Retrode 2026: Dump SNES & Genesis in 12 Steps, 20 Min

The Retrode is the least glamorous preservation device you will ever plug in, and that is precisely the point. It does not upscale. It does not stream. It has no companion app, no login, and no opinion about your library. You push a cartridge into a slot, a small FAT volume appears on your desktop, and on that volume sits a file that is, byte for byte, the game you already own. Then it gets out of the way.

In 2026 the shipping unit is still the Retrode 2, still $99.99, and its firmware has not meaningfully moved since roughly 2016. The long-promised Retrode 3 — MIPS, Debian, a browser interface, and a new NES slot — remains an out of stock, notify me placeholder aiming, as it has aimed for some time now, at "the end of the year." This tutorial is therefore about the hardware that actually exists on desks today, with a clear-eyed section at the end on the one that does not.

What follows is a full workflow: prerequisites and exact versions, twelve numbered steps with the reasoning behind each, the RETRODE.CFG directives that most guides skip, a DFU firmware procedure that will not brick your unit, a twelve-row troubleshooting table, and a complete working configuration you can copy. Budget about twenty minutes for your first cartridge and five for every one after.

What the Retrode Actually Is (and Isn't)

Before you touch a cartridge, understand what class of device this is. The confusion in most write-ups comes from treating the Retrode as a "flasher" or an emulator. It is neither. It is a memory reader that lies to your operating system in a very specific, very useful way.

A cartridge slot that pretends to be a USB stick

The Retrode 2 is a composite USB device. It enumerates simultaneously as a USB mass-storage device — a tiny removable drive — and as one or more USB HID gamepads. The mass-storage half is the entire trick. As the official FAQ puts it, the firmware "wraps whatever memory chips there are on the cartridge into virtual files on a USB drive." The ROM chip becomes a read-only ROM file; the battery-backed save RAM becomes a small .srm you can, with permission, write back. There is no dumping software to run because the "dump" is just a file copy.

Because it speaks two USB classes that every operating system has supported since the previous decade, there are no drivers to install. Windows, macOS, and Linux mount it on sight — as did the Pandora and Caanoo handhelds it was originally designed alongside. The HID half means you can plug a real SNES or Sega pad into the ports on top and use it as a controller for the emulator you play the ROM in. That is the whole product: read chips, present files, pass through pads.

Retrode 2 versus Retrode 3, as of mid-2026

The unit you can buy is the Retrode 2, second revision, sold through DragonBox and Stone Age Gamer. Its brain is an Atmel AT90USB646 AVR microcontroller running LUFA-based firmware, per the device's Wikipedia entry. Native slots are SNES/Super Famicom (the upper, wider slot) and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (the lower, shorter slot). The Retrode 3, by contrast, is a from-scratch redesign: a MIPS processor running Debian Linux with built-in Wi-Fi that presents itself over USB-Ethernet and runs entirely in a web browser. It adds an NES slot. It is not for sale. We will return to it, but do not wait for it.

What it flatly refuses to do

The Retrode reads memory chips on a board. It does not emulate the cartridge's coprocessors. Games whose boards carry an SA-1, an S-DD1, or Sega's Virtua Processor — chips that, in the official FAQ's words, "sit between console and ROM/RAM chips and act as sort of a copy protection mechanism" — are not supported. So Super Mario RPG (SA-1), Star Ocean (S-DD1), and Virtua Racing (SVP) will not dump correctly. By contrast, Super FX and DSP1 titles dump fine, because those coprocessors are reimplemented in the emulator at playback time, not required at read time. Star Fox and Super Mario Kart come off clean. Know which of your carts are on the blacklist before you blame your contacts.

Prerequisites: Hardware, Software, and Versions

This is a short list because the Retrode's entire virtue is that it needs almost nothing. The mistakes people make are in the "almost."

Hardware on the desk

• A Retrode 2 — $99.99 from Stone Age Gamer, which ships as the unit, a USB cable, and an instruction sheet. Nothing else is in the box.
• The cartridges you want to dump. SNES/SFC and Mega Drive/Genesis work out of the box. Confirm none of them use SA-1, S-DD1, or SVP.
• Optional plug-in adapters, $39.99 each: Nintendo 64, Game Boy/Color/Advance, and Sega Master System. More on their quirks below.
• A USB 2.0 port that supplies clean power. On a laptop that is stingy with bus current, use a self-powered USB hub. Flaky power is the second-most-common cause of bad reads.
• 99% isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs. Thirty-year-old edge connectors are the number-one cause of truncated dumps. This is not optional.

