MVS & AES NEOSD flash card... AES Version ANNOUNCED & AVAILABLE!!

neosd

Neosd Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2016
Posts
956
I almost pulled the trigger on the MVS version to use for my Youtube videos (wanted to show the prototype version of ASO II), but as soon as I was ready, of course Stone Age Gamer changed the page to say it was out of stock. Still might get the AES version instead. In the end I felt it wasn't worth $470 to show 20 seconds in a video that will get 300 views.

Of course it will have many other uses, but mostly only for homebrews and protos, since I have a complete MVS library already.

Edit: And it's in stock again. I may need to get it for an upcoming video.

Hello,

We have been out of stock for about 15 days. Neither Stone Age Gamer or us had stock.

We ordered a batch about 1st of June but we had not one, but 3 factory delays cause summer vacations.
The worst thing was that we didnï½´t knew when we would have the stock, until the day before, it was two weeks of : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
And even that, we came to the factory they day they finally said :come to get the batch, and we only got 50% of the order this day, not the entire batch (the rest arrived August 4th)

So, we got stock back on friday 28th July at 9:00 (as stated, only 50% of the batch we ordered) . We worked all the weekend to get every pending order shipped on monday 31th. It was a long weekend. Some orders (Correos orders) were shipped on saturday 29th, cause postal office was open on saturday, and the rest of the pending orders (UPS orders) were shipped on monday 31th, Stone Age Gamer order aswel.
It was kinda crazy cause after we processed everything pending, only 3 NEOSDS were left on monday 31th (we are on stock again now BTW)

So, as far as i know, Stone Age Gamer got their order on 3th August and they have stock again now.


We are not closing by summer, i myself have spent this weekend mounting prototypes and validating those, while the rest of the team has been coding on different areas.

I wish we would be bigger to not have such delays on factoring, but we are an small compnay with small batches, so we are the ones that suffer the delays. It dosent matters how many months in advance you submit a factory order, it always happens.

Well, not much more to say, delays ... we have to live with those. There is not much we can do at factory side than insist, but there are things we can do at our side once we get stock, such as work on weekends to get pending orders shipped in a day.




BTW : If we don´t give more info about stock or about when we are going to ship when we are out of stock is cause we don´t have it. I know it sux for the ones waiting for an order to get shipped, but its worst for us that we feel the preasure to ship. Just imagine ourselves telling our customers the same factory tells us : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow ...

Longest time we have been out without stock has been 18 days if i don´t remember bad. If i am not wrong, we ran out of stock 3 times this year, no more.
For now we should have stock for the next 1,5-2 months, but we are already working on sourcing more parts for the next batch.


Thanks
 
Last edited:

Chaotic Mind

New Challenger
Joined
Jul 9, 2017
Posts
58
Hello,

We have been out of stock for about 15 days. Neither Stone Age Gamer or us had stock.

We ordered a batch about 1st of June but we had not one, but 3 factory delays cause summer vacations.
The worst thing was that we didnï½´t knew when we would have the stock, until the day before, it was two weeks of : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
And even that, we came to the factory they day they finally said :come to get the batch, and we only got 50% of the order this day, not the entire batch (the rest arrived August 4th)

So, we got stock back on friday 28th July at 9:00 (as stated, only 50% of the batch we ordered) . We worked all the weekend to get every pending order shipped on monday 31th. It was a long weekend. Some orders (Correos orders) were shipped on saturday 29th, cause postal office was open on saturday, and the rest of the pending orders (UPS orders) were shipped on monday 31th, Stone Age Gamer order aswel.
It was kinda crazy cause after we processed everything pending, only 3 NEOSDS were left on monday 31th (we are on stock again now BTW)

So, as far as i know, Stone Age Gamer got their order on 3th August and they have stock again now.


We are not closing by summer, i myself have spent this weekend mounting prototypes and validating those, while the rest of the team has been coding on different areas.

I wish we would be bigger to not have such delays on factoring, but we are an small compnay with small batches, so we are the ones that suffer the delays. It dosent matters how many months in advance you submit a factory order, it always happens.

