We had a troublesome time loading games tonight, the clock speed of the game processing appeared to be very slow, music was half-speed, and some graphics on certain games failed to draw properly as a result.

I was afraid my unit was borked.

We had left it powered off for probably a handful of months.

Luckily, connecting it to PC and flashing the latest firmware, caused it to start working properly again.

One supposes that the FPGA must lose its memory bit by bit over time, requiring to be powered on regularly, or flashed again.

It's a good warning to owners: You should make sure you have the executable, and latest firmware backed up somewhere on your own storage, in the unfortunate event that the retrousb website someday fails to continue existing.

If I have to be re-flashing this device in thirty years, to keep it working, I'm glad I backed up the firmware and the installation tools.