Software — the drivers you will not install

For dumping itself: a file manager. That is the entire software prerequisite, because the device is standard USB mass storage. For verification you want a checksum tool — sha1sum on Linux/macOS, CertUtil -hashfile on Windows — and a No-Intro or Redump reference database to compare against. For playback you want a libretro core; our walkthrough on picking the right RetroArch core covers Snes9x, bsnes, and Genesis Plus GX. For firmware work only — and only if you have a specific reason — you need Atmel FLIP on Windows or dfu-programmer 0.7.2 or newer on Linux/macOS.

Firmware baseline: know before you change

Check what you have before you touch anything. The last public builds are 0.18c (stable) and 0.18d beta 3. The RETRODE.CFG configuration feature this tutorial relies on has existed since firmware 0.17g, so any modern unit supports it. One specific bug — forceSystem GG not being recognized — was fixed in 0.18d beta 3. If your unit predates that and you need Game Gear detection through the Master System adapter, that is your one legitimate reason to reflash. Otherwise: most units in the wild are fine exactly as they shipped. Do not reflash for sport.

Dumping a Cartridge in 12 Steps

These twelve steps take a first-timer about twenty minutes and a practiced hand about five. Each one carries a reason, because a step you do not understand is a step you will skip at the worst moment.

Before you start the clock: the legal reality

The cartridge in the slot is yours. The ROM you pull off it is a copy, and what you may lawfully do with a copy depends on where you live. "I owned the original" is a mitigating fact, not a talisman. Dumping your own cartridge for your own backup sits in a jurisdiction-dependent gray zone; downloading or redistributing ROMs you do not own does not — that part is settled, and not in your favor. The University of Maryland's institute has written about the Retrode specifically as a preservation tool, which is the framing that keeps you honest. Dump what you own. Archive it. Do not seed it.

The twelve steps

1. Clean the cartridge edge connector. Dampen a swab with 99% isopropyl alcohol, wipe the exposed contacts until the swab comes away clean, and let it dry fully. Oxidation and grime on a three-decade-old connector are the single largest cause of truncated or garbage dumps. Do not blow into the cartridge — the Sega-era ritual pushes moisture onto the contacts and accelerates corrosion.
2. Seat the cartridge in the correct slot, fully. The lower, shorter slot is Sega Mega Drive/Genesis; the upper, wider slot is SNES/Super Famicom. Push until it stops. A partial seat is worse than no seat: it produces a mount that looks fine and reads pure noise.
3. Attach any adapter before you connect USB. If you are dumping N64, Game Boy, or Master System, the adapter must be plugged into the Retrode before the USB cable, because the firmware probes attached hardware at enumeration. Hot-attaching an adapter after the drive has mounted will not be detected.
4. Connect the USB cable — this powers and mounts the device. There is no power switch. Use a rear or powered port; a laptop's under-fed front port is a common source of intermittent reads. Within a second or two a small FAT volume appears.
5. Confirm detection and read the directory. The filenames are derived from the cartridge's internal header, uppercased and truncated to 8.3. Seeing RETRODE.CFG alongside a .sfc or .bin file means the read succeeded. A representative listing:

   $ ls -la /run/media/you/RETRODE/
   -r--r--r-- 1 you you 3145728 Jan  1 2000 SUPERMET.SFC
   -r--r--r-- 1 you you    8192 Jan  1 2000 SUPERMET.SRM
   -r--r--r-- 1 you you     512 Jan  1 2000 RETRODE.CFG

   SNES ROMs appear as .sfc, Sega ROMs as .bin, and save RAM for either as .srm.
6. Copy the ROM to local disk — do not work in place. Reading repeatedly across a USB bus from a thirty-year-old connector is asking for a mismatched byte. Copy once, then operate on the local file:

   $ mkdir -p ~/roms/incoming
   $ rsync -h --info=progress2 /run/media/you/RETRODE/SUPERMET.SFC ~/roms/incoming/
   $ ls -l ~/roms/incoming/SUPERMET.SFC
   -rw-r--r-- 1 you you 3145728 Jul 13 11:02 SUPERMET.SFC

