General questions about NES clones
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djcouchycouch
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General questions about NES clones
Which one is considered the most accurate?
Do any support s-video?
Are there any known upcoming NES clones that are better than the currently released ones?
Do any support s-video?
Are there any known upcoming NES clones that are better than the currently released ones?
Right, the sound on the famiclones are off, the PPU isn't quite right, the video quality isn't quite as good as a deck loader and it will not run MMC5 games or any game that uses four-screen VRAM or name table ROM.
On the up shot I have never had any problems with games starting up on mine (it's a Yobo), the controllers it came with are actually pretty decent, it's never erased a save file (except when I kicked the power cord out of the wall), and it is very hard to crap out the game by bumping the cart or system.
All in all I'd say it's the best $20 I've ever spent. I highly recommend them as a good value. The quality is not the highest but the price is right
Now if you want to drop some real dough you could go get one of those VHS label maker NESes with the RGB output or something. I've never seen the point though.
On the up shot I have never had any problems with games starting up on mine (it's a Yobo), the controllers it came with are actually pretty decent, it's never erased a save file (except when I kicked the power cord out of the wall), and it is very hard to crap out the game by bumping the cart or system.
All in all I'd say it's the best $20 I've ever spent. I highly recommend them as a good value. The quality is not the highest but the price is right
Now if you want to drop some real dough you could go get one of those VHS label maker NESes with the RGB output or something. I've never seen the point though.
Are you sure it had perfect sound? I have one of these Dynacom clones, and I never realized there was anything wrong with the sound until it was pointed out to me. I never had a good ear for fine details, but when listening to them side by side the difference is obvious. I'll try to capture some samples later.IvanDSM wrote:Weird, i already saw a licensed Brazilian clone from Dynacom, and it had perfect sound and etc...
The Dynacom consoles do appear to be better than the average Chinese Famiclone, but they're still not perfect.
Yes, it was one of these Dynavision Blacks. It sounded perfect to me. The salesman put Super Mario Bros. and it was just like the original. Except it was a small 16:9 TV it was plugged on, lol.tokumaru wrote:Are you sure it had perfect sound? I have one of these Dynacom clones, and I never realized there was anything wrong with the sound until it was pointed out to me. I never had a good ear for fine details, but when listening to them side by side the difference is obvious. I'll try to capture some samples later.IvanDSM wrote:Weird, i already saw a licensed Brazilian clone from Dynacom, and it had perfect sound and etc...
The Dynacom consoles do appear to be better than the average Chinese Famiclone, but they're still not perfect.
I can't think of something cool to put here.
From what I've heard the NoaC are nearly perfect internally because they were just copies from looking at the internals of the Famicom and cloning them. The duty cycles got swapped apparently on some. Incompatibility with certain carts like MMC5 seems to be a wiring issue more than some internal issue. Things outside the very internals (CPU and PPU) may not be perfect as the wiring is external, so would the circuits that output the audio and video to the user. It would be great if someone had the source to the NoaC so that the duty cycle problem could be fixed as well as the wiring of the cartridge port to be done properly. It probably isn't that far from a perfect clone. It would be fantastic if it was fixed up. You can fit it on a tiny IC and would be perfect for making handhelds or just a small footprint console.
If you're going to start enhancing the NES, another 6K of WorkRAM ($800-$1FFF) would be nice. DMA from CPU bus to PPU bus would be handy too. While we are at it, overclocking without altering audio generation would be very neat as well. Other useful things would be a built in PPU based IRQ, like MMC5's scanline counter functionally. Oh another 2K for 4 nametables total would be nice to include as well.
I've seen three kind of Famiclones in first half of 1990s. They are probably 'generations', steps of increasing integration.
First kind is close to the original, with 2A03 clone, PPU clone (UMCs), SRAM chips, and some 74xx logic. Console had large two layers board with all these ICs and small one with 7805 and RF circuit.
Second kind had an epoxy bulb kind large IC, but also two SRAM chips. The bulb sometimes was on a separate small board that was soldered with pins into main single layer board with cart slot, SRAMs and gamepad connectors. These clones had two boards too.
Third kind is the NOAC, it had just an epoxy bulb IC, and almost no other components - quartz, few capacitors and resistors, rarely a transistor. These clones usually had three boards - one with gamepad connectors, other with cart slot and the chip (single layer), and third with 7805 and RF circuit.
More modern clones were like third kind, but the board was ultra-small. Originally it was similar to Famicom cart by size, and modern boards were like 2-3 times smaller.
None of these had the mixed duty cycles.
Sound and picture quality-wise, first and second kind were better, third kind had a lot of digital noise in sound and often vertical bars of bright, don't know how this called properly (noticeable on black background as array of wide vertical columns).
First kind is close to the original, with 2A03 clone, PPU clone (UMCs), SRAM chips, and some 74xx logic. Console had large two layers board with all these ICs and small one with 7805 and RF circuit.
Second kind had an epoxy bulb kind large IC, but also two SRAM chips. The bulb sometimes was on a separate small board that was soldered with pins into main single layer board with cart slot, SRAMs and gamepad connectors. These clones had two boards too.
Third kind is the NOAC, it had just an epoxy bulb IC, and almost no other components - quartz, few capacitors and resistors, rarely a transistor. These clones usually had three boards - one with gamepad connectors, other with cart slot and the chip (single layer), and third with 7805 and RF circuit.
More modern clones were like third kind, but the board was ultra-small. Originally it was similar to Famicom cart by size, and modern boards were like 2-3 times smaller.
None of these had the mixed duty cycles.
Sound and picture quality-wise, first and second kind were better, third kind had a lot of digital noise in sound and often vertical bars of bright, don't know how this called properly (noticeable on black background as array of wide vertical columns).