Retrode 2026: Dump Carts + Saves in 12 Steps, 30 Min

There is a specific disappointment that arrives the first time someone plugs in a Retrode expecting it to play their cartridges. It plays nothing. It is a bridge — a dumb, driverless, gloriously single-minded bridge — between a thirty-year-old mask ROM and a modern filesystem. The official FAQ calls it a USB interface for vintage video game cartridges and controllers, not an emulator, and it means exactly that: it presents your cartridge to the operating system as a file, and your controller as a standard USB HID gamepad. Nothing more. That restraint is the whole point.

The same FAQ states, in as many words, that the Retrode is not for pirates. For once the copy is honest. The device reads one cartridge at a time — silicon you physically own, sitting in the slot in front of you — over USB Full Speed and not one byte faster. It is a preservation tool and a save-management tool, and it happens to be one of the few dumpers that works with no drivers and no special software on Linux, macOS and Windows. That is the entire pitch, and it has aged remarkably well.

This tutorial covers the shipping product — the Retrode 2, whose firmware froze at 0.18c in April 2016 and has not moved since — and the successor that is finally arriving, the Retrode 3, targeted for the end of 2026 at under EUR 100. We will dump a SNES cartridge and its save in twelve numbered steps, flash the firmware over DFU, bend the device's behaviour with the RETRODE.CFG file, survive the plug-in adapters, and walk out with a complete, annotated configuration you can paste onto the drive. Bring a cartridge you own. That caveat is not decorative.

What the Retrode Actually Is (and Is Not)

A USB bridge, not an emulator

Internally the Retrode 2 is an 8-bit Atmel AVR — the AT90USB646 — running firmware built on Dean Camera's LUFA USB stack. When you plug it in, that microcontroller enumerates as a composite USB device: a mass-storage endpoint (the cartridge, exposed as a tiny FAT volume) plus one or more USB HID gamepads (the controller ports). Your OS sees a thumb drive and a joystick. It does not see, and does not need to see, a Retrode. That is why there are no drivers, and why a 2026 retrospective can still describe it as a ROM dumper that runs without drivers or special software on the popular operating systems.

Because the brain is a Full-Speed AVR — 12 Mbit/s theoretical, minus protocol overhead — dumping is not fast. A 3 MB Super Nintendo cartridge takes a couple of minutes; a 4 MB one takes longer. This is not a defect. It is 2016-era silicon doing an inherently serial job over a slow bus, and the correct response to a slow dump is patience, not a support ticket.

Retrode 2 versus Retrode 3 in 2026

Two devices share the name. The Retrode 2 is the one you can buy today and the one this guide is built around: a mass-storage dumper for SNES/SFC and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, with optional adapters for N64, Game Boy and Master System. The Retrode 3, covered in full further down, is a ground-up redesign around a Linux SoC with built-in Wi-Fi that talks to you through a web browser and adds a native NES slot. It is not yet on sale. If you need to dump cartridges this week, you need a Retrode 2. If you can wait for the end of the year, read the Retrode 3 section before you spend anything.

The legal line: "not for pirates"

The Retrode's marketing has always drawn a bright line, and it is worth respecting because it is also roughly the legal line. The device makes a personal backup of a cartridge you own. It does not download anything, it does not distribute anything, and it physically cannot dump a cartridge that is not in the slot. Whether a personal backup is lawful where you live is a question for your jurisdiction, not for a German cartridge reader — but the tool itself is designed around ownership, and every workflow in this article assumes you are dumping your own shelf. For the wider context on why bit-perfect cartridge dumps matter to institutions, the University of Maryland's MITH preservation writeup is a good, sober read.

Prerequisites: Hardware, Software and Cartridges

The hardware you need

A Retrode 2 unit. Retail is around $99.99 at Stone Age Gamer in the US, or EUR 64.90 direct from DragonBox in Europe; the manufacturer's own suggested price is listed as roughly EUR 65 / USD 85. The box contains the unit, a USB cable and a single instruction sheet — no software disc, because there is nothing to install. You also need a data-capable USB-A cable (many spares are charge-only; those will power the device but never mount it) and a host machine with a genuine USB host port.

