Hi guys, I'm new here, so apologies if such posts aren't allowed. I'm looking to sell my NES PowerPak - would here be suitable place to try to do so? eBay appears to frown on devices that are capable of facilitating piracy, despite the homebrew/dev potential.
Thanks, Bob.
Out of curiosity, what would you want for your power pak?
I'm looking for around 110USD, or your equivalent local currency, plus P&P. Comes with a 4GB Kingston CF card, and has only been used for a couple of months.
It would have to be lots less for me to want yours. For all I know there could be something wrong with it and I don't want something for 25 dollars less that doesn't work; I would rather pay the extra $25 for something that does.
If you suggest a lower price, I am in the market for one.
(It would make it a lot easier than making a repro)
Plus, the N8 is out. It's better than the powerpak, and costs what you want for yours...not trying to be rude, just pointing out the facts.
I would also go for it if price was less than what you want. Shipping should not be too much, around 5-7€ from GB to Germany i think.
And indeed, it would ease up the process of testing my hacks on actual console, than having to set up my old laptop to burn tge eprom, what takes a long time than just copying to a CF
Wow, OK, I'd never heard of the N8 before. It's fully working, so I'm open to offers
$90 USD ish? The N8 is around $140 plus shipping where I've looked.
What are its advantages over the PowerPak, besides it coming in a 60-pin format too? Better mapper compatibility and more modern storage medium?
neshiggins wrote:
What are [the N8's] advantages over the PowerPak, besides it coming in a 60-pin format too? Better mapper compatibility and more modern storage medium?
As I understand it, "using SD" and "being actively maintained at all".
I'm a little more excited by the InviteNES, but I think only because they've been better at sharing progress with this forum.
lidnariq wrote:
neshiggins wrote:
What are [the N8's] advantages over the PowerPak, besides it coming in a 60-pin format too? Better mapper compatibility and more modern storage medium?
As I understand it, "using SD" and "being actively maintained at all".
In other words, there is no advantage. It uses SD rather than CF. They both support just about the same mappers. They in general, do the same thing. I like the EverDrive products. But I've had a PowerPAK for a long time. There is no reason for me to replace it with the N8 EverDrive. The one advantage I know of doesn't apply to me, it works on clones apparently. If all you have is a clone then N8 is for you. And ofcourse if your clone has swapped duty cycles, you could actually use the N8 to run patched ROMs that swap the duty cycles in software to match the duty cycle swap in hardware.
Only advantage I can think of is auto SRAM saving rather than holding the reset. I wouldn't expect krikkz to expand the mapper support much, seems to be a few issues with games that don't work correctly even on mappers listed as working. Although, to give it the benefit of the doubt it hasn't been on the market as long as the powerpak to get the compatibility better, but seeing krikkz's pattern of usually not supporting anything I doubt you'll see any improvement. I'll be waiting for the powerpak 2.0 personally
.
Krikzz does support his products. The only thing is that he has many products now. He can't be updating/adding features to all of them all the time. I would expect Krikzz will add more mappers. But in the end the two products are comparable. And isn't there supposed to be a PowerPAK 2 coming along with new features?
zzo38 wrote:
I prefer CF over SD.
CF is becoming quite difficult to find in stores, though. The last ones I got I found in a "as is" bin for a pretty low price. I only got 2 because I didn't want to risk spending more money on garbage. Both appear to work fine though.
This is still available, is there no interest? I'm open to (non-silly) offers, just bear in mind that I live in the UK, so shipping will be a bit higher than normal.
Thanks.
Edit: I'm throwing in a 2GB Kingston CF card, plus USB CF reader
i predict the powerpak 2 will be out when heck freezes over. So you might as well invest in the n8.
snstay wrote:
i predict the powerpak 2 will be out when heck freezes over. So you might as well invest in the n8.
Bullshit, terrible advice. N8 is a better built PP. PP2 will probably kick it's ass for having bigger ROM space alone, as N8 is piss poor at only 512KB each side. I'd wait, for sure. Don't get anything until the PP2 is out. Much better over all, considering we'll have at minimum a scoreboard and the same stuff PP already has, which is better than the N8 by a long shot.
The thing about Retrozone products is you don't expect them to come out in a certain small span of time. Just one day it's there. No warning.
All the flash carts are likely to play the main mappers fine. It's obscure mappers and special features that make them better or worse. One thing that is cool that I don't know if the N8 supports, is the realtime save states. There are realtime save state mappers for PowerPAK.
MottZilla wrote:
One thing that is cool that I don't know if the N8 supports, is the realtime save states. There are realtime save state mappers for PowerPAK.
I'm not sure whether it already has this feature, but other Flashcarts from Krikzz do have realtime saves (like the Mega Everdrive), so I'm pretty sure the N8 has at least the potential to do it.
tokumaru wrote:
MottZilla wrote:
One thing that is cool that I don't know if the N8 supports, is the realtime save states. There are realtime save state mappers for PowerPAK.
I'm not sure whether it already has this feature, but other Flashcarts from Krikzz do have realtime saves (like the Mega Everdrive), so I'm pretty sure the N8 has at least the potential to do it.
Currently it looks like the feature doesn't exist. I know the Mega EverDrive supports save states, but I don't believe any of the other ones support such a feature. To be clear though, I really like the EverDrive cartridges. But I also like the PowerPAKs. I have a feeling much of the slamming of the PowerPAK's reputation is actually related to issues with bunnyboy/retrozone, grudges or other type of drama. Or maybe fanboyism toward the EverDrive line.
As a product, the PowerPAK is a fine one. But I've noticed people don't compare products as products, they judge them on things that have nothing to do with how the product works.
I will admit the menu on the powerpaks is pretty horrid and could be put together much better, like SD2SNES.
The color restrictions on the NES make it hard to make the UI look good, although there's some obvious improvements over the default PowerPak firmware.
The most important thing is paying attention to the 90% safe area, which AIUI the current firmware doesn't.
There's a bit the FPGA can do to help (like automagic nonproportional font support) but you're still kinda hamstrung by the very small source palette, the even smaller active palette, and the 256px width of the screen.
The FPGA can also shrink the attribute area from 16×16 to 8×1, which would only help with putting shorter-than-8-pixel text on the screen, because each row of text could draw from a different attribute.
Finding a good antialiased font at any smaller size might be difficult, however. (For non-antialised fonts, I suppose the Chicago typeface, or one of the 4x6 tiny fonts, maybe.)
lidnariq wrote:
The color restrictions on the NES make it hard to make the UI look good
Hard, but it can be done.
Quote:
Finding a good antialiased font at any smaller size might be difficult, however. (For non-antialised fonts, I suppose the Chicago typeface
An 8x8 version of which is inside Concentration Room and Thwaite. See "who's cuter" in
my 8x8 collection.
I don't see why it necessarily has to be fixed width given that the device has enough CHR RAM for the entire screen and the FPGA could bankswitch it like the Oeka Kids mapper. I could try making an antialiased version of
the font that I used for
the menu in the Streemerz bundle, but I'm not entirely sure it needs to be AA.
tepples wrote:
https://pineight.com/mw/images/4/44/Pak_chooser.png
Some of those are kinda hard to read. It also requires someone draw a 8×64 pixmap for every game from a fixed set of 1 of 4 palettes. (It also seems to be using 8x8 attribute zones? A problem for famiclones, anyway)
Quote:
I don't see why it necessarily has to be fixed width
It doesn't. I accidentally said "nonproportional" when I meant "proportional" ...