So we got more H8/3294 Drive Controller ROM dumps, 3 more of them from different kinds of development drives, for posterity, courtesy of Willis, GamingLegend64 and Zoinkity! Specifically:

• GS01X02 (1997-01-14): Earliest ROM date so far
• GS01B01 (1997-12-09)
• GS01B02 (1998-03-12)

We don’t really get the differences that much, but they seem to have a different purpose in mind maybe? It’s hard to say.

And then, something a little Rare: 2 new Blue Disk dumps, also courtesy of GamingLegend64 and Willis!

Now, I don’t wanna hype them too much, because none of these are playable, but they are a look into how Rareware actually used the 64DD back then, with crash dumps of Banjo-Kazooie. It seems Rareware was a fan of the 64DD purely for debugging purposes, if it wasn’t for games, it was at least for that. Unfortunately I’m no expert of Banjo-Kazooie code, and would rather leave the reverse engineering to people who knows the game in and out.

It’s not as hype than you would hope, but I hope they might uncover something interesting. I’ve also taken the liberty to directly offer extracted files from them alongside the dumps.

You can find everything in the Games page, in the Development tab.

You may have not noticed, but I added a new tutorial page for SummerCart64 to make it very easy to use for 64DD games but also to figure out how to update it and so on, hopefully this will be very helpful for new users.

As of recently, I helped Did You Know Gaming to cover every cancelled 64DD game, either to debunk or confirm, or provide technical information and some corrections (some of which I missed, I’m sorry!), and the first video came out a few days ago, and you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jk2JORHYsk

And, the day the video came out, I was managing what looks to be an actual prototype of a retail 64DD from Console Variations!
Insane! We dumped the H8/3294 CPU ROM from it, it’s even the earliest drive controller firmware I’ve seen, ever, from April 3rd 1997.
You can find it on the Retail Games downloads page, though it’s not of much use but for preservation for whoever is interested. I’ve also left the page to the retail prototype in question.

Sorry for the lack of news on this site but there was really not much happening.

But I’ve decided to update the website in quite a few ways now:

• The Emulators / Tools page was updated to use a tab system. Click a button to access what you need.
  • You can even access the Tutorial page from there now!
• The Dumps pages have been fused into one Games page and is way more to the point using the same tab system.
  • The IPLs have their own tab and clarified their requirement.
• I added a tutorial for Ares!

I hope this makes the website easier to navigate, and I hope to provide even more clarity to everything.

So in the past few weeks, I have been busy implementing 64DD in Ares’ N64 core. Now Ares v130 is out, and I’m happy to tell you that it includes my most accurate 64DD emulation code yet.

It is a little rough in terms of timing but a lot of the intricacies are pretty much emulated, and I’m proud of it. It supports Japanese Retail, American Retail and Development 64DD IPLs and Disks and selects accordingly. However, it does not support disk swapping yet, but you can use the N64 Mouse if you want.

The other big change for v130 is that it now includes macOS support for Parallel-RDP which is the Vulkan API based graphics plugin. I had a few people who were on Mac asking about it and since I don’t really deal with N64 emulation much, only 64DD specifics or other weird things (more on that, eventually), but now there’s finally something.

I want to put to your attention on how to play 64DD: The first time you boot up a 64DD game, you have to set up the clock, hold the A button to set it, and then you can play however you want. Do not forget to set the IPL ROMs in the Firmware menu, by the way.

If you deal with micro stutters while playing something 64DD: Disable auto-saves, as it saves 64MB every time and that might stop emulation for a few microseconds every time.

I have also updated the downloads page to include simple64 (previously named “m64p”), which recently added support for cartridge ports, which I’m personally iffy about, because it is definitely less annoying to use, but then you don’t really get much access to everything 64DD can offer in terms of experience…

I always saw Cartridge Ports as a bandaid solution for 64DD when it is definitely doable to play 64DD games now in their disk forms.

But you get more choice, and I think that’s the most important.

A long time in the making, as at one point, I found out that my dumper performs bad SD card writing at times so you could only trust the last dumped file…

This was pretty much the perfect excuse to just rewrite the entire thing again, but this time with the intention of making a new all-in-one dumper for 64DD, improving as much as I could in the process. This time, it supports both the 64drive and the Everdrive 64 for the first time!

And a first beta is now available. Why a beta?

Because as much as I could test on a retail drive and a development drive (thank you very much to the people who were kind enough to lend me this stuff), I never actually feel confident if this would ever work in every use case, but hopefully, time will show.

I am so happy to release this first beta and I am really proud of the new development of this. You can find the links to the first beta and source code in the Emulators / Tools page.

AS A RESULT OF THIS, I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING THE PREVIOUS DUMPERS AT ALL NOW.