The Retrode has two cartridge slots — the shorter lower slot is Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, the wider upper slot is SNES/SFC — and four controller ports arranged two-by-two (two SNES, two Sega). There is a small button by the ports labelled in the manual as (8) RESET, and a second one, (7) HWB, that you will only ever touch when flashing firmware. Keep a bottle of 99% isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth nearby; nine dumping problems out of ten are dirty edge connectors, not dead hardware.

Software and OS versions

Officially none. The FAQ names Linux, macOS and Windows as supported, and any reasonably modern release of each mounts the Retrode as removable storage with zero setup. You will want a couple of optional tools depending on your goal: dfu-programmer (or Microchip FLIP on Windows) if you intend to reflash firmware; a checksum utility (sha1sum, md5sum, or a GUI equivalent) to validate dumps against a reference database; and an emulator or frontend to actually play the results. If you are heading into RetroArch anyway, our walkthrough on picking and installing the right libretro cores pairs directly with the files this device produces.

There is one firmware fact you must internalise before you start: the Retrode 2's firmware is frozen. The last builds are 0.18c (stable, dated 22 April 2016) and 0.18d beta 3. There is no 0.19, no 0.22, and — despite a persistent forum myth — no firmware update that ever "added enhanced-chip SNES support." If a listing tells you otherwise, it is wrong. We will come back to this.

The cartridges — and the co-processor caveats

Standard SNES and Sega cartridges dump cleanly. So do SNES carts with the Super FX chip (Star Fox, Yoshi's Island) and the DSP1 (Super Mario Kart, Pilotwings): the Retrode reads the program ROM directly and a modern emulator supplies the chip's behaviour. What does not dump correctly is any cartridge whose co-processor sits between the edge connector and the ROM and remaps or gates access to it — specifically SA-1 (Super Mario RPG, Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3), S-DD1 (Star Ocean, Street Fighter Alpha 2) and the Sega Virtua Processor / SVP (Virtua Racing). The Retrode reads the cartridge bus without running those chips, so the bytes it captures are wrong. This is a hardware limitation of the Retrode 2, not a firmware bug, and no configuration flag fixes it. The official Retrode FAQ spells out the supported and unsupported chip list; do not lump Super FX in with the unsupported set, because it is the one people get wrong most often.

The Dump: 12 Steps, Start to Finish

What follows is the full workflow for a SNES cartridge and its battery save, on Linux; macOS and Windows differ only in where the volume mounts and which file manager you use. Every step has a reason attached, because the reasons are where the failures hide. Budget about thirty minutes for your first cartridge, most of which is reading this and cleaning contacts — the dumping itself is a few minutes.

Phase 1 — Cabling and seating (Steps 1 to 4)

1. Step 1 — Inspect and clean the cartridge. Wipe the edge connector with 99% isopropyl on a lint-free cloth and let it flash off. Rationale: a half-size ROM or a garbage filename is almost always oxidised contacts, not a dead cart or a broken Retrode. Clean first and you skip half the troubleshooting table.
2. Step 2 — Seat the cartridge fully in the correct slot. SNES/SFC goes in the wider upper slot, Sega in the shorter lower one. Push until it stops. Rationale: partial insertion reads partial silicon, and the device has no way to know it only saw half the address lines — it will happily hand you a corrupt file.
3. Step 3 — Connect the Retrode to the host with a data USB cable. Straight into the machine, not through a passive hub. Rationale: the Retrode draws bus power and enumerates as mass storage; underpowered hubs and charge-only cables are the two most common reasons the drive never appears.
4. Step 4 — Confirm the device enumerated. On Linux, check the kernel log. You are looking for a Full-Speed mass-storage device reporting the firmware version string. Rationale: proving the OS sees the volume before you go hunting for files isolates a cable or power fault from a cartridge fault.

