Recently my NES powerpak had it's plastic case broken. So I recommand everyone, do *NOT* use any plastic cases from RetroUSB, they suck (thanks China!).
Also, my SNES PowerPak has stopped to function entierely. It just provides a black screen and doesn't boot, I do not know what is going on. Although I did reflash the BIOS using Manu Löve 's menu, so maybe this is part of the issue. Or maybe it's the CIC, I do not know.
All that to say that I am very disappointed at how short living the RetroUSB's products are.
Have you tried
cleaning the SNES PowerPak's connector with rubbing alcohol (isopropanol solution) on a cotton swab?
Well, that sucks.
OTOH, I bought my NES Powerpak in 2007 (I think), and my SNES Powerpak in 2009. Both are still intact and functioning properly. And I've taken them with me on several trips, as well as bringing them to the office a couple of times. So I wouldn't say there's a quality problem in general. I haven't flashed any alternative menus though.
mic_ wrote:
Well, that sucks.
OTOH, I bought my NES Powerpak in 2007 (I think), and my SNES Powerpak in 2009. Both are still intact and functioning properly. And I've taken them with me on several trips, as well as bringing them to the office a couple of times. So I wouldn't say there's a quality problem in general. I haven't flashed any alternative menus though.
Ditto to this except I did flash Ramsis' menus without a problem on the SNES PowerPak.
I am disappointed by the relative lack of support for both PowerPaks over the years. There still bugs with games that are quite fixable.
I also have a PowerPak from the very first batch that was produced in 2007 or so and it's functioning flawlessly. No problems with SNES PowerPak either. I have flashed some version of Ramsis' menu, but not the latest one (just haven't gotten around to it).
My NES and SNES PowerPAK cartridges are still functioning fine. I do have Ramsis' updated menu installed though like thefox said I also don't have the very latest version installed.
I really haven't had much trouble with either cart. The one problem I can remember is one day I was playing Kid Icarus and made it reasonably far into the game. Suddenly for no apparent reason the game resets and the console just keeps resetting. The lockout chip somehow became unsatisfied and ruined my game. I was pretty irritated by it. But other than that episode it's been pretty solid.
MottZilla wrote:
The lockout chip somehow became unsatisfied and ruined my game.
I doubt it had anything to do with the chip itself. A bad contact could be enough to corrupt a single bit in the CIC transmission, which in turn would cause the console's CIC to enter the forced reset cycle state.
tepples wrote:
Have you tried
cleaning the SNES PowerPak's connector with rubbing alcohol (isopropanol solution) on a cotton swab?
Thanks, I just tried, alas, no result.
It also do not seem to be the lockout chip because the Power Pak still fails when I use it with a lockout adapter (using another cart for the lockout chip lines), and I know it was working with and without the adapter before, because some games wanted to be either with or without the adapter whenever they enforce a NTSC or PAL PPU (the adapter makes the game believes it's an NTSC PPU when reading the PPU registers by some hardware magic). For instance to play Live a Live, one of my favourite SNES games ever, I had to use the adapter.
At least the NES powerpak will be fine as soon as I'll adapt it in another plastic case it just will not "look good".
are you sure its not a problem with the compact flash card you are using? When I first received the nes powerpak back in 2010 i had problems with it right off the bat. only my issues were because of the card type i had used. at first i thought it would be the cart connector to the nes but after poking around, cleaning it and trying carts that i have i found it to not be the issue. Lexar compact flash cards are the worst cards to use even when properly formatted they still produce errors with loading a game. I've been very satisfied with it after i sorted out all those little things.
Same applies to the SNES powerpak. i had the exact same issue when i used the cart
Quote:
are you sure its not a problem with the compact flash card you are using?
Yes, I am sure. It doesn't boot even when there is no compact flash, normally it should boot and show the version of your CPU and PPUs.
Maybe it's your systems. I have a friend who has an nes and snes and both don't like my power paks.
Are you also using original adapters on your systems?
My SNES Powerpak had the same black screen issue about a year or so ago. Mine was still under warranty so I contacted them. I sent it back and they either fixed it or sent me a new one. I'm not sure which they did, but it works now. I had not flashed any alternative menu on it before it stopped working. It had been sitting in a box for a couple years till i decided to use it one day and found it didn't work anymore.
"5 year replacement warranty - if the cart stops working we replace it"