UFO Super Drive for SNES?

[JohnnyRockets]

I was on the verge of buying one of these, can anyone tell me if they have one and like it?

 

 

Thanks!

[+Gemintronic]

What feature are you buying it for?

[awhite2600]

I have had one since the mid 90's. Haven't used it in quite a while. My UFO drive had limited RAM, so a few of the larger ROMS (> 2 Megabyte ?) would not work. The passthrough connector was also incomplete so any of the games with extra chips would not work unless you removed the drive.

 

Overall the drive was very workable, especially back in the day. Games were a bit slow to load from floppies.

 

I'd say grab one if it's cheap enough. Otherwise you might be better off with an SD based cart.

[JohnnyRockets]

Well the reason I wanted it was to fulfill this vision I had of being able to do the following:

 

1) Play SNES games and save anywhere, as my game time is quite limited.

 

2) Hook it up to an original SNES or a RetroN3 and use it on my big flat screen.

 

 

Not sure if this is the appropriate animal or not?

 

 

JR

[StoneAgeGamer]

I was on the verge of buying one of these, can anyone tell me if they have one and like it?

 

 

Thanks!

 

I assume you are talking about the flash cart and not the old disk drive. It seems save states may be a big deal to you, but let me warn you save states on a flash cart are not going to work on 100% of the time for all games. Its probably more around 75% or less. I would consider this feature more of a bonus and not something that should be a deciding factor.

 

One huge downside of the SuperUFO cart is the 8 character file name limit. IMO this is a deal breaker even for the price. I know they can be more expensive (depends on version), but I would suggest Super EverDrive or Super PowerPak over this. One big reason (besides file character issue) is support for these two products is much more available. I think the EverDrive support community over on AssemblerGames is pretty good and pretty quick to respond and help fix an issue. SD2SNES is also an option, but a lot more pricey.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think the support for the SuperUFO flash cart is all that great. Support for a product like this I feel is important, but you may not.

[JohnnyRockets]

StoneAgeGamer,

 

Hey thanks! Yes, saves are important as they allow me to actually finish a game. I was looking at the EverDrive (Sega version) on your site and it looks really nice. I think I will buy one next week. It seems that you have them in stock if I am not mistaken.

 

I'm mostly talking about this one: http://stoneagegamer.com/everdrive_deluxe.aspx

 

Looks like it will fit the bill.

 

I know that it is not guaranteed that it will work on a clone hardware, but is there a chance it may?

 

 

 

Thanks a lot! JR

[Mark Wolfe]

I just got one, I was about to go talk about it in the official flash cart thread. go see my review there.

[fiddlepaddle]

I have the UFO Super drive floppy drive, with one floppy disk (Tetris) and it's a cool conversation piece. I did try it out, but I don't really USE it.

[Mark Wolfe]

if you're talking flash carts or backup devices, check this thread out: 38 →

 

the last page or se we are discussing the super ufo pro 8. the damn thing does not live up to its own hype. many of the features simply do not work as advertised.

[goldenegg]

I have the UFO Super drive floppy drive, with one floppy disk (Tetris) and it's a cool conversation piece. I did try it out, but I don't really USE it.

 

This was such an awesome device back in the day.

[kennyk]

Retrogate has the Super Everdrive in stock right now, if you don't mind it not having DSP-1:

http://shop.retrogate.com/Super-Everdrive-SED.htm?productId=2

 

I bought a Super UFO a while back to play US carts on a Japanese super famicom, and it works well for that. Fully compatible converters are rare and expensive, so this was a nice lower cost option.I would personally prefer a SD2SNES to anything available right now.

[+Gemintronic]

Well the reason I wanted it was to fulfill this vision I had of being able to do the following:

 

1) Play SNES games and save anywhere, as my game time is quite limited.

 

2) Hook it up to an original SNES or a RetroN3 and use it on my big flat screen.

 

 

Not sure if this is the appropriate animal or not?

 

 

JR

 

I think it's overkill. I've got a device at home that JUST does save states. Should be much cheaper. I'll go and dig it up and get more info.

[JohnnyRockets]

Well the reason I wanted it was to fulfill this vision I had of being able to do the following:

 

1) Play SNES games and save anywhere, as my game time is quite limited.

