Unlock Achievements on Your NES – Build the RetroAchievements Adapter Today!

[odelot]

Hey shmups forum folks,

I'm excited to announce the release of our NES RetroAchievements adapter—it's now available on GitHub! This project brings modern features (like unlocking achievements) to your classic NES hardware. Although anyone can build it, we're still in development and would really appreciate any help to deliver the project to the community just as we envisioned.

Whether you want to build a prototype, test and improve it, spread the word, or even contribute to our donation campaign (running throughout April to cover hardware costs and further PCB design iterations), every bit of support is welcome.

For more details, check out our campaign video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRES6z_qyDk or visit our project repository https://github.com/odelot/nes-ra-adapter. I'm sure there are plenty of talented folks here ready to dive in and start building right away—I’m counting on you!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Cheers,

odelot

[Konsolkongen]

That is very neat.

Maybe this could be combined with the Opentendo PCB?

[odelot]

That is very neat.

Maybe this could be combined with the Opentendo PCB?

Nice idea. I will get in touch with the dev responsible for opentendo PCB

[bobrocks95]

Very cool! I am a bit concerned about 3.3V and 5V mixing on cartridges for retro consoles and how safe the sudden switch to connect the cartridge pins to the console would be, but I like the idea. I don't think I'd want to build one with a screen, but with how it needs time to read and connect maybe it's kind of necessary. I wonder if I could actually see it from my couch though...

[odelot]

Very cool! I am a bit concerned about 3.3V and 5V mixing on cartridges for retro consoles and how safe the sudden switch to connect the cartridge pins to the console would be, but I like the idea. I don't think I'd want to build one with a screen, but with how it needs time to read and connect maybe it's kind of necessary. I wonder if I could actually see it from my couch though...

The LCD is really more useful for helping with setup and showing that it has successfully identified the game than anything else. I thought about using a NES program, like an everdrive, and using some microcontroller to simulate a ROM so that I could send real-time data to this NES program - but I thought that was getting more complex and with more microcontrollers on the board. Maybe replacing the LCD with a text-only OLED would help consume less power and could be as useful as the LCD. Or using some LEDs as a status indicator.

As for the 3.3v and 5v, that's not my area of ​​expertise (I am a computer scientist) but here it is all I studied about the matter.

During game identification, the BUS between the cartridge and the NES is not connected, so it won't damage the console. The cartridge is in input mode, so the extra current would go to PICO. The leakage current would be in the PICO safety range, but we could try to reduce it using small resistors.

When the PICO is listening to the BUS (during the gameplay), all its ports are in input mode and all ports are 5v tolerant.

We have relied on these facts to continue testing on real hardware for hours and with our own cartridges, with no problems so far. I hope that GH, my friend who will miniaturize the PCB, will make the circuit more robust than it is today.