Buy a real nintendo instead...

[tschak909]

/me just whistles and uses his emulation setup and all the roms....

[MaximRecoil]

 

Then, by the book, Everdrive is emulation, no two ways about it. Part of the system is being emulated/simulated/recreated/replaced whatever.

 

That's not in dispute. An Everdrive emulates a standard cartridge, but when people talk about emulation with regard to video games, they are normally talking about software that runs natively on modern hardware platforms, which emulates an older arcade or console hardware platform. This can lead to things like colors being off, sounds being off, input lag, audio lag, timing differences, etc.

 

The Everdrive is the same idea as e.g., a flash drive for a Commodore 64, which emulates an original floppy drive and reads floppy disk images. The software doesn't run any differently because it is still running on the original hardware. It is also the same idea as a virtual optical disc drive on a PC (such as Daemon Tools), which emulates a physical optical disc drive, and allows you to mount optical disc images.

[NE146]

Guess it's time to redefine everything we thought we knew .. So every flashcart and multicart that you (or someone else) shoves roms on to play on consoles, from the 2600 Harmony to the 5200 multicarts, to the Vectrex multicart, to the GBA/DS flashcarts, to the Everdrive nes/snes/genesis/sms console carts, means you have to say you are playing an emulator. Who knew?

 

I will say the Vectrex does a great job emulating those vector graphics when using those emulated Vectrex roms.

 

[icemanxp300]

I have skipped over majority of the comments in this thread but in my opinion an emulator is the graphical portion that shows the roms playing. So in the cases of such devices as everdrive, the everdrive technically is not an emulator because it does display anything on it's own. The actual nes system is the emulator, as such there is no emulator present.

 

I don't consider a file system within such devices as and actual emulator.

[Keatah]

Ever drive is an emulator. An emulator for a rom chip. That's the extent.

 

Does it make the whole console an emulator? Are you playing via emulation? Nope. Does it have the potential to introduce errors? Yes - but I would think it's simple enough that all the bugs and problems have been worked out and that it presents the information to the cartridge slot with exact timings.

[akator]

 

an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the host) to behave like another computer system (called the guest)

 

 

ROMs, floppys, hard drives, flash media, and optical media are all mediums for storing data. They all provide the same function but use different technology. They do not emulate each other.

 

A multi-ROM cart is not an emulator, it is fancy storage with multiple ROMs on it.

 

An Everdrive is not an emulator, it is an adapter to use modern flash storage with old hardware that used ROM storage.

 

 

[0078265317]

And I also got a flash cart and ds lite. But real hardware and carts is the best.

[Newsdee]

I'd define emulation as a Turing machine running a program of another Turing machine. It's all a matter of how fast it can do it.

 

Hardware clones are an attempt to reconstruct the original Turing machine instead. Speed is not a problem, but accuracy is especially if the original has undocumented quirks. This is not an inherent limitation but it means the original hardware is not fully understood yet.

 

Cartridges are (usuallly) not Turing machines[*] and they are much simpler to replicate exactly. Put an Everdrive inside an original shell, and make it start one specific ROM, and nobody will be able to spot a functional or "haptic" difference with a real cart. Not even with an oscilloscope.

 

One could argue an emulator can be rigged to work in the same way but you'll need a bigger CPU, consume more electricity to get the same accuracy, and it definitely won't work together with old hardware.

 

[*] Some NES and SNES mappers have a CPU inside. For some consoles carts are more like expansion cards for a PC; this ability was lost with the switch to disk / flash storage.

Edited November 16, 2016 by Newsdee

[keepdreamin]

 

 

An Everdrive is not an emulator, it is an adapter to use modern flash storage with old hardware that used ROM storage.

 

 

 

While I think this argument is pretty stupid, that's not entirely true in all cases. the SD2SNES replicates certain Super Nintendo enhancement chips via the on board FPGA. So it's not always acting as a simple adapter.

[Keatah]

One could argue an emulator can be rigged to work in the same way but you'll need a bigger CPU, consume more electricity to get the same accuracy, and it definitely won't work together with old hardware.

 

Wouldn't improved manufacturing processes enable a wholly software based machine to be more power efficient?

 

Certainly an ENIAC or COLOSSUS emulator running on a 20 watt intel chip is going to win. While that example wins, perhaps more recent systems like even a VCS or Atari 800 take more power in emulated form.. Don't know where the exact balance tips from more efficient to less efficient.

[icemanxp300]

Ever drive is an emulator. An emulator for a rom chip. That's the extent.

 

I disagree. All an everdrive is, is a cartridge that has more storage and has more than 1 mapper than original nes carts. What terms are you using to justify a cartridge being an emulator? An emulator plays games, and everdrive does not play games it contains them. The hardware reads the information from the everdrive. Just as if you are playing Mario/Duckhunt you have a navigation menu to choose what game you want to play and then the game loads. That is the exact same thing an everdrive does, it just contains more games to load.

[Newsdee]

Wouldn't improved manufacturing processes enable a wholly software based machine to be more power efficient?

Not compared to a modern FPGA, which also benefits from better manufacturing. There is also the difference that hardware clones do everything in parallel, whereas you need a very fast CPU to meet the same timings (as it needs to do things sequentially). That CPU would need more power to run.

 

Custom ASICs (which some might consider "real" hw clones) are only better that FPGA in that they can run at higher frequencies and need even less power. But getting then manufactured needs a lot of upfront cash and they aren't reconfigurable.

 

At the end of the day one can play most games fine in an emulator though. My point here is really is that between emulation and real old hardware there is now a third way which blurs the lines to a very high extent. Having an FPGA is basically having a clone factory at home.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Newsdee

[Flojomojo]

I for one would prefer to avoid a pissing match over the meaning of words on this forum of people who generally like the same kinds of things.