Well, not much more to say, delays ... we have to live with those. There is not much we can do at factory side than insist, but there are things we can do at our side once we get stock, such as work on weekends to get pending orders shipped in a day.




BTW : If we don´t give more info about stock or about when we are going to ship when we are out of stock is cause we don´t have it. I know it sux for the ones waiting for an order to get shipped, but its worst for us that we feel the preasure to ship. Just imagine ourselves telling our customers the same factory tells us : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow ...

Longest time we have been out without stock has been 18 days if i don´t remember bad. If i am not wrong, we ran out of stock 3 times this year, no more.
For now we should have stock for the next 1,5-2 months, but we are already working on sourcing more parts for the next batch.


Thanks

It's all cool. When I bought mine from Stone Age I knew it would be some time before the back-orders caught up.
 

gunaska

n00b
Joined
Apr 4, 2017
Posts
14
Hello,

We have been out of stock for about 15 days. Neither Stone Age Gamer or us had stock.

We ordered a batch about 1st of June but we had not one, but 3 factory delays cause summer vacations.
The worst thing was that we didnï½´t knew when we would have the stock, until the day before, it was two weeks of : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
And even that, we came to the factory they day they finally said :come to get the batch, and we only got 50% of the order this day, not the entire batch (the rest arrived August 4th)

So, we got stock back on friday 28th July at 9:00 (as stated, only 50% of the batch we ordered) . We worked all the weekend to get every pending order shipped on monday 31th. It was a long weekend. Some orders (Correos orders) were shipped on saturday 29th, cause postal office was open on saturday, and the rest of the pending orders (UPS orders) were shipped on monday 31th, Stone Age Gamer order aswel.
It was kinda crazy cause after we processed everything pending, only 3 NEOSDS were left on monday 31th (we are on stock again now BTW)

So, as far as i know, Stone Age Gamer got their order on 3th August and they have stock again now.


We are not closing by summer, i myself have spent this weekend mounting prototypes and validating those, while the rest of the team has been coding on different areas.

I wish we would be bigger to not have such delays on factoring, but we are an small compnay with small batches, so we are the ones that suffer the delays. It dosent matters how many months in advance you submit a factory order, it always happens.

Well, not much more to say, delays ... we have to live with those. There is not much we can do at factory side than insist, but there are things we can do at our side once we get stock, such as work on weekends to get pending orders shipped in a day.




BTW : If we don´t give more info about stock or about when we are going to ship when we are out of stock is cause we don´t have it. I know it sux for the ones waiting for an order to get shipped, but its worst for us that we feel the preasure to ship. Just imagine ourselves telling our customers the same factory tells us : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow ...

Longest time we have been out without stock has been 18 days if i don´t remember bad. If i am not wrong, we ran out of stock 3 times this year, no more.
For now we should have stock for the next 1,5-2 months, but we are already working on sourcing more parts for the next batch.


Thanks


IS it time to resent my order?????


@neosd
 

Neo Alec

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2000
Posts
11,923
Hello,

We have been out of stock for about 15 days. Neither Stone Age Gamer or us had stock.

We ordered a batch about 1st of June but we had not one, but 3 factory delays cause summer vacations.
The worst thing was that we didn?エt knew when we would have the stock, until the day before, it was two weeks of : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
And even that, we came to the factory they day they finally said :come to get the batch, and we only got 50% of the order this day, not the entire batch (the rest arrived August 4th)

So, we got stock back on friday 28th July at 9:00 (as stated, only 50% of the batch we ordered) . We worked all the weekend to get every pending order shipped on monday 31th. It was a long weekend. Some orders (Correos orders) were shipped on saturday 29th, cause postal office was open on saturday, and the rest of the pending orders (UPS orders) were shipped on monday 31th, Stone Age Gamer order aswel.
It was kinda crazy cause after we processed everything pending, only 3 NEOSDS were left on monday 31th (we are on stock again now BTW)

So, as far as i know, Stone Age Gamer got their order on 3th August and they have stock again now.


