It’s nearly tricky to believe these days, what with modern day game consoles packing terabytes of inside storage, but there was a time when the totality of your gaming job would be stored on an external memory card that held just a couple of megabytes of conserve info. Of study course, right before that you experienced to compose down a sequence of random letters and quantities to decide on up the place you still left off, but which is a story for an additional working day.
When the memory card notion could be quaint to the present day gamer, its modular nature does provide the hacker with some attention-grabbing avenues to investigate. For example, take a look at the extremely remarkable PicoMemcard job from [Daniele Giuliani]. Components clever, it does not get a lot easier than this. You just choose the PCB from a low-priced (or dead) PlayStation memory card, and solder seven jumpers to the edge connector contacts so you can plug them into the Pico. Then you have just obtained to upload the firmware to the Pico, and you are done.
Obviously you can also compose new preserve files to the Pico from the laptop or computer, which opens up all varieties of possibilities. As we’ve lined in the previous, there are ongoing initiatives to exploit the PlayStation’s duplicate defense system employing diligently crafted help you save game titles. The PicoMemcard will allow you to easily get these will save on your own console, enabling you to be part of in on the enjoyment.
Don’t want to trash an present memory card? [Daniele] is performing on a custom made PCB that implements a suited edge connector, indicating you are going to no longer have to have the sacrificial card. Whilst not at this time applied, the board design and style also includes an SD slot, which sooner or later ought to allow the PicoMemcard to hold even a lot more data. If you are continue to rocking the initial PlayStation just after all these years, we’d strongly advocate purchasing a Pi Pico and preserving an eye on this undertaking. We’d recommend the exact for all you Match Boy aficionados, as nicely.
Many thanks to [Andrea Campanella] for the tip.
