Inside a famiclone

Discuss hardware-related topics, such as development cartridges, CopyNES, PowerPak, EPROMs, or whatever.

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DarkNova21
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Inside a famiclone

Post by DarkNova21 »

Hi!
I'm new in NES homebrew development. I don't know if this goes here or in another forum so I put here.
I have a question. Is it possible hack a famiclone? I'm not talking about consoles that use RetroArch (o something like that), I'm talking about a NOAC. A Chinese cheap console with 500 games in 1.

I just wanna port Doom for that XD :oops:
You just lost the game
Pokun
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Re: Inside a famiclone

Post by Pokun »

"Hack" as hacking the firmware in modern systems to allow running arbitrary code?

There is no such thing, the Famicom (and NOAC Famiclones are generally no different) doesn't have any firmware to hack, you just need to build your own cartridge (or use an existing flashcartridge), program your own game and it should run. There is nothing preventing you from running arbitrary code as long as you can connect your ROM chips to the system.


Doom sounds very ambitious to do on the Famicom hardware, even the Super Famicom struggles with it.
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tokumaru
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Re: Inside a famiclone

Post by tokumaru »

You're definitely not gonna be able to run a faithful port of Doom on a NOAC, unless that by "hacking" you mean entirely replacing the system's guts with a Raspberry Pi or something.

Like Pokun said, Nintendo's 8 bit consoles and its clones do not have any sort of firmware or OS, the software stored on the cartridge is given full control of the entire system, and there's only so much you can do with a 1.8MHz 8-bit CPU and a video chip with severe color limitations...

As a Raycasting enthusiast, I do believe that the NES can handle a modest first person shooter that doesn't play like complete crap, but you're definitely not getting anywhere near Doom using only original hardware.

The SNES received a fairly crappy version of Doom, and that was only possible because the cartridge had an extra CPU in it (the SuperFX chip). You could do something similar and build an NES/Famiclone cartridge with a powerful CPU and more memory, but that requires very advanced knowledge of electronics, and many people consider that level of "hacking" pointless anyway.
lidnariq
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Re: Inside a famiclone

Post by lidnariq »

As long as the famiclone supports disabling its nametables, I'd expect theRasterI's Doom hack to work adequately.
If we have to pack the display into normal NES PPU attribute regions it might be too much more image quality reduction.
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