7. Sanity-check the size. Super Metroid is 24 megabits, which is 3,145,728 bytes. If your copy is 512 KB, you either had a bad seat or you tried to dump a coprocessor cart the Retrode cannot handle. ROM sizes are powers of two or well-known mapper sizes; anything else is a red flag.
8. Copy the SRAM save, if the cart has one. The .srm is your battery-backed progress. Copy it now, because the CR2032 keeping it alive has been draining for thirty years. Not every cart has a save — a missing .srm is normal for action titles that never wrote to SRAM.
9. Eject and unmount before you remove the cartridge. The user guide is explicit: "Hot-swapping cartridges (with the Retrode connected to the computer) is possible, but it can potentially damage on-cartridge savegames." Unmount the volume in your OS, then pull the cart. This one line prevents the most heartbreaking failure mode.
10. Verify the checksum against a database. Compute the SHA-1 and compare it to the No-Intro DAT for that title. A match certifies a known-good dump; a miss almost always means dirty contacts. Re-clean and re-dump before you trust it:

    $ sha1sum ~/roms/incoming/SUPERMET.SFC
    9c9e6a...(full 40-hex string)...  SUPERMET.SFC
    # Compare against the No-Intro DAT. Match = good. Miss = re-clean, re-dump.

11. Rename to the canonical title. SUPERMET.SFC is an 8.3 header artifact, not a filename you want in an archive. Rename to the No-Intro canonical name — Super Metroid (USA).sfc — so your frontend scrapes correct metadata and box art. Keep the raw dump too; provenance matters.
12. Archive, hash, and log. Store the renamed ROM, the save, the raw dump, and a checksum file together in a per-title folder, and append a line to a manifest. A preserved ROM you cannot prove the provenance of is a rumor, not an archive.

What a successful run looks like

After twelve steps you should have a local directory containing a correctly-sized ROM whose SHA-1 matches a public database, an optional save file, and the untouched original dump. If all three are true, the cartridge is preserved. Everything past this — playing it, loading it onto a handheld, or importing your save into an emulator — is downstream of that verified file. Where you take it next is a matter of taste; a budget handheld like the Miyoo Mini Plus will happily run it.

The RETRODE.CFG File Most Guides Ignore

The single file that separates a casual Retrode user from someone who can wrestle an awkward cartridge into a clean dump is RETRODE.CFG. It is a plain-text configuration file that lives on the virtual drive, and almost nobody reads it.

Where it lives and when it is read

Every time the Retrode mounts, RETRODE.CFG appears in the root of the volume alongside your ROM and save files. The firmware parses it at power-up, so any change you make takes effect on the next reset or re-enumeration — unplug and replug, or press the RESET button, and the new directives apply. This is why config changes never appear to "do anything" until you power-cycle: the file is read once, at boot.

The four directives that matter

The configuration feature has existed since firmware 0.17g, and the directives that earn their keep are these four:

• sramReadonly — 1 (default) makes save files read-only; 0 lets you write an .srm back onto the cartridge. This is the switch that turns the Retrode from a reader into a save-restore tool.
• forceSystem — overrides auto-detection when the header is ambiguous or the adapter serves multiple systems. The canonical example is GG to force Game Gear behavior through the Master System adapter.
• forceSize — overrides the ROM size the cartridge header declares, for homebrew or reproduction boards whose headers lie.
• forceMapper — overrides a mis-detected memory mapper, for the rare board that identifies itself incorrectly and produces a scrambled dump.

An illustrative config, with a warning

A minimal file looks like this. One directive per line:

# RETRODE.CFG - one directive per line.
sramReadonly 0
forceSystem GG
forceSize 4
forceMapper 0

Treat the syntax above as illustrative of the format, not gospel on the exact delimiter. The RETRODE.CFG already present on your mounted volume is the authoritative template — open it, match its comment character and spacing exactly, and edit conservatively. When in doubt, the full Retrode user guide is archived in plain text and is the primary source.

Reflashing Firmware Over DFU Without Bricking

Ninety percent of readers should skip this section entirely. The firmware is frozen and the hardware works. But if you have a genuine reason — a specific bug, a corrupted flash, or a unit that predates a fix you need — here is how to do it without turning a $99.99 device into a paperweight.

