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Well, I decided to update my Powerpak mappers from 1.32 (plus the loopy mappers) to 1.34 and have encountered a problem with playing NSFs or games with extra sound channels. Some games play the extra audio, while none of my NSFs will. Everything worked fine before updating.

Here's what I've done so far:
* Reformatted (not quick format) Kingston 1GB flash card
-Tried FAT
-Tried FAT32
* Downloaded 1.34 mappers from Retrozone and extracted to the card
* Checked roms and made sure they were good.
* Tried on my modded NES and Famicom (with modded adapter)


Games that work with extra sound since I updated:
- Akumajou Densetsu (J)
- King of Kings (J) (bad graphics, but just testing audio)
- Final Lap (J)
- Erika to Satoru no Yume Bouken (J)


Games that don't work properly sound wise:
- Mappy Kids (J)
- Sangokushi 2 - Haou no Tairiku (J)


NSFs I tested and don't work right since updating:
- Castlevania 3 - Dracula's Curse JP (VRC6)(1989)(Konami)
- Moryo Senki Madara (VRC6)(1990)(Konami)
- Gleylancer1 (N106)
- T_AkumajoDracula_VampireKiller_N106ver

I'm about to try going back to an older version of the mappers, but before I do I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions.

I never had NSF with extra sound working, but games with extra sound works for me.

I had this problem as well (only it was just the NSFs that were missing extra audio), and it was resolved by replacing a certain mapper file with an old version of it. I think it was M.MAP. Try replacing M.MAP with a pre-1.34 version and see if that helps.

joe1088 wrote:I had this problem as well (only it was just the NSFs that were missing extra audio), and it was resolved by replacing a certain mapper file with an old version of it. I think it was M.MAP. Try replacing M.MAP with a pre-1.34 version and see if that helps.

I tried replacing M.Map and NSF.NES from a 1.33 release and a 1.20 release I had on my drive and nothing bring the extra sound back for the NSFs. I even tried reformatting again and going back to my 1.20 release and it's still gone. Oh well, there's always PC-based NSF emulation I guess!

I spoke too soon! I found a zip file I had saved with an m.map and nsf.nes dated 11/10/2008 that seems to work great with VRC6 NSF files, but not at all with N106 ones. I think I got this zip file from Loopy's site back in the day.

Joe1088, does your NSF player play N106-enabled NSF files?

Guido Anchovy wrote:Joe1088, does your NSF player play N106-enabled NSF files?

Yes it does; all implemented expanded audio works now. The M.MAP I have is dated 11/29/2008. Checking Loopy's site, I see he has one dated 11/30/2008. Try here for the latest.

I did check and it was M.MAP that was the issue in my case.

Edit: Possibly also NSF.NES, like you mentioned. Try his latest version of that too.

Hmmm I have had this issue too. I wonder why bunnyboy doesn't include loopys mappers in to the official release?

Hmm wait he did:

NES Mappers v1.30
-------------
- Added many mappers written by loopy

But somehow these perhaps have been replaced in the official release?

Another issue I have had, while recording from my own nsf's using PP to play them. Is that in the beginning of the songs the sound gets a bit bad. This is solved by making a special "recording version of the nsf". I add a pattern of silence in FT and problem is solved. I guess this issue can be solved in the NSF-playing software, by adding 0,5 sec of silence before starting to play.

Anyone else had this problem? I've not but I've had an NTRQ user contact me to say DCM had stopped working on his PowerPak (using NTRQ and some games). I'm waiting to hear back as to whether he's using 1.34 mappers.

What's the official problem/fix?

the mappers at http://www.retrousb.com/downloads/POWERPAK134105.zip are a binary match to those at http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/NES/powerpak_loopy.zip

m.map and nsf.nes are exactly the same