Expected output (Linux, Retrode 2 on firmware 0.18c):

$ dmesg | tail -n 5
usb 1-2: new full-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-2: New USB device found, Mfr=Matthias Hullin, Product=Retrode2
usb-storage 1-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access  Retrode2  0.18c  PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

$ lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,LABEL,MOUNTPOINT | grep -i sdb
sdb   2.1M  RETRODE   /run/media/you/RETRODE

Phase 2 — Mounting and copying the ROM (Steps 5 to 8)

1. Step 5 — Open the mounted RETRODE volume. On Linux it auto-mounts under /run/media/<user>/RETRODE (or /media); on Windows and macOS it appears as a small removable drive. Rationale: it is an ordinary FAT volume, so anything that reads a USB stick reads this — no special tool required.
2. Step 6 — Read the filenames the Retrode generated. The device derives each name from the cartridge's internal header title, truncated to 8.3, e.g. SUPERMET.SFC for Super Metroid, alongside SUPERMET.SRM for the save and a RETRODE.CFG. Rationale: a sensible name means the header parsed correctly; a name like RETRODE.SFC or gibberish means detection failed, and you will want the config file covered two sections down.
3. Step 7 — Copy the ROM to your library. Drag it to your ROM folder, or rsync it. Rationale: never work off the mounted volume — treat it as read-only source media and keep the canonical copy on real storage where a stray unplug cannot touch it.
4. Step 8 — Eject before you touch the cartridge again. Unmount or eject in the OS first. Rationale: the on-cart save SRAM is live while the volume is mounted; the user guide is explicit that hot-swapping "can potentially damage on-cartridge savegames" and that you should "prefer to eject/unplug the Retrode first."

$ ls -la /run/media/you/RETRODE
total 3072
-r--r--r-- 1 you you 3145728 Jan  1  2016 SUPERMET.SFC
-r--r--r-- 1 you you    8192 Jan  1  2016 SUPERMET.SRM
-r--r--r-- 1 you you     512 Jan  1  2016 RETRODE.CFG

$ rsync -a --info=progress2 /run/media/you/RETRODE/SUPERMET.SFC ~/roms/snes/
      3,145,728 100%    1.05MB/s    0:00:02 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)

Phase 3 — Saves, verification and cleanup (Steps 9 to 12)

1. Step 9 — Copy the .SRM save file. It is the raw battery-backed SRAM, the exact bytes an emulator loads as your in-game save. Rationale: back it up now while the thirty-year-old coin cell still holds it. A dumped ROM is forever; a battery save is a countdown.
2. Step 10 — Verify the dump by reading twice. Copy the ROM, eject, reseat the cart, press RESET, remount and copy again, then compare the two files bit-for-bit. Rationale: a clean edge connector yields identical reads; a mismatch proves contact trouble before you trust the file for a decade.
3. Step 11 — Match the hash against a reference database. Compute the SHA-1 and compare to a No-Intro reference DAT for the correct region. Rationale: a matching hash means your dump equals the community's known-good image; a mismatch on a supported cart usually means dirty contacts or the wrong region entry, not a bad cartridge.
4. Step 12 — Swap the next cartridge with RESET, not a hot yank. Eject, remove the cart, insert the next, and press the RESET button to re-enumerate. Rationale: RESET forces a clean re-scan; hot-swapping under power risks both a stale mount and, per the manual, save corruption.

# Dump once, reseat + press RESET, dump again, prove they match:
$ cp /run/media/you/RETRODE/SUPERMET.SFC pass1.sfc
$ cp /run/media/you/RETRODE/SUPERMET.SFC pass2.sfc
$ cmp pass1.sfc pass2.sfc && echo IDENTICAL
IDENTICAL

# Match the SHA-1 against a No-Intro reference DAT for the region:
$ sha1sum pass1.sfc
<40-hex-sha1>  pass1.sfc

Firmware: Frozen at 0.18c, and How to Flash It

The 0.18c / 0.18d beta 3 reality

Retrode 2 firmware development effectively stopped a decade ago. The stable release is 0.18c, dated 22 April 2016; the newest build of any kind is 0.18d beta 3. The 0.18 line is where the device gained Master System SRAM reading, improved N64 and GBA size detection, a LUFA library refresh and a Master System plug-in bugfix; 0.18d beta 3 fixed, among other things, a case where forceSystem GG (Game Gear) was not recognised. That is the end of the road. There is no 0.19, 0.22 or "enhanced-chip" firmware — a claim that circulates in listings and forum posts and is simply false. Treat the frozen firmware the way you would treat any mature, feature-complete tool: it is done, not abandoned.