Whether you should touch it at all

The Retrode's firmware is built on Dean Camera's LUFA USB stack for AVR microcontrollers, and it has not received a public update in years. There is no feature waiting for you in a newer build; the last ones are 0.18c stable and 0.18d beta 3. Reflash only to fix a named problem — for example, to gain forceSystem GG support if your unit is older than 0.18d beta 3 — or to recover a unit whose firmware got corrupted. If it dumps cartridges correctly today, close this section.

Entering the bootloader: HWB, then RESET

The Retrode has two buttons: HWB (button 7 in the guide, for custom firmware functions) and RESET (button 8). To enter the Atmel DFU bootloader, hold HWB, press and release RESET, then release HWB. The order is the whole game. The device re-enumerates as a bootloader with the well-documented Atmel vendor/product ID 03eb:2ff9 for the AT90USB646:

# After HWB + RESET, confirm the bootloader enumerated:
$ lsusb | grep 03eb
Bus 001 Device 021: ID 03eb:2ff9 Atmel Corp. at90usb646 DFU bootloader

Flashing with FLIP or dfu-programmer

On Windows, Atmel's FLIP utility gives you a GUI: select the AT90USB646, load the .hex, erase, program, verify. On Linux or macOS, dfu-programmer does the same from a terminal:

$ sudo dfu-programmer at90usb646 erase --force
$ sudo dfu-programmer at90usb646 flash retrode-0.18c.hex
$ sudo dfu-programmer at90usb646 reset

After reset, power-cycle the unit and confirm it re-mounts as a normal Retrode. Because the DFU bootloader lives in a protected section of the chip, a failed application flash does not destroy your ability to re-enter DFU and try again — which is why this device is very hard to brick if you follow the button sequence. If erase complains, the --force flag on newer dfu-programmer builds handles the chip's security check.

Backing Up and Restoring SRAM Saves

The Retrode is, quietly, one of the best save-backup tools in existence. It reads the battery-backed SRAM off a cartridge as a file, and — with one config change — writes it back. For anyone whose childhood save is sitting behind a thirty-year-old coin cell, this is the reason to own the device.

Why saves are read-only out of the box

By default, the Retrode presents save files as write-protected. The user guide states it plainly: RAM files "are by default write-protected." This is deliberate. An accidental drag-and-drop or a stray write from your OS's indexing service could otherwise overwrite a decades-old save with garbage. The device treats your save as precious until you explicitly tell it not to.

Enabling writes safely

To restore or edit a save, set sramReadonly 0 in RETRODE.CFG, power-cycle, and then copy an .srm over the virtual save file. The rules are strict: it must be the same game and the same save size, and you must never hot-swap while the volume is mounted. Copy the file, unmount, then remove the cart. Get the size wrong and you corrupt the save you were trying to write.

The dying-battery — and continue-on-hardware — use case

Two workflows justify this. First, the rescue: pull every save off every cart you own now, before the CR2032 cells finish dying, and you have permanent backups. Second, the round trip: play in an emulator on the couch, export the .srm, write it back onto the real cartridge, and continue on original hardware. Note the limits — the Retrode handles SRAM saves; GBA flash and EEPROM save types remain listed as "pending" and are not reliably supported. For SNES and Genesis battery saves, it is the cleanest tool there is.

Beyond 16-Bit: N64, Game Boy, and Master System Adapters

The base Retrode 2 is a two-slot 16-bit machine. Three plug-in adapters extend it, each $39.99, each with its own personality documented on the official plug-in adapters page.

The current $39.99 adapters and what they read

Three adapters remain in production: Nintendo 64, Game Boy/Color/Advance, and Sega Master System. Others that once existed have been discontinued because their edge connectors became unobtainable — a quiet reminder that this is boutique hardware built on a supply chain of thirty-year-old parts. Each adapter attaches to the same expansion interface and, critically, must be connected before you plug in USB.

N64 quirks

The N64 adapter reads ROMs correctly; save support has historically been listed as "firmware support pending." It runs at 3.3V, supports up to two controllers, and — like all adapters — must be connected before the USB cable. N64 dumps are large and the connector is fussy, so cleaning matters even more here. If your goal is N64 output on a modern television rather than emulation, dedicated FPGA hardware such as an Analogue 3D is the complementary path — dump with the Retrode, play on the FPGA.

