So I've been a lurker here for awhile, doing my best to learn as much as I can about chip music gear. I think I have a pretty good hold on what I need for a solid first arduinoboy but I have a couple questions about flashcarts. I want to be able to run mGB and LSDJ, but I'm confused about how that works. I know that certain roms only run on specific cartridges, do I need to buy carts specific to mGB and LSDJ? If so, can you give me any info on those carts? It would be awesome if there's a cart that can load both so I only have to drop the cash on 1. Speaking of which, how much can I expect to pay for a cart that loads mGB/LSDJ? I've seen everything from $40-80 for flashcarts. Is there other software for the carts that I'll need to buy? thanks for the help!
someone may come along with a more comprehensive answer, but here's the fast one:
cheapest and easiest to get option for flash carts is EMS' 64M USB enabled cart, which you can buy at kitsch-bent.com or nonelectronics.com and maybe other places. You can load LSDJ on one bank and mGB on the other bank. It's sometimes a smidge finicky about switching banks but it's usually fine. Loading stuff on them can be tricky, you've got to have a windows machine and I guess on newer versions of Windows the drivers can be sticky? But if you work at it you'll figure it out and there's a lot of info out there about it. Also if you pay for your LSDJ license ahead of time,
drag 'n' derps are sortof seen as the holy grail of carts for music - they only take one piece of software at a time, but it's really easy to swap it out, just takes seconds, works with any computer. Costs twice as much as the EMS tho. You can get them straight from the maker at derpcart.com
there's also an everdrive for gameboy which can load tons of software and has a menu, it's more targeted for gamers, but it should work fine for music. They just came out so nobody has really used them yet, but everdrive products have a really good rep. I ordered one from retrogate but I'm still waiting on it to arrive so I can't say much about it.
The only other software you might want to think about for now is LittleFM which really helps out with song management, especially if you don't have a transferring solution, read about it here: http://blog.gg8.se/wordpress/2013/02/04 … -released/
Pretty much any cart out there will do both, mgb is a pretty small program, and lsdj only requires 8m of flash. One of the ems 64m carts would hold both for you. (You could switch between them)
Awsome, thanks for your help! I'm stoked to get started.