 

2) Hook it up to an original SNES or a RetroN3 and use it on my big flat screen.

 

 

Not sure if this is the appropriate animal or not?

 

 

JR

 

I think it's overkill. I've got a device at home that JUST does save states. Should be much cheaper. I'll go and dig it up and get more info.

 

That'd be great "Loon", I just want save states, so I can actually finish a game with my 15-20 minutes of game time each day. Thanks! JR

[StoneAgeGamer]

Well the reason I wanted it was to fulfill this vision I had of being able to do the following:

 

1) Play SNES games and save anywhere, as my game time is quite limited.

 

2) Hook it up to an original SNES or a RetroN3 and use it on my big flat screen.

 

 

Not sure if this is the appropriate animal or not?

 

 

JR

 

I think it's overkill. I've got a device at home that JUST does save states. Should be much cheaper. I'll go and dig it up and get more info.

 

That'd be great "Loon", I just want save states, so I can actually finish a game with my 15-20 minutes of game time each day. Thanks! JR

 

He is probably talking about NakiTek GameSaver. What the device does is keep power to the cart in an attempt to retain your spot in the game. I think it has some flaws though.

[Austin]

Well the reason I wanted it was to fulfill this vision I had of being able to do the following:

 

1) Play SNES games and save anywhere, as my game time is quite limited.

 

2) Hook it up to an original SNES or a RetroN3 and use it on my big flat screen.

 

If the goal is to play on your big flat screen, you are better off hooking a computer to it and going through emulation. Save states via emulation are virtually fail-safe, the compatibility rate is much higher than something like the Super UFO, and with the added filters and video resolution settings, the games are going to look much better than hooking a Retron or SNES to it via composite (*edit: that is, provided by "big flat screen", you mean a LCD screen, not a CRT).

Edited August 10, 2012 by Austin

[Satoshi Matrix]

I have a Super UFO Pro 8 dascheap sent me for review, but I haven't placed a review yet because I can't figure out how to use 90% of its features. Is there any English resource to help me figure out how to actually use it?

[Eyedunno]

Retrogate has the Super Everdrive in stock right now, if you don't mind it not having DSP-1:

http://shop.retrogat...htm?productId=2

 

I bought a Super UFO a while back to play US carts on a Japanese super famicom, and it works well for that. Fully compatible converters are rare and expensive, so this was a nice lower cost option.I would personally prefer a SD2SNES to anything available right now.

I bought one for the exact same reason (already have an SD2SNES) a month or two ago, and yes, it works well for that and is one of the cheaper options.

 

Action replay codes also work with almost everything I care about using them for (even if you have to load the game into the internal RAM first, thus eliminating the possibility of codes with most special chip games), so that's another plus.

[Eyedunno]

I'm double-posting, but I have some new information. I got a copy of Rudra no Hihou that wouldn't copy correctly with my Mash Mods copier for some reason, but that forced me to figure out how to deal with this thing's eccentricities.

 

If you want to convert a copied SuperUFO rom to a regular, headerless one, just use NSRT with "nsrt -remhead [romfile.ext]". It seemed like it would be a bit trickier to convert the save to a standard emulator/flashcart save, and after several failed attempts, I decided to try loading the game and the save in ZSNES, saving a state, closing ZSNES, deleting the srm file, and reloading the state to get a new srm file. In fact, all that ended up being necessary was to load the game in ZSNES, and it automatically resized the srm to the correct size. Easy peasy.

 

Hopefully this helps somebody.

[Thrillo]

I have a Super UFO Pro 7, and it's a pretty nifty unit. It supports instant saving/loading, though the music isn't always right upon loading the savestate since the sound chip RAM isn't saved. It also supports the transfer of normal saves and instant saves to and from a PC via the floppy drive, which is handy. It has 32 megabits of RAM, so the vast majority of games fit into it; the ones that don't fit usually have special chips anyway, which brings me to the drawback. The main drawback is that it doesn't support games that use a special chip (ie. SuperFX, DSP, SA-1, etc.) but really, it's totally understandable by the standards of the day (and today to an extent).