Game Boy and Master System caveats

The Game Boy adapter reads GB, GBC, and GBA ROMs, and GB/GBC SRAM saves. GBA SRAM and flash saves are "pending." Watch the voltage: GB and GBC cartridges run at 5V, GBA at 3.3V, and the adapter handles the switch — but this is why you should never improvise your own wiring. The Master System adapter reads ROMs fine; its SRAM support is pending, and because many SMS cartridges carry no readable header title, the Retrode often cannot name the file. Expect a generic filename and rename by hand after you have identified the dump by checksum.

Five Pitfalls That Ruin a Dump

Every one of these has cost someone an afternoon. They are ordered by how often they happen, not how bad they are.

Hot-swapping and dirty contacts

Pitfall 1 — Hot-swapping a live cartridge. Pulling a cart while the volume is mounted can corrupt the on-cartridge save. Fix: unmount in your OS every single time before removing a cart, exactly as the user guide warns.

Pitfall 2 — Dirty or oxidized contacts. This produces truncated files, wrong sizes, and checksums that never match. Fix: 99% isopropyl alcohol and a swab, every cart, before the first read.

Bad power and in-place reads

Pitfall 3 — Under-powered USB. A stingy laptop port causes intermittent reads that look like flaky hardware. Fix: a self-powered USB 2.0 hub or a rear desktop port.

Pitfall 4 — Working directly off the mounted volume. Repeatedly reading a large ROM across USB stresses the connection and invites a single flipped byte. Fix: copy to local disk once, then verify and operate on the copy.

Wrong expectations: coprocessors and full-console adapters

Pitfall 5 — Trying to dump an unsupported cart. SA-1, S-DD1, and SVP titles will not come off correctly, and no amount of cleaning changes that. Fix: check your cart against the blacklist before you start. A bonus sixth trap: the SNES mouse works only in the left controller port, and the Super Game Boy and RetroPort adapters do nothing at all, because they are full consoles that do not pass cartridge data through. That is by design, not a defect.

Troubleshooting: 13 Failure Modes in a Table

When a thirty-year-old edge connector decides today is the day, this table gets you back to a clean dump. Read the symptom column first.

Detection, reads, and hardware

Reads that finish but produce a bad file

The nastiest failures are the ones that complete. A dump that is the right size but the wrong checksum is almost always contacts — clean and repeat, and if it persists on one specific cart, suspect a coprocessor board. A dump that is exactly half or a quarter of the expected size points at a mapper mis-detection you can sometimes fix with forceMapper or forceSize.

Controller and adapter gremlins

If a pad or accessory misbehaves, the answer is almost always "it is not a standard SNES or Sega pad." The Retrode implements standard controllers only. The SNES mouse is the one documented exception, and only on the left port.

Advanced Tips: Verify, Automate, Preserve

Once you can dump one cartridge, the interesting problem is dumping a hundred without introducing a single bad file. That is a discipline problem, and it is solved with checksums and scripts.

Checksum verification against No-Intro and Redump

A dump is not preserved until it is verified. Compute the SHA-1 of every ROM and compare it against the No-Intro DAT for cartridge systems (SNES, Genesis, Master System, Game Boy) or Redump for disc-based systems. A match means your dump is byte-identical to a community-verified reference. A mismatch is not a catastrophe — it is a signal to clean the contacts and re-dump. Keep the checksums.sha1 file next to the ROM so a future sha1sum -c can re-prove it years later.

Scripting batch dumps

Because the Retrode presents a mounted volume, automation is trivial: watch the mount, copy the ROM and save, hash them, and append to a manifest. A minimal loop copies everything on the current mount and records a hash for each file, so a session of swap-copy-swap-copy leaves you with a verifiable log rather than a folder of mystery files. The full script is in the configuration section below.

Where to actually play your dumps

A verified ROM is a starting point, not a destination. On a PC or a handheld, load it into a libretro core; our RetroArch core guide walks through which core to trust for each system. For a living-room build, flash a dedicated retro OS — our Batocera flashing walkthrough gets you from ISO to boot in a half hour. And for accuracy purists, cartridge-faithful FPGA hardware like the MiSTer Multisystem will run your dump with cycle-level fidelity. The Retrode's job ends at the verified file; everything after is your preference.

The Retrode 3: What's Coming, and When (Late 2026)

Every conversation about the Retrode eventually arrives at the sequel that keeps almost-arriving. Here is the honest state of it as of July 2026.

