nesdev.org

OK, so I have;

- a MacBook running OSX (10.5.x)
- a FamicomAV

And I want to be able to use the Famicom to test out music (reference sound, as there is no substitute for hardware) and play a few games etc.

What do I need from the PowerPak shop? Will just the basic PowerPak cart suit my needs, do I need it's more expensive cousin and is CopyNES any use to me (particularly as it seems like it needs a PC/Windows to work)? Do I need a 72-pin converter?

Thanks (and apologies to those people who I already had this discussion with on IRC )

Neil

I don't own one but to my here is the extend of my knowledge (which I hope is right):

For a famicom, you will need:

- The normal powerpak
- A 72 to 60 pins converter
- If you want to use sound like VRC6, namco etc, you will need to modify your powerpak yourself with a resitor at the right place for it


From what I understand, you cannot use a copy nes on a famicom without a lot of work. The power pak lite is for the copy nes so you can remove it from your list of choice.

As for the converter, it may be difficult to find thought.

edit:

As for myself, the way I do test on my famicom is by making a dev cart out of famicom game.

Thanks Banshaku.

Is there any merit in picking up a NTSC NES to use with PowerPak (Lite) + CopyNES? Or will it just not work with my computer anyway?

neilbaldwin wrote:Thanks Banshaku.

Is there any merit in picking up a NTSC NES to use with PowerPak (Lite) + CopyNES? Or will it just not work with my computer anyway?

From what I read since I never used it, the copy nes only works under windows. I saw something about linux in some thread here but I'm don't now it that means that it could work on mac osx.

If I understand well your needs, you want to do is to test your program on the real hardware, similar to my own needs. The powerpak or a home made dev cart is more than enough. CopyNes is with a ram cart is limited to a few mapper compared to a powerpak who can support a lot more.

It always depends what you want to do. If you don't have an eprom burner and the time to modify some cart, the powerpak is quite a good deal. The only problem (like me) is to find some adapter to make it work on a famicom. For that reason, I make my own devcart. If you do have access to an ntsc nes, that may save you some money along the way. I had a few of them when I was not living in japan. It was quite a mistake to have sold them actually.

Hi, Neil.

If you have an AV Famicom, you'll need the 60-72-pin converter for the PowerPak, as it's a regular NES cartridge. With a little modification to the inside of the converter, you can route the PPak expansion audio to the Famicom's audio out (though it does mute the overall Famicom audio, something you might not want for clean recordings.)

Anyway, stay away from the PowerPak Lite, as it's only for CopyNES. The regular (more expensive) PowerPak should work fine with your Mac as long as it accepts CF cards that are FAT formatted.

Since your main goal is music, and people talked about expansion audio, it should be noted that the PowerPak implementation of the various audio chips might not necessarily be 100% accurate.

So if you plan on using more than the standard audio channels, I suggest you invest on an EPROM programmer instead, and hunt down boards with the different sound hardware you plan to use and make devcarts out of those, otherwise the resulting music might not be 100% accurate, which I suppose is your goal when using a real NES/Famicom.

The PowerPak is certainly better for just playing games. Although making a few devcarts out of the most common boards so you can play a large number of games isn't a big deal, saving games is pretty much impossible (unless you have means of reading and writing RAM chips on the boards).

Thanks, everyone, for the input.

To clarify, yes I just want to be able to listen to my music on hardware - I don't need anything more fancy than that, really.

And I'm not particularly interested in expansion audio so I'm not concerned with that aspect at all.

Oh, and does anyone know what might happen if I plug my Famicom AV in with the polarity the wrong way. I mean, apart from being dead - is there an on-board fuse or will I have fried something bad?

ccovell wrote:Hi, Neil.

If you have an AV Famicom, you'll need the 60-72-pin converter for the PowerPak, as it's a regular NES cartridge. With a little modification to the inside of the converter, you can route the PPak expansion audio to the Famicom's audio out (though it does mute the overall Famicom audio, something you might not want for clean recordings.)

Anyway, stay away from the PowerPak Lite, as it's only for CopyNES. The regular (more expensive) PowerPak should work fine with your Mac as long as it accepts CF cards that are FAT formatted.

Actually the way I did it (its on my youtube acount vcr32) you dont get muted sound

edit: Neil iirc theres no fuse in the thing. So you'll probably blow up the 7805 regulator in the thing and I've heard of fried ram chips....just dont use the wrong polarity and you're safe.

edit2: here's a link to my vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsfUviciKxs

neilbaldwin wrote:Thanks, everyone, for the input.

Oh, and does anyone know what might happen if I plug my Famicom AV in with the polarity the wrong way. I mean, apart from being dead - is there an on-board fuse or will I have fried something bad?

Hopefully you didn't blow every chip on the board like I did when I accidentally "crossed the streams". I ended up replacing all of the chips on the thing from a NES board I had laying around.

http://home.comcast.net/~guidoanchovy/f ... owedup.jpg

Oh no

Crap....you did it? Ouch, well it might just be the 7805 regulator that blew up.
I DID warn you on irc though. Stil too bad

Jeroen wrote:Crap....you did it? Ouch, well it might just be the 7805 regulator that blew up.
I DID warn you on irc though. Stil too bad

And I did tell you I was cursed with those sorts of things

In actual fact, I got it the correct way first time but the screen stayed black so I swapped the polarity, thinking that would fix it.

There's a reason I'm not an electrical engineer.

So it might seem that the unit was faulty before I plugged it in, but now I've killed it I don't even have any comeback for the Ebay dude.



Luckily I known someone who can fix it for me. But oh, the shame.

Does your screen accept ntsc? Also did you use AV cables? Like those that come with snes? Rgb ones (scart) won't work with the av famicom.

Jeroen wrote:Does your screen accept ntsc? Also did you use AV cables? Like those that come with snes? Rgb ones (scart) won't work with the av famicom.

NSTC - yes.

SNES cable - yes.

Trouble is, I need to wait until tomorrow before I can get someone to take it apart and assess the damage.

Also, more cause for woe - where on earth do you get a 72-pin converter from!? All sources seem to have dried up, apart from a couple of site that try to flood my screen with pop-ups for credit reports which out of principle I will not deal with.