Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

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tepples
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tepples »

zzo38 wrote:Now what should be done is someone add the official names of registers to the wiki too, together with the unofficial names mostly used today.
Not so sure how wise that'd be. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd guess propagating names that came straight from leaked confidential docs might threaten the legitimacy of NES homebrew.
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Bregalad
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by Bregalad »

I seriously doubt anyone cares. It's not like homebrew has been based entirely on those documents that only leaked 30 years after their original intent (longer than the expiration time of a patent).

But yes those names are terrible, just like the ones that tepples made which are IMO pretty bad but still better than Rico's.
I'd still vote for adding them in addition to the register name and the names tepples made. That was, all the info is here, and anyone is free to use them as they want.

Someone with knownledge of japanese should definitely upload the "optional header" page with all the info from those documents. It's very interesting stuff I think.
tepples
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tepples »

I seriously doubt anyone cares.
Maybe I did overreact. Back when I was active on gbadev.org, I seem to remember there being a big no-no against even mentioning leaked official docs. Perhaps the difference is that I was writing homebrew for GBA while the system was still manufactured.
30 years after their original intent (longer than the expiration time of a patent).
Copyrights on the documents in question last longer than patents. Look at some of koitsu's recent locks of topics in SNESdev when That One Manual gets brought up.
doppelganger
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by doppelganger »

I'm still interested in seeing That One NES manual in English, though only as a historical artifact, just to see what the old devs had to work with in those days. :-)
Be whatever the situation demands.
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by Overload »

doppelganger wrote:I'm still interested in seeing That One NES manual in English, though only as a historical artifact, just to see what the old devs had to work with in those days. :-)
I don't believe an english NES manual exists. I'm pretty sure developers outside of japan had only the Japanese manual if any at all.
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tokumaru
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tokumaru »

I remember developers saying they had poorly translated versions of the Japanese docs.
BootGod
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by BootGod »

It is cool to see the header (or footer rather) documented. We talked about this a long time ago here http://forums.no-intro.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=445 (which is surprisingly close). With these docs, we fill in some more blanks

Code: Select all

FFE0-FFFFh: Game Title. 16 bytes max. ASCII codes 20h-5Ah allowed. Supposed to be right-justified.
FFF0-FFF1h: PRG checksum (last bank - 2 checksum bytes). NROM & CNROM, is the whole PRG. GNROM is last 32KB. UNROM & MMC is last 16KB.
FFF2-FFF3h: CHR checksum. 00h if RAM
FFF4h: Data sizes. Values: 0 = 8KB,1 = 16KB,2 = 32KB,3 = 128KB,4 = 256KB,5 = 512KB (No love for 64KB I guess)
	D7-D4: PRG size
	D3: 0 = CHR ROM, 1 = CHR RAM
	D2-D0: CHR size
FFF5h: Board Type.
	D7: 0 = H Scroll, 1 = V Scroll (invert to interpret as mirroring)
	D6-D0:	0 = NROM
		1 = CNROM
		2 = UNROM
		3 = GNROM
		4 = MMC (any)
FFF6h: Version? Should start at 1
FFF7h: Valid Title Length - 1. 0 if no title entered.
FFF8h: Maker Code. 1 = Nintendo, 2-254 = everyone else. 255 must be reserved.
FFF9h: Header Validation Byte. 8-bit checksum of FFF2-FFF9h should = 0.
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koitsu
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by koitsu »

The footer requirement was not obviously well-enforced, as there are all sorts of games which are "non-compliant" in this manner. I clearly see many Konami games which fill the region with $ff.
BootGod
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by BootGod »

Yeah the footer only shows up in maybe 1/4 of the games out there, and often enough even if it is present, the data is incorrect in some manner.
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tokumaru
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tokumaru »

BootGod wrote:

Code: Select all

D7: 0 = H Scroll, 1 = V Scroll (invert to interpret as mirroring)
"H Scroll" and "V Scroll" are very poor names to describe name table layout, because games can have any kind of scrolling with any kind of name table layout (different combinations will result in different kinds of artifacts at the edges of the screen, but all types of scrolling are always possible).
BootGod
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by BootGod »

tokumaru wrote:
BootGod wrote:

Code: Select all

D7: 0 = H Scroll, 1 = V Scroll (invert to interpret as mirroring)
"H Scroll" and "V Scroll" are very poor names to describe name table layout, because games can have any kind of scrolling with any kind of name table layout (different combinations will result in different kinds of artifacts at the edges of the screen, but all types of scrolling are always possible).
Not my wording, that was straight from the docs. Nintendo always seems to use the "scrolling" convention rather than mirroring. The H/V pads on their boards are the same story.
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tokumaru
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tokumaru »

BootGod wrote:Not my wording
I didn't say it was. :)
Nintendo always seems to use the "scrolling" convention rather than mirroring.
I'm totally fine with the convention, and I do think it's better than the "mirroring" convention, what I'm arguing is that the type of scroll a game uses is not directly related to the way name tables are mapped in the PPU's addressing space (will a game that scrolls both horizontally and vertically have both solder pads on the cart soldered? certainly no), so "scroll" is a bad word to define mapping.
The H/V pads on their boards are the same story.
They don't use the word "scroll" on the boards though, so that's fine.

I know I may be sounding somewhat grumpy, but the only reason I'm saying this is that as a programmer who knows that there are several different solutions for each programming problem, I find it bad to imply that a particular solution is mandatory for a particular problem. I don't want newbies to think they absolutely must use one type of name table mirroring/arrangement to scroll in a specific way, I want them to know that there are other things to consider.

I think it's OK to document Nintendo's wording for preservation reasons, but I don't think it should be used in new documents or Wiki pages if it may give people the wrong idea.
tepples
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tepples »

The mirroring page already mentions "horizontal arrangement" as a synonym for vertical mirroring and vice versa.
NewRisingSun
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by NewRisingSun »

On CPU/PPU pages 1 and 4, I notice that pin 30 is merely called X_OUT and described alongside X_IN (pin 29, previously named CLK). No mention of test registers either. I wonder if the early CPU versions that don't have periodic noise also lack the test registers.
Last edited by NewRisingSun on Sun Nov 03, 2013 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tepples
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Re: Several Famicom Nes Documents... in Japanese

Post by tepples »

It might differ between the early 2A03 and revision G.
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