1,009 Reply by arfink

(123 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

FuturNari wrote:

Hi arfink!
I would love to be one of the lucky 26 to buy your cart but I live in a PAL country (New Zealand) and it seems donor carts are hard to find here! Best thing I can think of to do is buy a turbo racing cart on ebay Australia and get the seller to send the PAL turbo racing cart to you and get you to work your magic but by the time I factor in shipping costs (New Zealand is far away from everything and has a weak currency) it seems I should probably just spend that large sum of money on rent and food sad

tl;dr
Any idea of shipping costs to New Zealand?
Or know of any Australian cart developers?

Thanks for your time! Your work is awesome.

Thanks very much FuturNari. If/when Neil releases a PAL version of the NTRQ software I'll be happy to make a PAL cartridge. Shipping from the US to New Zealand isn't so much of a bugger as you'd think, as long as it doesn't have to be done multiple times. When I start doing preorders you should get in contact with another member who is shipping me a PAL donor cartridge so you can arrange for him to send me two. We'll get there when we get there, but something cheaper can almost certainly be worked out.

Neil: I'm not holding my breath, just mentioned it as a possibility. And such a thing has been done with the famicom before, with a device which is known as the Turbo File.

As for getting data of the cartridges themselves, since an NVSRAM is being used there is a slight possibility that since it's stable even when removed from the cartridge that backups could be done with a simple SRAM reading circuit that could attach to the PC. Either way, my cartridges will not immediately support this.

Akira: you could get a PCB of this, but since I have to get them from donor cartridges anyways you might as well keep the casing too. If you just want the parts that you can assemble yourself with your own donor, that can also be arranged. If you want to do it exactly the way I will, you'll see it's a challenging job, but there are easier ways to cope with the soldering if you are willing to chop through the front of the cartridge. I'm going to do more work on my prototype tonight, and hopefully then you can see what kind of a mess my prototype looks like and why I haven't begun taking orders yet. smile

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1,010 Reply by arfink

(46 replies, posted in General Discussion)

poke-1,170 wrote:

aphex, hands down. vangelis makes pompous kitch.

Which is pompous? I think the grandeur of his works is what makes them so attractive. Especially the likes of Spiral, Albedo .39, Oceanic, and The City.

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1,011 Reply by arfink

(46 replies, posted in General Discussion)

freezedream wrote:
µB wrote:

that's pretty apples and oranges

   ^ This. But I definitely listen to Aphex Twin more, though I'm quite selective with his music. Does anyone listen to any Tomita?

YES, I thought nobody would mention him! My favorite of his works is his interpretation of The Planets.

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1,012 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

If you use an NVSRAM they could be programmable via Copy Nes, it'd be pretty easy to do. Or EEPROM, perhaps?

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1,013 Reply by arfink

(46 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Vangelis. Hands down.

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1,014 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

neilbaldwin wrote:

To throw more water on the fire: there is no PAL version of NTRQ at the moment.

Just sayin'....

Does this mean that it won't work on a PAL nes period, or it won't be tuned correctly? I was under the assumption it could work, just not quite right. I'll have to try it with a PAL nes emulator.

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1,015 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

herr_prof wrote:

The fact I can load all kinds of games and play nsfs jukebox style made powerpak a no brainer. Once you can patch ntrq iqwth your own samples it will rock even more!

Are the mute city carts socketed? For easy update?

No, they are not. This is one of the advantages of my design. Also, his will not have multiple SRAM banks. For those who wish to make their own, I am putting together a tutorial, and I can burn EPROMs for folks who don't have their own equipment.

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1,016 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Head over to the Chipcoalition forum and talk to a guy named MuteCity he can make you one cheaply.

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1,017 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

jbuonacc wrote:

i think your argument is a bit flawed because it's not like you can build your own Powerpak.

Oh, and I could design it, get pcb's made, etc. This kind of thing is not beyond my skill level, just beyond my desire.

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1,018 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

No, thank you very much. Atavistic and proud! Also, lets see the Powerpak do accurate sound reproduction for Famicom hardware, lets see 100% mapper support. Lets see nanosecond accurate IRQ timings. Sure it's "good enough" for those who just want to drop the dough right up front and never have to "deal with" having something hand built. For me, it's not just about function. It's about how you get there. It's the reason why I continue to even bother with the chipmusic scene instead of going all fakebit. I know, Low-Gain is going to disagree with me, and this is hot ideological water, but the DIY aesthetic is incredibly important to me. I also know it's important to other people who don't have my level of skill for building things, which is why I'm offering to make them for people who are interested.

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1,019 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

OK, I wish people would just stop it with the whole PowerPak thing. No offence, but they cost $150! That is pretty steep for most people, I would say. There are good reasons to make these things, including but not limited to having a special custom cartridge, having a dedicated cartridge, getting into the whole DIY thing, and a lower price. Saying otherwise is like saying that the only reasonable way to do a prosound mod is to buy the kit from Nonfinite. I'm sure the pre-made option it great and all, but DIY is where it's at.

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1,020 Reply by arfink

(39 replies, posted in Trading Post)

Crystal Labs wrote:

I like this has turned into a conversation between married folks talking about ridiculous shirts and vans slip ons. I relate to all three topics. Thank you, chipmusic.org ... I can now relate to other people on the internet.

And this would be the reason why this place isn't 8bc- having a Real Life (tm) seems to force you to be more mature... interesting.

