and going blind. But otherwise what a nice presentation. Here is the project page for this device BTW: https://github.com/ClusterM/fdskey And a little demo of it in action from Youtube that I found: I have no affiliation with any of these people or the Aliexpress seller (other than the fact that I can recommend him as I actually got my stuff..hah!) but I can absolutely recommend this if you have an FDS. I grabbed the English translation pack of disk images found online (Google it, I will not share the link or files of course) and it's going to be mighty cool to play through the original Zelda FDS game translation! I will mention if you have a Twin Famicom like I do and you grab one of these make sure you are on firmware v1.3. This shipped to me with v1.2 and it would disk error on loading half of the games. I grabbed the latest v1.3 which surprise surprise was updated for Twin Famicom support: https://github.com/ClusterM/fdskey/releases Popped the FDSKey.bin on the root of the microSD and powered on the console with it connected while depressing all four buttons. The upgrade went smoothly and even provided an option to delete the update file after completion which is nice. While I am still getting into the settings there are many. Stuff like turbo speed for loading games, allowing the key to start at the same directory you last left off after power cycle, some saving options like "backup + over right" which keeps a backup of the disk unaltered and saves to the altered copy of the disk, and something called "everdrive like" which saves the game in the method of how an Everdrive does it (Everdrive compatible saves format). All of the settings and their explanations are on the GitHub link. Really nice device for the price I will say.

If you make the hole REALLY big you can just shake the card out if it ever falls in!