We are not closing by summer, i myself have spent this weekend mounting prototypes and validating those, while the rest of the team has been coding on different areas.

I wish we would be bigger to not have such delays on factoring, but we are an small compnay with small batches, so we are the ones that suffer the delays. It dosent matters how many months in advance you submit a factory order, it always happens.

Well, not much more to say, delays ... we have to live with those. There is not much we can do at factory side than insist, but there are things we can do at our side once we get stock, such as work on weekends to get pending orders shipped in a day.




BTW : If we donエt give more info about stock or about when we are going to ship when we are out of stock is cause we donエt have it. I know it sux for the ones waiting for an order to get shipped, but its worst for us that we feel the preasure to ship. Just imagine ourselves telling our customers the same factory tells us : tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow ...

Longest time we have been out without stock has been 18 days if i donエt remember bad. If i am not wrong, we ran out of stock 3 times this year, no more.
For now we should have stock for the next 1,5-2 months, but we are already working on sourcing more parts for the next batch.


Thanks
You need no excuses at all, my friend. I wasn't expecting any reply at all. The lack of stock is totally understandable. It has been difficult to decide when to actually buy one of these, since I already have a full catalog of carts. It's not really a matter of if I buy one, just when.
 

Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
Staff member
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2002
Posts
4,662
Im not sure thats fair if he ordered over 6 months ago and still got nothing, not even a tracking number. On the other side if hes simply trolling its different story, from what neosd has said about the matter an order does look to have been placed. No idea whats going on here but something strange that does not look good.
 

xsq

Thou Shalt Not, Question Rot.,
Joined
Jan 17, 2013
Posts
7,414
you're right, wrong thread to be stirring up trouble.
 

gunaska

n00b
Joined
Apr 4, 2017
Posts
14
you're right, wrong thread to be stirring up trouble.



I am so sorry to make you feel uncomfortable.I am aware that this is not the right place to claim my request.

but i have no other way to connect them...my registered email address in neosd store has been blocked since months ago(it seems because i used an alternate email addr once.but they never move me out of the blocking list).I tried to use other email addr wrote to them,but they were all been ignored.I added notes at neosd store but no reply..

i claimed for resent or refunding but they only let me wait. the deadline date of they promised to solve my problem in this thread has been passed a lot of days.

I feel very anxious to see many people got their carts in this thread.I have wait for 8 months but i got nothing...it's all for the love of neogeo and the trust to the enthusiasts who loves it too.

pls,try to understand me...:crying:
 

jsiucho

Sakura's Bank Manager
15 Year Member
Joined
Apr 27, 2005
Posts
741
Ordered an AES one last week,, hopefully it makes it to Peru ok..
 

Gummy Bear

Windjammers Wonder
Joined
Apr 10, 2004
Posts
1,387
@ Neosd / neodev

Re: the shell and sticker.
The sticker appears to have a clear plastic layer on top.
Is this just a protective thing that can be peeled off or is it supposed to stay there?

Also:
With the save mode set to continuous, does that mean that if I leave a game running attract mode, the score data is saved every time the game cycles or only when the data changes?
Is it possible to switch the machine off at the 'wrong' time with saving set to continuous?

Thanks
 

dl1955

n00b
Joined
May 26, 2015
Posts
10
I had ordered mines from StoneAge Gamer. Excellent cart! Sorry to hear about delays. May order another one in a month... :)
 

Gamemaster

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2000
Posts
421
Out of interest, the review says NEOSD is using flash memory to hold the data, so you need to flash the roms to the flash memory every time you want to play an other game.
Flash memory has limited write cycles, so if you change the game very often it wears out and get defective later. Whats happens then, can i replace the flash memory or do i have to buy a new NEOSD ?

From other flashcards or backupstations (like the CD64plus for N64) i know they using normal memory that wont hold the data after you turn off power but its way faster and has no wear out.
The CD64plus fo exsample uses 32MB EDO Ram, loads data from CD or slow data connection from PC.


Isnt that a better option to load everything into RAM because the data is already on SD card ?