Frozen software is a recurring theme in this corner of the hobby, and it is not the insult people assume. If you appreciate the honesty of a project that stops when it is finished rather than churning forever, you will recognise the same energy in RetroPie sitting at v4.8 years after its last image. Stability is a feature, not a bug report.

Entering DFU mode (HWB + RESET)

You rarely need to flash — a shipping Retrode already runs 0.18c — but if you bought a used unit on an older build, or want the 0.18d beta to fix a specific detection bug, here is the safe path. The AT90USB646 carries an on-chip Atmel DFU bootloader. To enter it: hold the HWB button, briefly press and release RESET, then release HWB. The device drops off the mass-storage bus and re-enumerates as an Atmel DFU bootloader, which you can confirm by its well-documented ID 03eb:2ff9.

Flashing with dfu-programmer or FLIP

On Windows, Microchip's FLIP is the GUI route: select the AT90USB646 target, open the .hex, then erase, program and verify. On Linux and macOS, dfu-programmer is the scriptable CLI equivalent. The sequence is always the same three moves — erase, flash, launch — and the .hex you write is the official Retrode firmware image, nothing else.

# Enter DFU: hold HWB, tap RESET, release HWB. Then confirm:
$ lsusb | grep 03eb
Bus 001 Device 009: ID 03eb:2ff9 Atmel Corp. atmega/at90usb DFU bootloader

# Erase, flash the official image, launch the application:
$ dfu-programmer at90usb646 erase --force
$ dfu-programmer at90usb646 flash Retrode2_0.18c.hex
$ dfu-programmer at90usb646 launch

If lsusb never shows 03eb:2ff9, you are not in the bootloader — repeat the HWB/RESET dance. Never pull power mid-flash; the bootloader itself lives in protected memory, so a botched application flash is recoverable, but there is no reason to test that on a working unit.

Bending Behavior with RETRODE.CFG

Where the file lives and how it loads

The configuration feature landed in firmware 0.17g and survives in 0.18. When present, a plain-text file named RETRODE.CFG in the root of the mounted volume overrides the device's automatic behaviour. The Retrode reads it on mount; the status LED, which lights during ROM and SRAM access, blinks when a new configuration is parsed and written. Because the official documentation page for this file now redirects away, treat the specific values below as illustrative of the format — the key names are real and current, but always sanity-check against the device's own behaviour rather than a dead doc page.

The keys that matter

The high-value keys fall into three groups. For detection: forceSystem (override a mis-guessed console, e.g. GG for Game Gear), forceMapper (when the cartridge header lies about its mapper), forceSize (pin the ROM size when auto-sizing misreads) and detectionDelay (add settle time for a flaky cart). For filenames: filenameChksum (append a checksum so header-less carts get unique names instead of colliding), plus snesRomExt and segaRomExt to choose the output extension. For saves: sramReadonly, segaSram16bit and sramExt. Most people never write a CFG at all; you reach for it only when a specific cartridge misbehaves.

Writing saves back — the dangerous one

By default the Retrode exposes save data as write-protected: the .SRM files are read-only, which is why the earlier ls listing showed r-- on both the ROM and the save. To push a save back onto a cartridge — restoring a backup, or moving a save from an emulator onto real hardware — you set sramReadonly 0, reset, and copy your .SRM over the one on the volume. This genuinely writes to the cartridge's battery-backed SRAM, and a bad write corrupts the on-cart save. Do it deliberately, with a copy of the original .SRM already safe on your disk, and set sramReadonly back to 1 when you are done. Used carefully, this is exactly why the Retrode is a save-management tool and not merely a dumper.

