travistouchdown wrote:I was interested until i learned it doesn't support everdrives. Makes no sense. I get what they are trying to do I just don't think there is that big a market for people with massive physical collections when you can go either the original hardware/everdrive Route OR Mister for better FPGA experience.
They're not intentionally locked out, although I believe they've portrayed it that way in their marketing.
Rather it's a byproduct of how such devices work. Software emulation means that there's not a live cartridge bus and that the cartridge contents instead must be dumped to a file in the system's memory with the emulator running said rom file. The most you'd ever be able to get as a result is the multicart's menu since there's not continuous communication with the cartridge to trigger it to load your selected game.
It's also one of the selling points of FPGA clone systems like the Retro USB AVS (NES system), the Collectorvision Phoenix, and most famously Analogue's range of hardware ever since the first Nt Mini. Due to being a hardware clone utilizing a reprogrammable FPGA, they're able to have a live cartridge bus just like original hardware.
Thus they're able to work with multicarts, directly utilize onboard enhancement chips in cartridges like the Super FX (versus emulating them like Polymega), etc.