I recently bought an AVS and it works well with everything (besides obvious chinese games) but I thought it was suppose to play FDS games too? I am playing off the AVS, all FDS roms give me a grey screen.

my FDS ram adapter plus FDStick works fine. as does my FDS itself..

I'm sure they do. Seems to be a problem with the Everdrive itself from the quick search I've done. But the thread I found was from 2015 and I don't think it ever got fixed, seeing as I am on the latest firmware. Just wanted to know if others were having issues. It's not that bad though, there aren't that many exclusives on the Disk system I want or that aren't already on NES. Just missing some save features and a bit of sound is all.

I know very little about the AVS itself, but the first question I would ask is, are you sure the ROM files are setup correctly on your Everdrive? Have you used your ED to play FDS games on a regular NES before?

I don't own an NES anymore. I got returned them because I was having issues and I just stuck with the AVS. I got my Everdrive after I got my AVS. I think the FDS are set up correctly. Is there something I am suppose to do different? The same ROM files work on my emulator. I think I was able to get Mario 2 run once on my AVS with the Everdrive but I don't remember if I did or not because I am making a Rom Hack of Mario 1 (just updating the graphics) so the two games are blending together in my mind because I used a lot of assets from Mario 2.

I can't think of anything different other than making sure the file name ends in .fds and of course making sure it's a good ROM file.  

But testing it on an NES would at the very least help you confirm if the problem is ED related or AVS related.  

 

Yeah it ends in .fds and the ROM file is good, at least on an emulator. I've read issues of other people having the same problem on an actual NES.

I have no issues loading FDS games from my Everdrive N8 on the AVS. I just went and tested with metroid, akumajo dracula and zelda. They all start up just fine. Your issue is with the ROM files you are trying to use. I also have an FDS stick and they also all work just fine from the FDS stick via RAM adapter.

I recommend searching out the Smokemonster Everdrive packs on epforums.org. I think you'll find all the issues you've been having fixed once you get a good romset. The smokemonster roms have been almost all playtested and have been fixed whenever issues get reported. They are maintained regularly.

Just download, unpack to your sdcard and you're good to go.
 

Nah man, I just downloaded the NES Smokemonster Everdrive pack right now. Took me an hour the get it on my card and none of the FDS games work on it either.

Thanks for the recommendation though, everything is nicely organized now.

You may have more of an issue with the SD card, then. It's only like 1.4GB so it shouldn't have taken anywhere close to an hour. You might have an old, dying, or slow card.

Did you format it before loading the everdrive pack on to it? Do you have a different SD card you could test with?

Make sure you are using an up to date version of the OS -- I have used both v13 and v14.

Are you sure the headers are correct for the FDS ROMs you're trying to load? Just because they work in an emulator doesn't mean they'll work in an everdrive. The everdrive can be more picky.

It took me an hour to download, the download was from Mega Upload. It wasn't a regular download, it was going a lot slower, I think it might have been using seeds. Also yeah I formated it. I am on version 13. 
As for the roms they should be good, since I got them from the Everdrive pack... going to see if I can find another SD card.

Sorry for the double post but is it better to get a smaller SD card? Like 2G? Would it be faster to read and write then say 8GB?

I have a Class 10 full-sized SD card. It's 16GB. The volume shouldn't matter as long as it gets formatted correctly.
 

It can support 2G thought right? I don't see much sense in using anything bigger for NES games.

As long as it is correctly formatted it should be functional. The trouble is I don't know that there are too many new stock 2GB cards easily purchased. Most will be 4GB or larger in any stores. And 2GB cards generally will have VERY slow read/write rates compared to newer cards.

You would be better off looking for a class 10 card. The cost differences are negligible (costing between $6-$9 shipped).

Here is one from a quick search on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/SDSDU-008G...

As rule of thumb, don't try to cheap out. Buy good quality stuff and you'll have far fewer issues.
 

Does it matter what format it's formated in?

Needs to be formatted FAT32

Thanks for the help.

Keep us in the loop, I too have trouble with FDS games from the Smokemonster pack.

It didn't work with the new SD card either. It was a 32 GB Ultra Plus formatted in FAT32 using roms from the Smokemaster pack. I get the same gray screen. I noticed the regular games load faster though.

From what I've seen, the Smokemaster pack FDS ROMs have bad headers. That's what the Powerpak says anyway. I'm guessing that the Everdrive handles them the same way, by looking for the first 16 bytes of the ROM as an identifier.

When I hit the info for the rom, all it says is "FDS Image". In the Everdrive menu I mean.

Don't think its your ROM packs or the Everdrive. It could very well be the AVS itself. What OS are you running? Seems to have a problem with the beta firmware.

I'm running 1.20b6 and FDS roms and everything else are running fine through my Everdrive OS v14.

I haven't edited any headers. Most of those were already curated and edited by smokemonster and tested for compatibility (with the exception of the Side B Error roms that are seperated in a different folder).