# RETRODE.CFG - minimal save-management profile
# Place in the root of the mounted RETRODE volume.
sramReadonly    0      # allow writing saves back to the cart
forceSystem     auto   # let the header pick the console
filenameChksum  1      # unique names for header-less carts

Plug-In Adapters: N64, Game Boy, Master System

What is official versus discontinued

The Retrode 2's slots are SNES and Sega, but a set of plug-in adapters extends its reach. The current, official three are N64, Game Boy / Color / Advance (GBx) and Master System (SMS), sold at roughly $39.99 each in the US or about EUR 25 from DragonBox (with a three-adapter bundle around EUR 65). Older, more exotic adapters existed but are discontinued — the connectors became unobtainable — so ignore any listing promising a shelf of oddball converters.

Voltage and connection order

The adapters are not electrically identical, and getting this wrong risks the cartridge. The N64 adapter runs at 3.3 V, dumps ROM cleanly, supports up to two controllers, and must be connected before you plug the Retrode into USB. Its save support is still listed as "firmware pending," so treat N64 as ROM-only and back up N64 saves with a dedicated tool. The GBx adapter dumps ROMs for Game Boy, Color and Advance; it reads GB/GBC SRAM saves but lists GBA save/flash support as pending, and it switches voltage by system — 5 V for GB/GBC, 3.3 V for GBA. The SMS adapter dumps ROM and, since firmware 0.18, reads SMS SRAM; note that many Master System cartridges carry no header title, so expect to lean on filenameChksum and forceSystem.

The 32X and Super Game Boy question

Two "adapter" questions come up constantly, and the FAQ answers both. The Sega 32X, used as a passthrough cartridge adapter without its power supply, is the one full-console accessory confirmed to pass cartridge data through to the Retrode. The Super Game Boy and other full-console accessories do not — they are complete subsystems, not simple electrical passthroughs, so no cartridge data ever reaches the reader. If your plan hinged on dumping Game Boy carts through a Super Game Boy, buy the GBx adapter instead and save yourself an evening.

Five Common Pitfalls (and How to Fix Them)

Detection and data-integrity mistakes

Pitfall 1 — the charge-only cable. The single most common failure is a USB cable that carries power but no data: the Retrode's LED lights, nothing mounts, and you conclude the unit is dead. Swap to a known-good data cable straight into the machine before you troubleshoot anything else. It is the answer more often than it has any right to be.

Pitfall 2 — trusting a single dump. A cartridge with slightly oxidised contacts can produce a file that looks right and is subtly wrong. The fix is procedural, not technical: dump twice, compare the two files bit-for-bit, and only then match against a reference hash. Two identical reads plus a database match is the standard for a dump you intend to keep for a decade.

Save-data mistakes

Pitfall 3 — hot-swapping cartridges. Pulling a cartridge while the volume is mounted can corrupt its battery save. The manual is blunt: eject or unplug first, and use the RESET button to re-scan a freshly inserted cart. Never yank under power to save fifteen seconds.

Pitfall 4 — writing a save without a backup. Setting sramReadonly 0 and copying a .SRM over the cartridge is a real write to thirty-year-old SRAM. People do this once, get the file wrong, and overwrite a save they meant to preserve. Always copy the original .SRM off the device first; then write.

Cartridge-specific mistakes

Pitfall 5 — expecting SA-1/S-DD1/SVP carts to dump. Super Mario RPG, the Kirby games, Star Ocean, Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Virtua Racing will not produce a good dump on a Retrode 2, no matter how clean the contacts. Those co-processors gate ROM access; the limitation is physical. Do not spend an afternoon cleaning a cartridge that was never going to work on this device.

Pitfall 6 — believing the "0.22 firmware" myth. There is no firmware newer than 0.18d beta 3, and none that added enhanced-chip support. If a marketplace listing or forum post claims otherwise, it is wrong — and flashing a mystery "0.22.hex" from a stranger is a fine way to brick a working unit.

