VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

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Ben Boldt
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VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Ben Boldt »

I don't know much about this VT03 stuff, or how to tell if a famiclone has it. Are there any VT03's that take normal carts? Or are they all this 1-chip business that shares PRG and CHR on the same ROM chip? Ideally, I would like a VT03 PPU chip and hack it into a normal Famicom, but I am pretty sure this exists only as a glob with integrated CPU/PPU. Any advice on this?
NewRisingSun
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

There are famiclones built around a VT03 that take normal Famicom cartridges, yes. The CPU and PPU are always integrated into one blob though, -- hence "NES-on-a-chip" and not "NES-on-two-chips". :)
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Ben Boldt
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Ben Boldt »

Okay, cool. How can you tell if it is VT03? Is it just buying some and take a chance, or is there a good way to tell? Anything currently on AliExpress you could recommend? If there is some cheap handheld thing that I could rewire with a cart connector, that would be OK too.
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

https://hackaday.com/2020/05/11/teardow ... ation-nex/

Takes NES cartridges and has the word "VT03" printed on the PCB right next to the NOAC blob. The review part of this article is more negative than I think is warranted, though the NOAC does reverse the duty cycles, and is not compatible with MMC5 games and a few other unusual ones.
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Ben Boldt
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Ben Boldt »

That is really a cool one but it is pretty expensive. Anything possible that you know of around $10 on Aliexpress? How about these cheaps:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000204186463.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002830764988.html

I don't see any VTx games listed, so I suppose that's a bad sign. I am looking for a piece of garbage with VT03 glob in it, and possibility to attach a normal 60-pin connector. This "onebus" thing worries me, if all of the normal signals will be available coming out of the glob. Too bad you can't just buy a VT03 chip!
NewRisingSun
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

The thing is that the original VT03 is not being manufactured any more. VRT will only sell you VT32 or VT369, and I have no idea about whether those still have the signals to be used with regular cartridges.
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Ben Boldt
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Ben Boldt »

Aww crap. I always was intrigued what they did with that. There is always that temptation to break free of the confines of the Famicom, but that is kind of defeating the purpose in a way.

How official should we consider VT03? Is it like someone hacked an emulator and we should ignore that? Or is it something that deserves our attention as an almost legit upgrade? I’m torn by it. I was thinking I might understand it better if I tried it with a minimal investment, why I asked the original question.
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

Unlike hacked-up emulators, there is a hardware instantiation of it, one that preceded any software emulation attempts. Its place within the NES/Famicom universe is that it is a late development of unlicensed hard- and software, and so of interest to NES/Famicom "expanded universe" preservationists, while being of no interest to NES/Famicom "canon" (licensed+commercial-era unlicensed-but-not-bootleg) preservationists.

One reason to impart some sense of legitimacy to extended famiclones might be that they were used (on rare occasions) for fully-licensed material. Bandai Japan published a plug-and-play handheld gamepad consisting of a bunch of board/card games using the UM6578 in extended mode. Techno Source released official Atari and Intellivision ports using the same hardware, albeit running in NES-compatible mode. The current rights holders of Capcom, Data East, Namco, Taito and Technos titles licensed some of their games for inclusion on VTxx plug-and-plays. Konami allowed Majesco to port two of their Dance Dance Revolution titles to the VT03 platform, including one Disney title. There is a licensed VT369 handheld plug-and-play port of the computer game The Oregon Trail as well that is loosely based on the DOS version. Disney licensed their characters to Lexibook, including Minnie Mouse and Star Wars, who published fully-licensed Disney-themed hacks of Jungletac plug-and-play titles in their Compact Cyber Arcade handheld series that run on the VT369 famiclone, and a "Frozen"-themed Lexibook "Retro TV Game Console" that runs on the high-resolution (512x480) VT389 famiclone.
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Dwedit
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Dwedit »

Do the timelines add up properly for that? Software NES emulation was around 1997.
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NewRisingSun
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

I don't quite understand. What difference does it make that software emulation existed in 1997?
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Dwedit »

I probably misread your post then... I thought you claimed that the VTxx preceeded software emulation of the NES.
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

My meaning was that the VTxx hardware preceded the emulation of the VTxx, not the emulation of the NES. :)
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Ben Boldt
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Ben Boldt »

You're saying that if a hardware version comes first, then software emulator comes after that, it can be taken more seriously? How is it any less to have the software version come first?

If someone hacked up a Famicom emulator to do something new, then after that made a hardware version of that, wouldn't the hardware version technically be the emulator? Why does the hardware have to be the "real" one and the software version always the one that pretends to be like hardware?
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by NewRisingSun »

I was responding to two questions that you asked:
  1. "How official should we consider VT03?", and the answer was that it was official in the sense that it was used for some properly-licensed releases;
  2. "Is it like someone hacked an emulator and we should ignore that?", and the answer was that because there was a hardware instantiation of it, it is not like someone just hacked an emulator.
The sentence part "one that preceded any software emulation attempts" [of the VT03] was merely additional information with no relevance to the question of whether the VT03 should be considered or ignored.

In the end, your questions pertain to subjective value judgements rather than factual answers. I attempted to offer some criteria for making those value judgements.

The actual distribution of opinion, as I perceive it, is that only people on the Bootleg Games Discord express any interest in the VTxx and its games library, and I know that these people certainly do not hold that interest for the reasons I offered. So, any criteria I can offer about what should be taken seriously and what should be ignored are without practical relevance, as people will be interested or uninterested for their own idiosyncratic reasons.
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Ben Boldt
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Re: VT03 famiclone that takes normal carts?

Post by Ben Boldt »

I think VT03 is definitely interesting, but I am not sure whether to take it seriously. On one hand, it could potentially replace the Famicom in a way that the Super Famicom could not, supporting all existing games, with these new features lurking and sneaking in, potentially attempting to take over with limitless RHDN hack potential. On the other hand, it is obscure and most people don’t seem to care about it. And it is very difficult or expensive to obtain.

Just looking at our fanciest ASIC mappers with all this extra audio potential. It is there and has been there forever now. It isn’t that hard to hack the music of a game; it tends to be all packaged together as 1 chunk of code that gets called each frame, pretty easily replaceable. Yet almost no expansion audio hacks exist. Those that do have drawn very little interest. I think whatever is happening there is also what is happening with VT03, but VT03 has more disadvantage because the hardware is farther out of reach.

I suppose the interest in Famicom for most people is to run the old original stuff… Upgrades probably go the wrong direction for that. They feel nostalgic and seek escape from newer stuff, which is what brought them here, so why would they want something newer or better than exactly what they remember. That’s the best I can make of it.
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