D-Soft Neo Geo Flash Cartridge

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Morden

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I know D-Soft related topics can provoke some strong feelings in here, but heck, it's still a piece of Neo Geo hardware. Anyhow, today I found this in my YouTube subscriptions stream:


I have to say, it's hard not to be impressed by the loading times, but there's are some interface and software design decisions here which absolutely blow my mind, and not in a good way.

Since the cartridge uses volatile memory, any games flashed into the three available slots get wiped on power down. That's OK. Flashing them back takes no time at all. It took 20-something seconds to flash KoF 2003.

The cartridge remembers which games were assigned to which slot and re-flashes them back on power up! Which means getting to the first screen after boot up takes whatever amount of time is needed to populate three slots with games.

Once that is done, you get to the game selection screen. Here you can choose from one of three games that were just flashed and play them directly. This screen is timed. It can go to the main menu after 1 to 9 seconds. In reality, though, you have to wait at least ~12 seconds because you have to wait for the background transition, for the logo to scroll down, and for the Metal Slug hostage to skip on and off the screen.

I really hope all of this can be disabled and the cartridge will be able to boot to the menu directly. Like I said, with loading this fast, who needs the pre-flash on boot up? The biggest game will load in ~21 seconds!

I'm really happy with my NeoSD, but one thing I can appreciate in this cartridge is the MicroSD slot placement. It just makes sense.

Anyway, according to people behind the product, the menu is far from final, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one reacting to these weird procedures on boot up.

I'm curious about the case they'll be using and the AES version of the cartridge.
 

Morden

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Well, shit. I re-posted most of my comment in the proper thread, so feel free to nuke this one. Cheers.
 

fille1976

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goh,all this shit about flashing times on neosd is ridicilous,its a nice flashcard thats working perfekt and get updates to improve it.
and the menu i dont give a shit about,see sd2snes,that also a simple menu,and you dont need more tbh.
i dont care i have to wait 2 or 3 minutes,if this cards didn't exist,you have to pay the full price for the expensive games.
so i take the flashing time with it,and i gona buy an aes version next month.
i know they have perfekt support and with darksoft i dont know??
i dont have products from him,but still wish the product best luck.
 

GadgetUK

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It looks nice, but they are competing in different ways imho. I might get one at some point (depending on cost) to see what they are like, but the one thing I know already is the Neo SD is the cart for collectors due to the fact that you can load unmodified ROMS on the Neo SD. The thing they keep going on about - loading times, they haven't exactly entirely 'won' have they... What I mean is, the Neo SD once programmed boots the game instantly and behaves exactly like the original cart - no hacks, no menu popping up for x number of seconds etc. So for purists the Neo SD is the only real solution. I do like the multiple slot thing and faster programming times, but not keen on some of the menu decisions, but it's still early days I guess.

Fastest at loading isn't everything! I used to have a Cyrix processor many years back, that was faster than Intel chips of the same clock speed at the time, didn't half crash a lot though lol. Not trying to dis it, it might end up the popular solution for some casual gamers if the price is cheaper than the Neo SD, but the Neo SD is very highly polished in both functionality and compatibility. And at the end of the day, the Neo SD team continue to bring updates out, and they could always reduce price of the Neo SD if the Darksoft cart starts to take any of their market share. Thinking about it from a collector perspective, most collectors will end up with 1 of each anyway probably.
 

Yodd

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I agree completely.

I would think the only way Darksoft's device will really compete is if A. It's far cheaper or B. It has far faster load times.

I wouldn't mind having one in to review, however by the time they actually ship, Neosd will have had a solid year or more lead on them.


So unless it's like $199 or borderline instant load times, I don't see it really making much an impact.
 

basic

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I also think that it can't be understated the amount of effort that has gone into refining the NeoSD upon it's initial release. Between the efforts of the community identifying issues and the NeoSD team steadily fixing those issues...the DarkSoft effort is even further behind than the year of market presence for the NeoSD.
 
