http://soundcloud.com/andy_l/andy-l-pr8-famicom-loops popped up some fresh loops from the little beastie here :O) \o_
Last edited by ne7 (Mar 21, 2012 12:04 pm)
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Milwaukee, WI
Hey everyone, I have good news and bad news.
Bad news - I tested this with a third NES Open cart, Shingen the Ruler cart and Ultima Exodus cart and they all had the same exact no sound/glitch/freeze behavior. I soldered both sides/used the correct eproms/etc. No luck.
Good news - Stagediver happened to be over later that night. I showed him the problem and he called me a noob and got it working using some bizarre power reset method. I asked him why it works and he responded with "it's fucking magic, bitch." He was sober, I swear.
Anyway, here's how he got it working:
Insert the hacked cart and power the NES like normal. Wait for the ntrq logo, but instead of letting the program load, pop the cart back up for one flash (or one second) with the *power still on*, press the cart back down and hit power off/on *once* very rapidly.
A blank song (or song saved in ram) should be loaded. Your tune automatically saves to ram. Works like a charm. If you don't use this method, the program will not work properly.
A serious "what the fuck" is in order here. Why this works is beyond the scope of my knowledge.
Why does this work? More importantly, how did he just know to do this? Is this an old secret?
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Milwaukee, WI
Ok, a minor change to the powering process - I was corrected this morning.
1) Power the nes with the cart inserted. Do not push the cart down.
2) Wait for a flash or two and push the cart down with the power still running.
3) Power off/on once rapidly.
Try again if this doesn't work. I managed to get it working with the NES Open cart and the Shingen the Ruler cart, using both xx10 and xx20 eproms.
Would it be possible to add a separate power switch to the cart itself?
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UK
aha! Brill work RG!
PM'ing Neil about this - I think I know what it is now 
how bizarre hehe - It's to do with initialisation code on h/w seems to not be showing on the Famicom boards (as mine are normally built on the famicom h/w) but is showing up on the NES boards this time (we had a little similar issue with PR8/Pulsar like this before but nailed it after some testing!
I'll put together a NES dev cart to test out bits when I get some time later in the week too \o_ I also have access to a NTSC NES now and can even pop the NES cart into the Famicom for further testing as I fixed up my NES->Fam converter while I was sorting out Pr8
Last edited by ne7 (Mar 27, 2012 9:32 am)
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WOW MAN!
Very odd. I'll have a look. Worryingly though I think I nicked the reset stuff to fix Pulsar/PR8 from NTRQ code 
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Milwaukee, WI
I know this isn't the place for NTRQ glitches, but when you press left or right while holding A+B in the song section (top center) a bunch of weird shit happens in both an emulator and the actual hardware.
I have yet to check out the manual, so this might be desired.
@ne7: Glad we could be of some assistance!
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WOW MAN!
Been trying to have a look at this tonight and have had a frustrating time. It seems that somewhere along the Mac OSX update line, Nestopia is kinda fucked up. It crashes all the time and has stopped writing to the battery files. In short, pretty unusable 
I emailed RIchard Bannister (guy who wrote the OSX port of Nestopia) a while back about sporadic crashes to do with sound emulation but I got no reply. My fear is, given that Nestopia hasn't been updated for over 3 years is that he's stopped developing it.
This is not good
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WOW MAN!
After a few hours hacking around on my Mac I think (fingers crossed) that I've got Nestopia useable again.
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UK
:) ah thats rather brill - maybe you could fork Nestopia into a usable version for peeps Neil?
Quick update from me - fixed up my Nes Open Golf NES rom board - its totally fine after mild panic last week (thought it had bitten the dust but these things seem indestructible *Grin*), de-soldered the old eprom and am popping in a socket for testing updates now :O)
Last edited by ne7 (Mar 28, 2012 11:19 am)
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WOW MAN!
ne7 wrote:
Ah, perhaps I should've been clearer - I didn't physically change anything on Nestopia just fiddled with stuff on my laptop (things that have moved/changed since OSX Lion etc.) and it now works, sort of. Enough to keep me going anyway
I really wish I could get the OSX code as I would have a go at building it.
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Milwaukee, WI
Ok, so I just threw PR-8 and Pulsar on a hacked NES cart using ne7's method and here's what I found -
PR-8: The main screen comes up but nothing happens. It's basically a static picture; no cursor, no values, nothing. I went to test PR-8 in Nestopia and oddly enough I get the same exact behavior. @Neil: Is the rom corrupt or am I missing something? I downloaded the proper files from your site yesterday.
After some tinkering around I realized that if you drop a save file on the "frozen screen" in Nestopia it works perfectly. This is obviously a problem on a hacked NES cart, as you cannot just drop a save file on the NES. 
After even more tinkering I realized that if you jam the power button a few times you will eventually get a bunch of random values for your instruments/songs/etc. It basically opens a save file which never existed. Clear the data and you're set. Just don't "clear all" otherwise you're back to square one.
Side note - the Reset button doesn't really work with PR-8. It will basically turn the NES off.
Pulsar: Works in Nestopia, does not work on the hacked NES cart. The main screen/cursor/tempo section displays fine, but the whole center sequence/value section is a solid color with no values. Oddly enough you can program sounds/sequences, but it freezes after about two seconds...and you may as well be blindfolded.
Unlike NTRQ and PR-8 which can work after some power reset fuckery, Pulsar just gives random garbled screens.
Any thoughts? Everything was soldered correctly/etc.
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WOW MAN!
That is a bit weird. You'd imagine that the non-booting PR8 problem might be that there's no ability to utilise the blank .sav file that I distribute with the PR8 ROM for use with Powerpak but I do do some checking in the PR8 boot code for a 'signature' in the battery RAM - if it's not there I assume you either have an empty save file or have one that is 'corrupt' at which point the battery RAM is 'formatted' into a schema that PR8 requires.
I'd love to help more but absolutely have no means to test any of this stuff out. Maybe ne7 has some insight...
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WOW MAN!
Oh, you could try asking for some advice over on nesdev - someone might spot a pattern in the behaviour and be able to suggest a remedy...
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I've been thinking about starting this for months now and now that there is a tutorial for Pulsar and PR8 carts too, I think it's time to start this. There is only one little problem: I'm having a lot of trouble finding cheap parts. Any ideas where I can find these parts? They need to be shipped to Belgium.
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UK
Lavar; heya – a real good place to get cheap components is Ebay :) search worldwide + be creative in what you look for on there (like searching 'in' listings) and you’ll have maybe 3 to 5 of each part for the price you’d pay for one in radioshack or maplins (not sure if you have those in Belgium) :)
RG; I’m beginning to think this is all tied to the Famicom’s lack of a CIC security chip and differences to the way the two machines initialise data – the reason PR8 might not be resetting is very likely related to this, I’m going to grab LFT next time I see him online and pick his brains (I warned him already hehe) about it as if anyone can shed light on anything h/w related its most probably him *Grin*
Neil; I repeated the steps in my guide and built yet another PR8 cart for Famicom in the interim so the Famicom side of things checks out just fine – we just have to poke around a bit more on the NES side, it's super weird but I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it :)
Apologies for the delay getting back on here - work getting in the way of fun *Grin*
Last edited by ne7 (Apr 14, 2012 11:09 am)