Troubleshooting Table and Diagnostics

The quick-reference table

Twelve of the most common symptoms, their usual causes, and the fix. Work top to bottom; the cheap fixes are near the top for a reason.

Reading a bad dump

When a supported cartridge produces a wrong file, the evidence is in the size and the hash. A ROM that is exactly half (or a quarter) of the expected size points at address lines not making contact — reseat and clean. A full-size ROM whose hash matches no region in the reference database points at data lines or a marginal read — dump again and compare the two files. A file whose size is not a clean power-of-two fraction usually means the auto-sizer guessed; pin it with forceSize and re-dump.

When to suspect the cart versus the Retrode

Isolate the variable. If every cartridge fails to mount, suspect the cable, the port or the firmware — not the carts. If one cartridge misbehaves while others dump cleanly, suspect that cartridge's contacts or its mapper. If a whole category fails — every Game Gear cart mis-detected, every Master System save missing — suspect a configuration or firmware-version issue and check the relevant forceSystem flag or your firmware level. The Retrode itself rarely fails; it has almost no moving parts and no storage of its own to corrupt.

Retrode 3: The 2026 Successor

What is new — NES, Wi-Fi and a browser UI

The official site calls the Retrode 3 the "successor to the Retrode2," and it is a genuine redesign rather than a refresh. It keeps the SNES/SFC and Mega Drive/Genesis slots, adds a native NES slot, and still reads both ROM and SRAM. The interface is the headline change: instead of a mass-storage volume, the Retrode 3 registers as a USB-Ethernet device and runs its entire UI in a web browser — no drivers, no install, point a browser at its local address and dump. It has built-in Wi-Fi, is Made in Germany, and — because the OS lives on a reflashable image — the company calls it "practically unbrickable." As of the 2026 product page the hardware is described as finished while the software is still in development; DragonBox has spoken publicly of "10 fully working prototypes" and is "looking for developers." Availability is targeted for the end of 2026 at under EUR 100, with the final date and price unconfirmed and only a "notify me" pre-registration open.

The MIPS-versus-ARM contradiction

Here is a detail worth flagging, because the official page contradicts itself. The opening description says the Retrode 3 is built around a MIPS processor running Linux; further down, the same page refers to "its own ARM processor and a Linux operating system (Debian)." Both cannot be true. Until the software settles and someone posts a /proc/cpuinfo, the honest description is "a Linux SoC running Debian" — and the contradiction is a fair reminder that this is pre-release hardware whose own marketing has not been fully proofread. What is not in doubt is the OS: Debian, on an SD image you can reflash if anything ever goes wrong.

Flash-carts and the open-source stack

The Retrode 3 is fully open source — the company frames it as "future-proof" for exactly that reason — and the code is public across several repositories under DragonBox-Shop on GitHub: retrode3-oscr (a Linux CLI adaptation of Sanni's Open Source Cartridge Reader), plus the kernel, the Debian userspace and the hardware repositories. Software is GPLv3, hardware CC BY 4.0, docs CC0. Beyond dumping, the browser UI can write flash carts: MegaDrive DragonDrive works today, with SNES and Lynx flashing slated for launch. The lineage matters — building on Sanni's cartreader means the Retrode 3 inherits a large, actively maintained body of cartridge-reading logic rather than reinventing it. If you want that same accuracy-first philosophy in a play-back device, the MiSTer Multisystem 2 comes at preservation from the FPGA side.

Advanced Tips and Preservation Workflow

Verifying against No-Intro and redump

A dump you cannot verify is a dump you cannot trust. The community reference for cartridge-based systems is the No-Intro database; disc systems use redump. After a dump, compute the SHA-1 and match it to the correct region entry — a mismatch on a clean cartridge is often just a region difference, not a bad read. RetroArch's built-in database scanner does this matching for you when it imports content; our guide to loading cores and scanning a library covers that import path, and the wider libretro documentation on databases and BIOS lives at docs.libretro.com. For the raw method, two independent dumps that are bit-for-bit identical is the field-expedient proof, and cmp is all you need.

