Tried reaching out to the guy to give him some pointers before making his products.

http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic … 737#msg737

Almost forgot to mention...  On his thread he says he's going to release the Famicom cart first -- being that most of the world and including himself have famiclones.

If any of you have an NES and want to buy this cart for its potential expansion audio capabilities you may want to know that expansion audio will not work with standard 60 to 72 pin connectors; even with the expansion audio mod.  Standard converter carts do not have their expansion pins tracing to the cart edge.  In summary you will have to mod the converter as well.

So in conclusion people will have to produce new cart converters, modify their own, or wait for Everdrive NES.

Everdrive for NES and Famicom are currently in development.  Full details have not entirely been released.

I consulted with kevtris of NESdev to get a taste of what this cart could potentially do for chip musicians.

First off, what are the chips on board?

kevtris wrote:

(There are) 3 level xlators, small flash ROM, large sector based flash ROM, two SRAMs, CPLD, FPGA (cyclone 2) and a USB chip.

Chatting a little more we noticed that the FPGA on the Everdrive FC is larger than the one in the PowerPak.  This means it could store more logic all at once.  My first question was could it potentially fit all known expansion audio chips at once.  The answer is that it certainly could.

Now multi-chip NSFs could potentially no longer be a "hack."

Let's wait for more information to unfold. smile

52

(70 replies, posted in Sega)

Shiru wrote:

June 28, 2012 6:13 am

Sorry, such ornaments would require a huge change in the editor, almost making a new one, so no. I'm not even sure when I'll do a minor bug fix release which is certainly needed.

Changes in FM/PSG balance are one of considered things, it is often asked and should be done in the next version.

Such a fucking tease to think that just a couple months prior new features were considered on this great tracker programmed by someone who has years of experience knowing what they are doing.  If only robots programmed trackers then we wouldn't have to deal with people yanking content from their website and possibly disappearing.  VGM Music Maker, Nintendulator, etc...  Guess I better start training R.O.B. now because by the time he programs a tracker it will be 2060.

Well, according to one source:

/SYNC: this signal when zero, will force the status of colorburst control,
scanline and pixel counters/flip-flops used inside the PPU to definite
states. Generally, this is the means of which two 2C02s connected together
in a master-slave config (via the EXT bus) can syncronize together; the
master PPU's /VBL line feeds the vblank information to the slave's /SYNC
input. On Famicom consoles, this pin is always tied to logical one. On the
NES however, this pin is tied in with the 2A03's reset input, and as a
result, the picture is always disabled while the reset switch is held in on
an NES.

Of course it's not going to work with everything.

Solarbear wrote:

Nooby question. So... You say that it would be very possible to 'midi' input to the NES. Would midi sync then be possible? Cuz... If I could time sync my NES and my gameboys.... *sploogekill*

A few ideas...

~ If you connected your ENIO and NES to a WiFi hub/repeater and your laptop/computer/tablet/phone was on the same WiFi network, you could control your NES and/or supply it MIDI packets from any device on that network; namely your laptop.

~ With the MIDI right software on a PowerPak and this idea, one person could play a keyboard to control pulse 1, 2, and triangle, where another person with a MIDI keyboard could control VRC6 pulse 1, 2, and saw.

~ ENIO has flashable firmware able to support other hardware; being upgradable for other ideas an ethernet port and USB port could supply.

~ NES/Famicom has the ability to use a slave PPU through expansion.  A different PPU could be used for visualization.  TIA?

Just check the thread.  Please try to leave posts with content on NESdev.  Many people have lurked on NESdev for years before posting anything.  I did not make ENIO.  It is a project of chykn's.

With ENIO the limits of what the NES can do have officially been demolished.

As ENIO is in a beta-testing state and its infancy in development it is currently limited to a few very useful but revolutionary functions.

As is, the ENIO is currently:

- A no-solder expansion audio modification.
- A USB keyboard mod; which could very well turn into MIDI input/output.
- An external bootloader with SD.
- Ethernet capable.

Finally... big_smile

57

(70 replies, posted in Sega)

Your perception of how you take my words is your reality.  You said your piece and now you've moved onto bigger and better things.  Glad to hear it. Hedonism is the way to go. wink

58

(70 replies, posted in Sega)

Understood.  You may not realize my intentions at first.  But generally it's considered respectful to tell someone something to their face and not say it behind their back.

