FDSStick

[ebinsugewa]

I feel like this has been talked about in other threads but I don't see one specifically for it, so here it is.

What is the FDSStick?

It's a USB device (basically a thumb drive) that has a socket on the end for a RAM cart connector. You can use it to play Famicom Disk System games without the actual drive unit. It has enough storage to hold the entire disk library.

I suppose most (all?) of the FDS games are available on Everdrives etc. so why does this exist? For me the main feature I got it is that with an adapter cable you can actually write to the FDS drive itself. This is nice to restore games that are labeled incorrectly because they have since been overwritten, of which I have many.

You can get it outside the US on Tototek for $15+shipping: http://www.tototek.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=196

You can get it inside the US for about $15 shipped: http://3dscapture.com/fdsstick/

I haven't built an adapter yet to test the write functionality but it does just what it says with minimal fuss for short money. It installs the driver automatically when you connect it, and a simple GUI lets you load/manage the games on the device, or you can just leave the USB end attached to the computer and load images straight into the RAM adapter from your hard drive. I guess this might be useful for homebrew/hacking.

 

[madman]

SEARCH. FUNCTION.

 

[Dr Shroom]

Not interested if I still need to wire shit just to use it on the twin.

 

[GohanX]

Damn, the price went down a lot. I think I paid $30, they are $11.99 now. Nice!

 

[ki_atsushi]

Damn, the price went down a lot. I think I paid $30, they are $11.99 now. Nice!

And I couldn't resist! I see lone ram adapters on ebay all the time too, so this is perfect.

 

[GohanX]

It really is a nice device. Something is missing from playing a FDS and not actually flipping the discs and hearing those ticking sounds, but even so I haven't bothered hooking up my drive since I got mine.

Since you don't have a real FDS drive I will warn you, sometimes you think the FDS stick is locked up, but give it a minute, as it's still loading. The ram adapter isn't really any faster and loading the data from the stick instead of a real drive, and on a real drive you'd hear it making loading sounds. With the stick you may think that it's locked up, and it's not.

 

[ebinsugewa]

Damn, the price went down a lot. I think I paid $30, they are $11.99 now. Nice!

That was another reason to break this out into its own thread. I had originally held off but no excuse now.

Not interested if I still need to wire shit just to use it on the twin.

I'm not sure why they don't offer pre-built cables or if anyone does elsewhere, but that's the biggest drawback. Luckily I have the materials to make my own but it's really half the functionality gone (Twin users/disk writing) if you don't have a cable.

 

[goombakid]

There's this thing as well.

http://magicwildcard.com/

Same concept, but uses an SD card instead of internal memory.

You can use the original Famicom Disk adapter on a Famicom Twin, right?

 

[DanAdamKOF]

Oh cool! IIRC the last I looked for if these FDS drive emulators existed, someone made one and got it working with only 8 games at a time, which was promising but I didn't think I'd use.

Definitely in for one, thank you for posting this!

 

[Stellarola]

I bought one a few months ago. Cool gadget. Still fun to manually put the disks in...feels dirrrty.

 

[ggallegos1]

so for my own edification, this thing let's you play FDS games on a famicom without the FDS itself?

 

[GohanX]

You still need the FDS Ram adapter, but you don't need an actual FDS drive.

 

[fenikso]

And RAM adapters are stupid cheap on eBay. Now that the FDSStick is so cheap, anybody that's remotely interested in FDS games should get one, before JP sellers figure out what's going on and jack up the price of the RAM adapters.

 

[RAZO]

Is there any difference between playing fds games on the everdrive or going this route?

 

[Newsdee]

I've got one not long ago, specifically to avoid the bulk of the drive. It works great.

Yes there is a difference with an Everdrive, this is 100% compatible because it only replaces the storage part but the RAM adapter has the rest of the original chips. The Everdrive FDS mode has sound issues.

 

[fenikso]

Is there any difference between playing fds games on the everdrive or going this route?

I don't own an everdrive, so I can't speak from experience, but others have mentioned that the expansion audio on the everdrive is far from perfect. Other than that I can't really comment.

 

[JoeAwesome]

If this worked on the Retron 5, maybe...

 

[DanAdamKOF]

Just googled a bit and I don't think FDS works on the Retron 5.

 

[Stellarola]

I don't own an everdrive, so I can't speak from experience, but others have mentioned that the expansion audio on the everdrive is far from perfect. Other than that I can't really comment.

^ This. Best to use ram adapter with FDSStick if possible. Audio not correct with Everdrive FDS roms.

 

[Newsdee]

Definitely doesn't work on the Retron 5 or Retro Freak, because they attempt to dump the ROM at once. Same reason why the Super Gameboy doesn't work.

 

[Opethian]

why would you need to use this on a Retro Freak it already play FDS games if you have the BIOS dumped to it.

 

[Newsdee]

I mentioned it because it's the same system as the Retron 5 (except it allows to load ROMs). It relies on creating ROMs on the fly when you plug in a cart.

 

[GohanX]

why would you need to use this on a Retro Freak it already play FDS games if you have the BIOS dumped to it.

The same reason I used a Super Gameboy on a Supaboy instead of just using an actual Gameboy.

Because I CAN.

 

[ebinsugewa]

Oh cool! IIRC the last I looked for if these FDS drive emulators existed, someone made one and got it working with only 8 games at a time, which was promising but I didn't think I'd use.

Definitely in for one, thank you for posting this!

Yeah, that was this product. The originals didn't have much space but this one now has enough space for the entire library and is 1/3 of the price of the original.

 

[StealthLurker]

Anyone or any place got pre-modded read & write RAM adapters with cables for sale?