MIPS, Debian, and a browser instead of a mount

The Retrode 3 is a ground-up redesign. Instead of an AVR microcontroller presenting a USB mass-storage volume, it runs Debian Linux on a MIPS processor with built-in Wi-Fi. It registers as a USB-Ethernet device, so — in DragonBox's words — it "works on all modern systems without drivers," and you operate it "entirely in your web browser." The target price is "under 100 EUR," and because the OS reflashes from an image, the makers describe it as practically unbrickable. It also adds a third native slot: NES.

NES support and Sanni's Cart Reader lineage

The software is not a from-nothing effort. The Retrode 3 is built on Sanni's open-source Cart Reader, the sprawling community dumper that already supports dozens of systems, adapted into a Linux command-line tool in the DragonBox-Shop retrode3-oscr repository. The stated licensing is generous — GPLv3 for software, Creative Commons for hardware and docs. The pitch is Retrode-2 plug-and-play with Cart Reader flexibility, which, if it ships, is genuinely compelling.

Should you wait?

No. The Retrode 3 product page reads "out of stock," offers only a notify-me signup, and has been "aiming for availability by the end of the year" through more than one end-of-year, citing supply-chain constraints. That is not cynicism — hardware is hard, and a two-person operation building boutique dumpers on legacy connectors deserves patience. But if you need to preserve cartridges in 2026, the Retrode 2 works today, at $99.99, with a decade of documented behavior behind it. Buy the 2 now. Watch DragonBox for the 3.

A Complete, Working Configuration

Everything above, distilled into files you can copy. Adapt the paths to your system.

The annotated RETRODE.CFG

A working template. Remember the file already on your mounted volume is authoritative — match its exact syntax if it differs from this:

# ---------------------------------------------------------------
# RETRODE.CFG - working template (Retrode 2, firmware 0.18c/0.18d)
# One directive per line. The RETRODE.CFG already on the mounted
# volume is authoritative - match its exact syntax.
# ---------------------------------------------------------------

# Allow writing SRAM saves back to the cartridge.
# 1 = read-only (default, safe). 0 = writes enabled.
sramReadonly 0

# Override auto-detected system when the header is ambiguous.
# Example: GG forces Game Gear via the Master System adapter.
# Leave commented to trust auto-detection.
# forceSystem GG

# Override the ROM size the header declares (homebrew/repro).
# forceSize 4

# Override a mis-detected mapper. Leave off unless a dump verifies wrong.
# forceMapper 0

A dump-and-verify script

This copies whatever is mounted, hashes each file, and logs it to a manifest you can later check against a No-Intro DAT:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# retrode-dump.sh - copy the mounted cart, hash it, log it.
set -euo pipefail

SRC="${1:-/run/media/$USER/RETRODE}"
DEST="${2:-$HOME/roms/incoming}"

if [ ! -d "$SRC" ]; then
  echo "Retrode not mounted at $SRC" >&2
  exit 1
fi

mkdir -p "$DEST"
manifest="$DEST/manifest.csv"

for f in "$SRC"/*.SFC "$SRC"/*.BIN "$SRC"/*.SRM; do
  [ -e "$f" ] || continue
  base="$(basename "$f")"
  cp -v "$f" "$DEST/$base"
  sum="$(sha1sum "$DEST/$base" | cut -d' ' -f1)"
  echo "$base,$sum,$(date -Iseconds)" >> "$manifest"
done

echo "Done. Verify hashes in $manifest against a No-Intro DAT."

A folder layout that survives a decade

Store the canonical ROM, the save, and the untouched raw dump together, with a checksum file. Provenance is the whole point of preservation:

~/roms/
  archive/
    snes/
      Super Metroid (USA)/
        Super Metroid (USA).sfc      # renamed, canonical
        Super Metroid (USA).srm      # battery save backup
        checksums.sha1               # sha1sum -c input
        raw/
          SUPERMET.SFC               # untouched Retrode dump
          SUPERMET.SRM
  incoming/                          # staging from retrode-dump.sh
    manifest.csv

That is the entire discipline: dump, verify, rename, archive the raw copy, log the hash. Do it once per cartridge and the file you produce will outlive the coin cell, the connector, and — at the current rate — the wait for the Retrode 3.