Alright, brother.  Try not to take all of this too seriously.  You're a good guy and you contribute great work without anything expected in return.  Some people have forgotten the values of freeware, open source, community spirit, and personal challenges.  Obviously you haven't.

Also "shows" was a strong word.  I should have said "lends a perception to".  Nobody's perfect! smile

59

(70 replies, posted in Sega)

Dammit; you both made me a little mad. 

Shiru:  First off, just as herr_prof says, you need not be upset by people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about.  It shows that you have some emotional security issues; being regardless of language barrier.  I'm not one for parenting or coaching.  Compare the discourse among your peers at NESdev forum and here.  You obviously do not fit in among laymen and angsty, "gotta prove myself" musicians in this forum.  Try to take what people say not for what you read but for their intent.  If you cannot discern their intent, then take it at face value "with a grain of salt."  For one, you understand multiple architectures, assembly languages, and you've told me personally that you have been making music since the early 90's.  Get a hold of yourself and realize that you should be secure in your endeavors for your own sake.  People will make tools and people will use tools.  Everyone is entitled to preference and opinion; albeit subjective and inherently meaningless unless meaning is incepted.

Esopus-dragon:  You.  You, you you...  I won't waste much time talking to you.  I have stuck my foot in my mouth countless times and have not properly researched before posting on forums before.  My only advise to you is live and learn and even though we are separated between electronic means, there are people connected to you.  And even if you highly respect or feel intimidated or cannot relate to someone intellectually, it doesn't mean that they possess limitless mental vigor.

OK.  I feel a bit better now.  I've said what has been said out of respect and I send pleasant thoughts and intentions toward your upcoming days to the both of you.

Lazerbeat:  Demoscene coders use sinewave tables to make text scroll up and down.  You would have to patch a bit of code in ScrollNES for it to behave that way.  Start off by finding a program to generate an 8-bit sine(wave) look-up table; or the string of numbers themselves.  Afterward reference the PPU function and patch the routine with the sinewave vertical tile plotting behavior.  (Think about the behavior of a sine wave and how it would behave if controlling scrolling text. wink )  Take a minute to browse over the "Registers" and "Nametables" sections of the PPU portion of NESdev Wiki.

61

(21 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)

Hrm...  BGB doesn't do SGB music yet.  For an example load the Game Boy game Animaniacs.  It should also be using the SPC700 for music.

62

(1 replies, posted in Atari)

Sound Coder is a demo that encodes 3120Hz PCM to 5-bit PCM played at ~3KHz.  Thankfully the guys have also included a video link and the source code. smile  This is a cheap way of being able to sound like you know how to program decent music on the TIA.  Formula:  Make an intricate music loop, compress, low-pass, record at 3120Hz mono, run the encoding script, include your PCM in the code, comment out the intro code, assemble, and profit!

Right for two reasons actually.  Setting Z7F in FamiTracker makes a direct write to $4011 (the 7-bit DAC register; basically the raw audio sample register).  $7F is 127 decimal; which is the highest sample position and number for the 7-bit register.  This corresponds to volume as well.  $7F in a DPCM decoded sample (or a directly written 7-bit PCM sample) to the DAC is the highest "volume" marker in the sample waveform that can be made in 7-bits.  So basically even though you aren't hearing anything, it's basically a loud low frequency drone.  The triangle and noise channel pins are all shared with the DPCM channel going to the audio out on the NES/Famicom.  So if the DPCM channel is droning a loud low frequency, then the triangle and noise channels are in competition with it.  So basically it would be like two people trying to speak on stage without amplification while an amplifier connected to nothing is turned on next to them with the gain all the way up; drowning out a lot of their speech with the low frequency.

ant1 wrote:
danimal cannon wrote:

4bit PCM means 16 steps of envelope volume on the triangle channel right?

i think it means using the 16 levels the triangle already has to play audio samples actually

Yes. I figure that the triangle waveform starts at 0, goes up 15 steps, then goes down 15 steps. You could make a few 32 sample (or step) wave tables -- maybe 75%, 50%, 25%, and 12.5% volume that could follow the same frequency tables; but full 4-bit (16 step) volume would be impractical.

Distortion loop commands or filters might be cool too.