Then if you need Flash memory to hold a game even after power off, would it not be better to have booth options ? Flash and RAM also ?
For exsample this 3 in 1 EZ-flash for Nintendo DS does this. It has booth options.
 

massimiliano

ネオジオ,
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2004
Posts
3,224
Flash memory has limited write cycles, so if you change the game very often it wears out and get defective later.

well, Flash has quite a *substantial* amount of writing/erasing actions before failing, we are talking in the order of many writings each day for like 30+ years (NeoSD to comment, I guess the flash data-sheet has numbers in such order)...frankly I doubt anything, ram chips included, which btw are not "immortal" by any means, will survive that long anyway as there are other components that will likely fail before.

Given a realistic usage of the device, it is likely the card will outlive its owner.

Edit:
and to answer your question, having a game flashed once and from there on without loading times, for how fast ram could have been, means having a cart behaving *identically* to the original, as meant by SNK, no strange "booting times" etc..
 
Last edited:

TMOSteel

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2000
Posts
624
Got my order from Stone Age Gamer, enjoying it very much. Thanks to NeoSD, Rot, and everyone else who posted about their purchases and how great this thing performs.

A couple of things to note:

I sent an email to SGA suggesting they offer to "flip" the boards for customers like me with an OMEGA (I don't know if they come assembled to SGA or if SGA puts them together).

The reason being is with everything loose its easy peasy lemon squeezy I'm sure to assemble everything just the right way - with the SGA package you've got a cart sticker and a serial sticker (on the left side covering the other SD cutout) to contend with.

Not so easy, especially when you're old like me, have carpel tunnel, and shitty eyesight (even with glasses). Doable, but I shat myself the whole time fearing I would f'up the damn label.

The other problem - I have an older OMEGA, the one with the tight hole (yeah, I said it). The only cart that was problematic was the 161-in-1 but it went in when I forced it (yeah, I went there).

Now comes the NeoSD - holy crap, I thought I was going to crack something big time.

Getting the NeoSD case inserted with my older OMEGA is problematic - this is definitely not something to be inserting and then pulling out on any regular basis. Once its in, its good, but I had to keep the serial sticker off the side of the cart or else it just would have been torn to shreds (I saved it on some wax paper and put it inside the manual).

So it looks like I'll have to get in touch with Quan and see if I can order a new wider top assembly from him.

Other than that I just have to pick up a nice SD card after I peruse the thread about them and decide which one is best (I'm using a 32 GB PNY card I borrowed from my kid).
 
Last edited:

TMOSteel

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2000
Posts
624
Flash memory has limited write cycles, so if you change the game very often it wears out and get defective later.

Well, I've got a 1GB Lexar Jump Drive Sport - its almost 20 years old, and its been read, written to and wiped more times than I can count, on almost a daily basis (I used to be a desktop tech).

Still works as good as the day I bought it.

I wouldn't sweat the flash memory life cycle too much, I'm sure these drives and memory will still be viable long after we are.
 

neosd

Neosd Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2016
Posts
956
@ Neosd / neodev

Re: the shell and sticker.
The sticker appears to have a clear plastic layer on top.
Is this just a protective thing that can be peeled off or is it supposed to stay there?

Its supossed to stay there


Also:
With the save mode set to continuous, does that mean that if I leave a game running attract mode, the score data is saved every time the game cycles or only when the data changes?
Is it possible to switch the machine off at the 'wrong' time with saving set to continuous?

Thanks

I will let neodev answer you that cause i wont make mistakes, but we had this question before and neodev told me he thought about that situation and saves will not get damaged.



Got my order from Stone Age Gamer, enjoying it very much. Thanks to NeoSD, Rot, and everyone else who posted about their purchases and how great this thing performs.

A couple of things to note:

I sent an email to SGA suggesting they offer to "flip" the boards for customers like me with and OMEGA (I don't know if they come assembled to SGA or if SGA puts them together).

The reason being is with everything loose its easy peasy lemon squeezy I'm sure to assemble everything just the right way - with the SGA package you've got a cart sticker and a serial sticker (on the left side covering the other SD cutout) to contend with.

