Like I'm sure many of us interested in the FDS have experienced, the aging maroon box can be a bit of a handful. In my search for answers to why my FDS could be corrupting my disks, I found out about the FDSKey. As I studied teardown and calibration videos, I decided to pick one up to salvage the games I lost.
Being an open source project, I was initially hesitant on picking up the FDSKey from Save the Hero - there are of course cheaper alternatives, I could probably even fabricate it myself from various sources for cheaper - however, STH's FDSKey had a nice aesthetic and looked like a premium product in comparison to some of the garish toy-like ones I saw, so I took the plunge. And I can say, it was absolutely the right call. The build quality on this little monster is fantastic. It looks nice, it feels good to handle, the sdcard slot is easily accessible and the RAM port gives me a solid connection with little effort in both plugging and unplugging- that may seem like an unnecessary point, but in the process of rewriting disks it's quick and reliable ease of use is incredible. If you plan on picking up an FDSKey instead of fabricating one - pick this one for sure, you will absolutely not regret it. Even the screen is super clear!
Now for the FDSKey itself, I believe it is an absolute necessity for FDS owners. Backing up your disks and preserving both your game collection and your precious disk drive are going to be a necessity going forward. And with an early model FDS you can even rewrite disks, which has been a blessing for game collection (I recently had an Ai Senshi Nicol disk arrive with corrupted data on Side A and was able to successfully rewrite it with a backup)
TL;DR get an FDSKey, and get this one!