 

Here's a floppy disk emulator. It's a piece of hardware. It acts like a floppy disk, even though it's something else inside.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator

 

We all know Nesticle. It's a software emulator. It acts like a Nintendo Entertainment System.

 

It seems funny to talk about the Everdrive as an emulator (where does it end? Does a family station wagon "emulate" the school bus?) but I wish everyone would agree that these words mean different things in different contexts, and it's possible for more than one person to be right.

 

HUG IT OUT

[Gabriel]

So, has it been hacked yet to run other games?

[Keatah]

I won't argue that when the the word "emulation" pops up on a videogame forum that it means games played on modern hardware through a program that simulates the behavior of a console. I think we all agree on that. PC + MAME = Arcade game emulator.

 

I also won't argue the multicart stores billions of games.

 

But "emulator" can and does apply to many more things than just the above. There's In Circuit Emulation. There's replacement CPLD/FPGA for custom chips. The C64 has a glue chip that goes bad, IIRC. And a software configured FPGA is available as a replacement.

 

Everdrives and flashcarts are ROM emulators. They simulate/replace the standard masked ROM. They use a chip a hundred billion times more complex to recreate and simulate the function of proper original roms. In that way they are emulating a cartridge.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Keatah

[Keatah]

So we have:

 

1- Original hardware

2- Traditional software/PC emulation

3- FPGA circuit simulation

 

I can't wait for next method, whatever it is, to be invented.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Keatah

[Keatah]

So, has it been hacked yet to run other games?

 

I'd expect to see mods and such in the future. There's just a Flash ROM and mobile-class CPU (or SoC) in there. Some RAM..Desolder the Flash chip and read it through a programmer if the data is not accessible through the connectors already present. I would even suspect that with a certain sequence of something or other, it can be flashed without disassembly.

 

Extended game lists. Roms from other systems. It's all doable I'm sure.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Keatah

[Flojomojo]

So, has it been hacked yet to run other games?

Linux is a game to many people.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5cgbkm/linux_on_nes_classic_mini_current_progress_and/?client=safari

 

It's pretty involved ...and you could get to the same place in about one minute for half the price, and with a lot more versatility. Just use a wide-open-and-built-for-purpose Raspberry Pi that has onboard Bluetooth, wifi, Ethernet, USB, audio out, and GPIO pins.

 

I really do understand that it's being done "because they can" and I admire their ingenuity, but it's hard to get excited about this since it doesn't do much of use to anyone.

 

It reminds me of running DOOM on an Apple Watch, which was a thing last year.

http://mashable.com/2015/10/05/apple-watch-doom/#lbpQIsB4qkq7

[Keatah]

My favorite was Doom inside Doom.

http://mashable.com/2015/07/17/doom-inside-doom/#gCUK0MdUGkqm

 

..and in the future I'll bet they get Doom going on the TRS-80 Pocket Computer and Apollo AGC. Mark my words!

Edited November 17, 2016 by Keatah

[icemanxp300]

So, has it been hacked yet to run other games?

 

 

They are working on it.

 

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14533

[Keatah]

I like how the article said, "An AC adaptor is not included in the NES Classic Edition package, but as a plug-and-play device, it comes with a free HDMI cable."

 

Whoopdefuckindo! My VCS came with a free RF cable, and so did Intellivision. And like a million other consoles after that. Shit. Man. Even the dedicated Pong ones came with a cable too!

 

And what does plug'n'play have to do with anything? If it wasn't plug'n'play, would it all of a sudden not come with an HDMI cable?

 

And let me assure you one thing. Nintendo isn't giving you anything for free here. The "free" hdmi cable's cost of manufacturing, packaging, and shipping weight has been carefully factored into the $59.96 MSRP.

 

Stupid journalists don't know how to word anything anymore..

Edited November 17, 2016 by Keatah

[Skippy B. Coyote]

As far as where to get good clean ROMs, I can't say due to forum rules, but I can tell you that somewhere out there is a Paradise for a rare bird that is the second largest living bird in existence. It is native to Australia and the only surviving member of the genus Dromaius. Find it's Paradise and you will have found the treasure you seek.

I laughed harder than I should have at this.

 

Did you read it in the voice of Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple?

 

https://youtu.be/lC_hn4kzzkc

[adamchevy]

Sega does what Nintendont this Christmas at my house. I decided to take my mini money and buy a model 1 Genesis.

[Newsdee]

So we have:

 

1- Original hardware

2- Traditional software/PC emulation

3- FPGA circuit simulation

 

I can't wait for next method, whatever it is, to be invented.

I'm not sure we'd need another method other than maybe 3D printing of exact replicas of the originals.

 

I mean let's face it, for some people all that matters is that it's official Nintendo hardware. Whatever you do, you can't emulate the "experience of buying a legit Nintendo product". One could sell clone products branded Nintendork but in the end they're "emulating" the company.

 

Not trying to play on words here - what I mean is that for some laymen accuracy is besides the point. Some people will want the experience of putting carts in, but that can be replicated too. Then what's left is whether you care about stuff made in Japan in the 80s vs. an identical replica...

Edited November 17, 2016 by Newsdee

[Pixelboy]

Stupid journalists don't know how to word anything anymore..

Yeah, many of them don't understand the meaning of the word "journalism" anymore. For instance, last Friday (November 11th) on the evening news of my local TV station, a reporter covered the story of the NES Mini selling out in minutes in the morning of that same day. She interviewed store owners and people who bought the Mini. All that's fine and well, but the lady reporter completely neglected to investigate whether or not more units would arrive in stores during the holiday season. Hello??? That's probably the main reason why many people will be watching your stupid report all the way to the end! Major fail there!