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RAZO

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I agree completely.

I would think the only way Darksoft's device will really compete is if A. It's far cheaper or B. It has far faster load times.

I wouldn't mind having one in to review, however by the time they actually ship, Neosd will have had a solid year or more lead on them.


So unless it's like $199 or borderline instant load times, I don't see it really making much an impact.

I disagree about the part of it not making much of an impact. This guy has a pretty big following and since he did a pretty good job with his other multicarts, what makes you think this one won't sell? There alot of people here who love his CPS2, STV, CPS3 multi boards. They may not come out and say that they are going to buy one, but I guarantee you that they will, even if it's priced higher than the NEOSD. Not sucking DS's dick, just saying.
 
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Yodd

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I suppose that's possible.

My experience with his cps2 multi has soured me on his products.
 

RAZO

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I suppose that's possible.

My experience with his cps2 multi has soured me on his products.

It has some issues, sure, and is a bit fragile but what other options do we have?
 

Syn

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My stv multi is used regularly and has made me wait to see.

I sold my cps2 partially due to it's fragility.

This is another complete cart replacement setup which DS had great success in doing.

One thing a lot of people aren't mentioning is Mitsu did show the neosd loading a game faster to start things off. This was just comparing things right now. Any updates to either will be compared again I'd assume. They're in a no win situation with some of you anyways. Mitsu has already lined up at least two reviewers.
 
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aha2940

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I sold my cps2 partially due to it's fragility.

Strange, I keep rotating the boards I use on my supergun, multiCPS2 being one of them, always connecting/disconnecting it from the SG, and getting in and out of storage, it has never failed me. What kind if fragility did you see with yours?
 

Syn

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My setup was originally side mounted, not with the Multi. It had to be horizontal. Any updates were done by Mitsu too so it was properly done. I couldn't attach the cover as even properly put on (that's how I shipped it to Mitsu), it knocked something.
 

RAZO

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I will agree with the fragility as well but not once everything is connected and works. First board I ordered came with two broken pins but sent back to mitsu and he fixed it for free. 2nd order came with some pins that were bent but managed to bend them back into place. Both Multis I have never let me down and I've had them for awhile but I don't think I'll ever remove the multi daughter board from the b board. I'm afraid something might break if I do.
 

Syn

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I don't want to sound like I'm trashing it, I just had to relate my experience with it.

I do love my stv multi and the peeks we've had at the Neo. I'm going to buy one of the Neo multis in a year or so after both have been thoroughly field tested. I felt I jumped the gun on the cps2, I don't love the library the way I do the Neo and stv (Saturn).
 

RAZO

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I don't want to sound like I'm trashing it, I just had to relate my experience with it.

I do love my stv multi and the peeks we've had at the Neo. I'm going to buy one of the Neo multis in a year or so after both have been thoroughly field tested. I felt I jumped the gun on the cps2, I don't love the library the way I do the Neo and stv (Saturn).

I don't think you were trashing it, just being honest. I'm pretty sure some others might have had similar issues.
 

daithidownunder

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Based on why I have seen so far I think it boils down to this. If you switch games often and want fast loading times then it's got to be the DarkSoft cart. If you're not switching between games all that often and unmodified roms are a must then the NeoSD is your go-to. Plus it is already on the market and confirmed to work very well and with good support. Even Misui mentioned that the NeoSD worked very well.
There's definitely a place for both offerings, and I'll probably go for one of each to be honest. It's a great time to be involved in the Neo scene.

Sent from my HTC 2PST1 using Tapatalk
 
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aha2940

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If you switch games often and want fast loading times then it's got to be the DarkSoft cart. If you're not switching between games all that often and unmodified roms are a must then the NeoSD is your go-to.

I'd say this is the difference too. That's why we have Mercedes Benz and BMW, they are both great, just focused on different things, IMO.
 
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