Not so easy, especially when you're old like me, have carpel tunnel, and shitty eyesight (even with glasses). Doable, but I shat myself the whole time fearing I would f'up the damn label.

The other problem - I have an older OMEGA, the one with the tight hole (yeah, I said it). The only cart that was problematic was the 161-in-1 but it went in when I forced it (yeah, I went there).

Now comes the NeoSD - holy crap, I thought I was going to crack something big time.

Getting the NeoSD case inserted with my older OMEGA is problematic - this is definitely not something to be inserting and then pulling out on any regular basis. Once its in, its good, but I had to keep the serial sticker off the side of the cart or else it just would have been torn to shreds (I saved it on some wax paper and put it inside the manual).

So it looks like I'll have to get in touch with Quan and see if I can order a new wider top assembly from him.

Other than that I just have to pick up a nice SD card after I peruse the thread about them and decide which one is best (I'm using a 32 GB PNY card I borrowed from my kid).

Hello,

Yes, Ryan from Stone Age Gamer was asking us about Omega. We just pasted him the links from here where people were telling that OMEGA was working fine with NEOSD.

I myself never saw an Omega in front, and our plan since day one has been not supporting 3rd party hardware such as converters and so. Just cause at the end of the day any manufacture may do changes and its a nightmare to support that.

About flipping boards : we discussed this here and i think there wasn´t a clear conclusion, maybe my English is not good enought to explain it but i will try to explain it again


Here in Spain, horizontal MVS boards are more comon, i worked in the arcade industry for some years and i know the bigger operators in Spain. While developing NEOSD i called all my contacts trying to find 4 and 6 slots vertical boards, i ended collecting about 50 MVS boards but just one 4 slots and 0 6slots boards. Asking the tech manager of one of those big companys (more than 5k employees company) that has been in the arcade industry since 80s, he told me that he never saw a 6 slots board and he can only remember a few 4 slots being sent there. Same applies to 1 slot vertical boards, that were manufactured at the end of Neo Geo life cycle.

So this put us on this situation :
We didn´t wanted to make two shells, one for MVS and another one for AES, we payed a pile of money for the AES shell and we didn´t wanted to put more money there, so i had the idea to make an universal shell, for AES and MVS. If we would put the boards in the opossite way, the sticker would look down on 1-slot horizontal boards. We really thought vertical boards were not popular and also that MVS boards are intended to be inside a cab, this is not an AES where you see the machine near your tv.
We never thought about OMEGA users, i myself knew the OMEGA existed, but never thought about that, to be honest.
So OMEGA users bought NEOSDs and we realized that those were more popular than we thought and that NEOSD fits ok there (as users have reported here), they told us that flipping boards were possible and never knew anything more about omegas until Ryan messaged us this week.

I would say that we only got about 3 or 4 emails from users that inserted the cartridge in the opossite way, so maybe the effort of letting users requesting us how to mount the boards may be bigger than the actual users needing it. I mean : if we take custom orders about how to place the boards, we are adding an extra process and adding an extra human mistake that may happening while doing that (send a board flipped in the wrong way to a customer that either asked for it or not asked for it).
I know Stone Age Gamer is going to take such requests (they told us that atleast), but we don´t really have plans for that here cause the previous reason.

BTW they just get the NEOSDS from us mounted, without stickers.


Flash memory has limited write cycles, so if you change the game very often it wears out and get defective later

Neodev did the maths and answered this question here, some pages ago.

I just answer by memory but the maths (acording to the manufacturer provided datasheet) said that you would have to flash the entire memory 20 times a day during 20 years to get where the manufacturer says the limit is.

Flash vs RAM was discussed in the NEOSD thread aswel, every memory kind has its advantages and disvantages. Remember, kof2k3 is 96mb game and this takes time to read/write, to flash and to ram. If you write it into RAM, you power the Neo Geo off you loose it, do that 8 times and you are loosing time compared to flash where you flash it once and you power on/off without loose the game.
 
Last edited:

TMOSteel

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2000
Posts
624
Hello,

Yes, Ryan from Stone Age Gamer was asking us about Omega. We just pasted him the links from here where people were telling that OMEGA was working fine with NEOSD.