Batch dumping and the CLI path

The Retrode 2 is a manual, one-cartridge-at-a-time device by design — there is no batch mode, and pretending otherwise leads straight to hot-swapping and corrupted saves. If you have a large collection to process, the discipline that scales is a naming-and-verification pipeline on the host: dump, hash, rename to the No-Intro canonical name, file into the library, then swap with RESET. The Retrode 3 changes the economics here, because it runs a real Linux userspace: the retrode3-oscr CLI can be scripted over SSH, which is the first time "automate the boring parts" has been a realistic sentence in Retrode's history.

# The Retrode 3 runs Debian and enumerates as USB-Ethernet.
# No drivers: point a browser at its local address (illustrative):
#   http://retrode3.local/

# Or drive the OSCR-derived CLI over SSH (illustrative syntax):
$ ssh retrode@retrode3.local
retrode3:~$ retrode-oscr dump  --slot snes --out /captures/
retrode3:~$ retrode-oscr sram  --slot snes --backup /captures/

Preservation-grade practice

If you are dumping for keeps, adopt the institutional habits: keep the raw dump untouched and make working copies from it; store the .SRM alongside the ROM, because a save is part of a cartridge's history; record the firmware version and the date; and never overwrite a battery save you have not first backed up. Once your ROMs are verified, they will run anywhere — drop them onto a Batocera install for a plug-and-play frontend, or into any libretro-based setup. The dump is the artifact; the emulator is interchangeable.

Complete Working RETRODE.CFG

The annotated reference file

Below is a complete RETRODE.CFG covering every key discussed in this guide. Drop it in the root of the mounted RETRODE volume; the device parses it on mount and blinks the LED when it does. Remember the framing: the key names are the real, current ones, but because the official CFG documentation page now redirects, treat the specific values as a well-formed example to adapt rather than gospel.

# ================================================================
#  RETRODE.CFG - complete reference (illustrative of the format)
#  Root of the RETRODE volume. Parsed on mount; the LED blinks
#  when a new file is read. Key NAMES are real; values are examples.
# ================================================================

# --- Save data --------------------------------------------------
sramReadonly    1      # 1 = protect on-cart saves (default); 0 = allow writes
segaSram16bit   0      # 1 only for the rare 16-bit-SRAM Sega carts
sramExt         SRM    # extension for save dumps (.srm)

# --- System / mapper detection ----------------------------------
forceSystem     auto   # auto | SNES | MD | GG | SMS - override bad detection
forceMapper     auto   # override the cart mapper when the header lies
forceSize       auto   # force ROM size in bytes if auto-sizing misreads
detectionDelay  0      # extra settle time before the bus read (flaky carts)

# --- Filenames --------------------------------------------------
filenameChksum  0      # 1 = append a checksum so no-header carts stay unique
snesRomExt      SFC    # extension for SNES dumps (.sfc / .smc)
segaRomExt      BIN    # extension for Sega dumps (.bin / .gen / .md)

A read-only preservation profile

For archival dumping you want the device to touch nothing it does not have to. Set sramReadonly 1 (protect every on-cart save), leave detection on auto so the header drives the filename, and enable filenameChksum 1 so that header-less carts still produce unique, collision-free files. This is the configuration to leave on the device 95% of the time — it cannot damage a save because it is not allowed to write one.

A save-management profile

When you are deliberately moving saves — restoring a backup, or migrating an emulator save to hardware — flip to sramReadonly 0, do the single write you came to do, verify the game boots and sees the save, then set sramReadonly back to 1 immediately. Treat write-enabled mode as a tool you pick up and put down, not a default state. For a faster, stripped-down version of this entire walkthrough aimed at people who just want SNES and Genesis dumps, our condensed 12-step Retrode 2 tutorial hits the essentials in about 25 minutes. Whichever profile you run, the rule underneath all of it is the same one the FAQ leads with: this is a tool for the cartridges you own, and it is deliberately, structurally, not for pirates.