Powerpak anybody own this and how is it?

[alienform]

I just ordered a Powerpak from retro zone anyone know
how good it works and i heard something about needing a
rom auditer??? or something of the sort to fix some games that will
now work. anyone know the bad about this product and good

Thanks for any help. Alienform

[tokumaru]

i heard something about needing a
rom auditer???

If a game doesn't run, but it's mapper number is listed as implemented, then there is probably something wrong with the header. When this happened to me I just looked into it on a game-by-game basis, since I did not buy a PowerPak to put my entire pirate ROM collection in it. If you are planning on putting a huge amount of games on your CF card, it'd be much faster to let a tool fix your headers for you.

anyone know the bad about this product and good

GOOD:

• You'll be able to play lots of games you do not own in cart form;
• Will give you better control over your saved games, since you'll be able to transfer them to/from your PC;
• You'll be able to play/test homebrew software;

BAD:

• Some mapper features are still not implemented correctly (such as the MMC3 scanline counter), so there will be glitches not present in the original games;
• Not perfect as a development tool, since it's BIOS will run before the program, altering the startup state;

This is all I can thing of right now.

[alienform]

Thanks For Your Help. Do you Know ANy Good tools to repair headers?

[GradualGames]

I've been fixing roms for my powerpak with Nestopia. I think in the first menu there's an "edit ines header." All I did was File...edit iNES header... then open your .nes rom, then don't do anything in the dialog box. Just hit Save As...once you have hit "ok" to save, a box will pop up saying do you want to fix the header (or something like that, forget the message). Just hit yes. For all my roms that had said: 'Bad File Header" in Powerpak, they now work fine!

[Memblers]

I don't have one, but it seems like the bad thing would be for development, having to move the flash card back and forth repeatedly for any kind of test. I've done that enough with chips+sockets, it gets old. Also I'm really surprised to hear that MMC3's scanline counting doesn't work.

The good thing would be putting a lot of stuff on the cart and just leaving it in the NES. And having an FPGA to play around with, if you're into that sort of thing.

[tokumaru]

having to move the flash card back and forth repeatedly for any kind of test.

Well, you don't typically do that so often. I needed some 6 or so tests to fine tune my latest scrolling-glitch-hiding technique, which was somewhat annoying, but usually I have a few days, or even weeks between tests on hardware. I do most of the work with emulators.

I guess that once you have the basic framework ready (video and audio), the rest is just logic, and since CPU emulation is much more accurate than PPU or APU emulation, emulators should be enough for the task.

[Memblers]

I guess that once you have the basic framework ready (video and audio), the rest is just logic, and since CPU emulation is much more accurate than PPU or APU emulation, emulators should be enough for the task.

Yeah that's usually true.

I've taken the opposite approach, usually when I was making the most progress I used my ROM emulator. Then I can just hit F9, reset the NES after a second or 2, and not even have to leave the code editor. Saves time. I also found it motivating to see/hear it running on the system, and of course the screen looks very different from emulators. NEStopia's tv mode seems closer to it. It also allowed me to eventually use my own boards that aren't emulated.

[tokumaru]

I've taken the opposite approach, usually when I was making the most progress I used my ROM emulator. Then I can just hit F9, reset the NES after a second or 2, and not even have to leave the code editor.

That's pretty cool! But there's the fact that you have zero debugging capabilities on a real NES. I mean, other than those you've programmed into the game yourself, but it's still much easier to look at FCEUXD's hex editor than writing a subroutine to display numbers somewhere on the screen. And there are kinds of debugging that I don't think are even possible with just the real console (CPU tracing, watching name tables, things like that).

[Jagasian]

Thanks For Your Help. Do you Know ANy Good tools to repair headers?

I have a PowerPak and I like it. The latest version of GoodNES (version 3.14) has a "fixnes" option that automatically fixes all of your ROM headers with a single command. I recommend using this technique as opposed to using Nesoptia because the Nestopia method requires manual work for each ROM.