I myself never saw an Omega in front, and our plan since day one has been not supporting 3rd party hardware such as converters and so. Just cause at the end of the day any manufacture may do changes and its a nightmare to support that.

About flipping boards : we discussed this here and i think there wasnエt a clear conclusion, maybe my English is not good enought to explain it but i will try to explain it again


Here in Spain, horizontal MVS boards are more comon, i worked in the arcade industry for some years and i know the bigger operators in Spain. While developing NEOSD i called all my contacts trying to find 4 and 6 slots vertical boards, i ended collecting about 50 MVS boards but just one 4 slots and 0 6slots boards. Asking the tech manager of one of those big companys (more than 5k employees company) that has been in the arcade industry since 80s, he told me that he never saw a 6 slots board and he can only remember a few 4 slots being sent there. Same applies to 1 slot vertical boards, that were manufactured at the end of Neo Geo life cycle.

So this put us on this situation :
We didnエt wanted to make two shells, one for MVS and another one for AES, we payed a pile of money for the AES shell and we didnエt wanted to put more money there, so i had the idea to make an universal shell, for AES and MVS. If we would put the boards in the opossite way, the sticker would look down on 1-slot horizontal boards. We really thought vertical boards were not popular and also that MVS boards are intended to be inside a cab, this is not an AES where you see the machine near your tv.
We never thought about OMEGA users, i myself knew the OMEGA existed, but never thought about that, to be honest.
So OMEGA users bought NEOSDs and we realized that those were more popular than we thought and that NEOSD fits ok there (as users have reported here), they told us that flipping boards were possible and never knew anything more about omegas until Ryan messaged us this week.

I would say that we only got about 3 or 4 emails from users that inserted the cartridge in the opossite way, so maybe the effort of letting users requesting us how to mount the boards may be bigger than the actual users needing it. I mean : if we take custom orders about how to place the boards, we are adding an extra process and adding an extra human mistake that may happening while doing that (send a board flipped in the wrong way to a customer that either asked for it or not asked for it).
I know Stone Age Gamer is going to take such requests (they told us that atleast), but we donエt really have plans for that here cause the previous reason.

BTW they just get the NEOSDS from us mounted, without stickers.

Gotcha, thanks for the info, so with that in mind it makes sense then if SGA want's to provide the "flip" service thats on them.

They seem like they would be pretty accommodating so I don't see why they wouldn't - and its going to be a lot easier on their end since no stickers are applied.

I think the modular design of your cart shell was pretty well thought out and very well made, so I have no issues with it on my end.

The fact that you can flip the boards is just a bonus.

Really nice job man, kudos to you and your team. Kudos.
 

neodev

Neosd Tech
Joined
Nov 28, 2016
Posts
256
Well, I've got a 1GB Lexar Jump Drive Sport - its almost 20 years old, and its been read, written to and wiped more times than I can count, on almost a daily basis (I used to be a desktop tech).

Still works as good as the day I bought it.

I wouldn't sweat the flash memory life cycle too much, I'm sure these drives and memory will still be viable long after we are.

The larger.flashes have a lifespan of 100,000 erase cycles, so assuming you flash 10 games a day, they should last around 30 years.
 

Neo Alec

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2000
Posts
11,923
The MVS shell not fitting in the system really concerns me. I may have to change to the AES version if the MVS one doesn't fit in my system. The cart slot was already measured and fits real and unofficial carts perfectly.
 

gameofyou

Mr. Big's Thug
15 Year Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2007
Posts
209
I have put some time into my AES version of the NEOSD, and I am very impressed so far. I have a background in electrical engineering, so I can imagine how much hard work went into this product. Thank you!
 

kuze

Akari's Big Brother
10 Year Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2013
Posts
2,549
The MVS shell not fitting in the system really concerns me. I may have to change to the AES version if the MVS one doesn't fit in my system. The cart slot was already measured and fits real and unofficial carts perfectly.

Worst case scenario you can just swap out the boards to a real or unofficial case right?
 
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