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1,021 Reply by arfink

(26 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Breaking the rom up into PRG and CHR is simple enough, all you need is a hex editor and knowledge of the correct places to cut it, which can be obtained from the iNES header. Alternatively, you can use the programs which are available on that very site you linked to, and run them on your Mac using the Dosbox emulator.

As for doing things from NoCarrier, those are quite simple. You have to split it into CHR and PRG files, duplicate them to fill the chip you are using, and install the EPROMs directly into an NROM-256 cartridge. It's fairly simple, but I can see how alot of this is overwhelming for people. I can write a simple tutorial for people at some point.

As for NTRQ, this is considerably more complex. You'll have to hunt down the correct donor cartridge first, which should contain an SKROM board inside. One cheap and cruddy game which has this is Al Unser Turbo Racing. Then you need to rewire the cartridge to accept  27c0x0 EPROMs. Instructions for doing this can be found here: http://nesdev.parodius.com/NES%20EPROM% … rsions.txt

Just follow the directions posted there for the SLROM, and you shouldn't have too much difficulty rewiring the cartridge.

Lastly, I am fairly sure this will involve absolutely no knowledge of C, since I can handle this and I don't know any C at all, only various dialects of BASIC and Pascal. Actually, you won't need to even know how to program a computer, although I like to say that with anything computer related it's nice to have done some coding as it familiarises you with the concepts.

EDIT: Feel free to complain if I'm too vague, I haven't tried to explain this to beginners before. Also, it would be helpful to know what your current level of skill is with electronics, since both of these projects are relatively advanced I suppose. If you haven't done much soldering with .1" pitch through hole components then I would say you'll need to brush up on your soldering. If you haven't done much desoldering I would also advise you to practice that as well, since you'll need that a good deal to prep the donor boards. Also, if you know someone who has an EPROM programmer you can save yourself alot of money by borrowing his, especially if you don't intend to be reprograming these alot. Lastly, with EPROMs, you'll also need a UV eraser device if you plan on reprogramming them, since just plugging them back into the programmer won't do anything without erasing them first.

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1,022 Reply by arfink

(123 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

jbuonacc wrote:
arfink wrote:

... well, we will have to wait and see if Neil implements it, but the possibility of a cable which runs from the P2 port to a PC is there.

hmm, that sounds pretty interesting, i'm not sure i've seen that mentioned anywhere. depending on if/how it works, something like that may also be useful for NES gamers if it'd be possible to pull SAVs from carts.

It was something he mentioned to me. It's be software controlled though, so that wouldn't be useful for other games. One other possibility is that with the NVSRAM, since it's stable without a battery, it can be removed and backed up with a regular chip reader too.

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1,023 Reply by arfink

(123 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

jbuonacc wrote:

it's friggin' great that you're doing this, but for $85 and no ability to transfer saves off the cart, wouldn't people almost be better off spending another $50 for a PowerPak? that would give you basically an unlimited number of saves/songs which can be stored on the PC, as well as being able to play 1000+ (?) NES games and NSFs on the real hardware. really not trying to shoot down what you're doing, but i almost think someone would be nutty not to just go for the PowerPak instead. either way though, i'm sure you'll be able to sell 26 copies if that's what you end up doing.

arfink wrote:

... One thing I have never understood is why losing your songs to a battery failure is such a concern for people. If you record your work then it'll be just fine.

huh? hmm that might work great for a guy who writes tunes on his acoustic, but i'd be pissed if i lost a track that i spent hours fine-tuning in a tracker or sequencer. especially if it's a WIP, and you haven't even gotten to the point of recording it yet. it's not just a matter of knowing what notes you were using, but instrument settings/tables/commands/etc.

Thanks. As for the price, I'm thinking the same thing, but it comes to $75 if you have a donor cartridge, so that's good for some people. Plus it's a dedicated cartridge, which some people want. Now, without the NVSRAM this becomes and even less expensive option, though I have not priced that out yet,

As for losing songs to battery failure, that will never happen with my design now that I am using NVSRAM, since there is no battery! Isn't that awesome? And as for transferring saves off the cart... well, we will have to wait and see if Neil implements it, but the possibility of a cable which runs from the P2 port to a PC is there.

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1,024 Reply by arfink

(123 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I know the Quest of the Avatar has a similar but incompatible board, the SUROM.

However, for other games which you aren't sure of do this: Open it up and if it's the right kind it'll look like this on the inside:

Make sure it's the same- it should have the battery, a chip that says MMC1(xx) on it, and two big chips, one of which will have 28 pins and say "NES-XX-XX PRG" and the other will have 32 pins and say "NES-XX-XX CHR." Replace the XXes with anything, it will differ from game to game to differentiate the mask data inside.

Do not confuse the SKROM with the similar-looking SNROM and SUROM. SKROM boards look like the picture and do not usually have a label on them which declares them to be SKROM. But the SNROM and SUROM will always have a label in the uppper-left corner by the battery which will say SNROM or SUROM.

EDIT:
OK, got a few more games to add to the donor list, courtesy of BootGod:

Conflict*
Desert Commander
Built to Win*
Vegas Dream*
Turbo Racing (not Al Unser endorsed, same game)

However, those marked without the star don't have a battery, but since I'll be using an NVSRAM it'll be OK, since the PCB is the same and I'll be removing the original battery anyway.
Also, interestingly enough, this PCB configuration was far more common in Famicom games, but I'm not even going to think about modding FC carts right now!

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