Newly built Sanni Cart Reader! And prototype preservation

(Due to the importance of preserving prototypes this post will also be made on my patreon account)

A few weeks ago I spent the time tracking down the parts to build a Sanni Cart Reader and 3d printer a unit. I went to electronics engineering school several years ago so this wasn't really a difficult project but still required a little more time than I was expecting to invest.

In short: The Sanni Cart reader flasher dumper is an Ardurino kit that can dump the contents of Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Super Nintendo, Super Famicom, Famicom and NES (requires an adapter because the cartridges are not physically compatible directly.), Sega Genesis, Sega Mega Drive, Nintendo 64 and a handful of others. Nintendo Power Game Boy and SFC Memory carts can be flashed allowing custom games to be written to them with some limitations such as not supporting enhancement chips for games like star Fox (GSU) and various other games.

Prototype and reproduction EEPROMs can be backed up and flashed and this is really important for preserving prototypes versions of videogames. If you have prototypes, you can email me at gameboygallery@yahoo.com or message me on twitter #nensondubois_ and we can get the ball rolling to backing them up.

Save RAM and N64 Gamesharks can also be backed up and reflashed if they brick you won't lose your code lists and settings. The Nintendo 64 controller can be tested as well as backing up the controller pack contents can be transferred. I also believe the Transfer Pack contentys of the Game Boy game can be backed up as well but that is redundant, as the hardware is dicey resulting in erroneous byteswaps and various errors with handling save about 36.8% of the time.

I'm not kidding, really the transfer pack hardware is faulty and only robust enough to send small amounts of data efficiently. This is speculation but it may explain why Nintendo never released an official Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator, and only intended it to transfer only small amounts of data such as Pokemon and character information mostly in various games.

In either case, I have a planned series of videos showing off the usefulness of this small but perfect device. (It really is a lot smaller than you would imagine), and plan on dumping several prototypes down the road.




 It even glows in the dark. Spoooooky!