1 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Yep, indeed it should! I've consumed some space in there for the op-amp stuff. I now use an almost totally SMD board to save on size. It ends up not sounding as good as my through hole version (largely because the through hole requires a beefier power supply) but still offers nice clean audio out while stuff offering some protection to the CPU itself.

At any rate, I have some room to spare so I think an internal solution should be quite doable. Likewise, having to use crimp pins isn't that big a deal - just about 10 minutes of work (I'm slow at that stuff wink )

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2 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I was thinking something similar actually. I already have an op-amp based circuit I built for better audio output so I already have a panel on the back. If the sync solution was small enough, could just bust out a MIDI connector on the back and call it done.

That sucks about needing to crimp though...bleh...crimp terminals and some glue solves that problem though I guess.

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3 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Oh yeah that's a good point...I hadn't though of just recycling the cable. The CD4021 works and I've even seen it used for Arduino projects, though I see the 165's waaay more. I know I have a few lying around which prompted the thought, though ultimately it doesn't matter (not like it's expensive and can be re-used from a controller, as you pointed out). I should up one of the newly manufactured controllers I have. Curious if they did anything different than the standard controller (I doubt it since everything else appears exactly the same).

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4 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Curious - the CD4021 is new to me, having been used to 74HC165's (largely via MidiBox, surprise surprise). It looks like there isn't much different apart from wiring and, if I read correctly, some clock handling. If I opted to use a shift-register to emulate a controller, I'd definitely use a CD4021, but I was curious as to more of the differences. Anyone know?

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5 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Oooh I'm a tad envious of your MB AY. That's on my list, although, yep, not the highest priority for me either.

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6 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Well damn that all sounds nifty! There was user MidiBox project where the dude made a AY-3-8910 synth so that may exist as an option in the interim. But yeah if 5B is attainable that would be a much more integrated solution.

For now, though, just being able to sync the NES would be, in it of itself, quite fantastic, sound chips aside.

As an aside, really bummed to see RetroUSB doesn't carry much stuff now. E-mailed him to see if that's just temporary, but haven't heard back yet.

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7 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

On the PowerPak, switching ROMs requires a power-cycle (reset won't do it) but otherwise it's easy to do. That said, I would probably setup ROMs on the PP just like I would a flash cart - namely try to fit as many on a ROM as I could, keeping with song orders and things. An added benefit is emulation of extra sound chips (a shame those chips can't be had more easily hmm).

So I guess to answer your question, on the PP the workflow doesn't really have to change all that much compared to a flash cart.

Having said all that, damn the stuff at Infinite Nes Lives is awesome! Dude even provides the Sunsoft 5B, although while I thought Famitracker implemented it, it looks like that hasn't been done yet. Still that's very cool!

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8 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

We do live shows so I tend to be in favor of what requires less work. What I saw of VegaPlay was pretty well in line with what I would need I think. I'd probably do a mix of having sub-songs on an NSF and multiple NSFs.

Better might be kind of relative. My band-mate likes the idea of physically changing out cartridges to make it look neat during a live show smile Not sure how that relates to flash carts save for saying if all our music won't fit on one, we'd have to switch them out. In actuality, that's not a big deal - we'd just coordinate our breaks so we switch carts then.

So I guess for me it doesn't matter much. Curious - what flash cart do you use? And, on that note, I noticed RetroUSB no longer carries plastic cases or their MMC board. I was kinda bummed out by that. Are these found elsewhere?

My gut feeling is the same as yours - that PowerPaks likely outnumber flash carts and other solutions. For us? We could easily do either, though.

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9 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Cool beans! I noticed the DropBox link is really just for the compo stuff you mentioned on NESdev? Guessing you're still working on the code and haven't released it yet? smile No rush if so, but when you do, I'd be happy to test it out!

In the interim, I may give FamiSlayer a go, but man not having to do any removing of headers and things is really tantalizing! So looking very much forward to seeing what you come up with, for both that as well as sync.

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10 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Maybe it was pulsar? I dunno some NES program I ran into had trouble due to using an odd mapper. That said, your version of VegaPlay (http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11322) /does/ indeed work with PowerPak. I used your example .NES and I noticed some songs would cause the NES to freeze. I'm guessing it's because the NSF didn't actually have song data there or something?

I don't have a 6502/NES toolchain setup yet so that's next on my list, at which point I can do additional tests. But apart from the freezing issue, yeah it worked like a champ! I'm guessing any sync additions you plan on adding should work fine too, but of course if you add them, let me know and I can easily test them on my PowerPak.

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11 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Sounds awesome! I think you just alluded to it, but I'm guessing your solution may need the PowerPak modified mapper to work? I seem to recall reading where the PowerPak's current mappers do not support FamiSlayer out of the box? No big deal for me, but was curious.

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12 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Well that should make things reasonably easy! I need to wrap my head around some of this theory more, but that makes the solution potentially pretty straightforward.

Yogi, I'm not too familiar with the Pic family apart from with the MidiBox stuff (where many of the details are covered up) so I don't know how helpful I can be smile But if you do get that design off the ground, I'd love to do what I can to help test it!

For me Arduino was just an easy path to entry and I think augmenting ArduinoBoy to send some pulses out to some unused pins is probably within the realm of possibility as has already been discussed. So I may play around with that just to see where that goes while you're working on your PIC solution.

Do keep me posted though! At this point, I'm more after a solution that would work over one that is simply one I built. The net goal is being able to use the NES again as soon as I can.

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13 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I am eyeing MCTRL actually, along with Pulsar. The reason I liked going the FamiSlayer route is I find FamiTracker a lot easier to work with than, say, LSDJ. The downside is I don't have sync when composing songs like I do using LSDJ, so composing is a bit non-linear when working with other synths.

On that note, though, the idea of using a sort of BPM track to send to the NES seems workable. If that works, though, it seems like sending the MIDI clock through and having a bit of code on the uC could do the same affect but without having to toss that in every-time? I've had to do the sync track for our drum machine (which is really just a glorified click for us) and it's a bit annoying to setup over just having a clock.

So, since we're now including MCTRL in the discussion - how easy of a modification might that be (DIY or otherwise)? One of the reasons for going the Arduino route was really just to reduce the number of stuff we have, particularly during a live show. If one box can sync both the GB and NES, it would be really convenient. But otherwise, MCTRL is there, works, I could look at using Pulsar with it - so the only gap is the discussion on syncing with a MIDI clock using FamiSlayer or some other NSF player, based upon some of the previous discussions in this thread?

I guess long story short, it sounds like going from MIDI Clock to NES requires either some caveats / things to be mindful of, or uC support to make things function like they would with LSDJ or other MIDI clock-aware devices?

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14 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Aha ok. Mostly makes sense (re the BPM) but I think I'll have to try it out and see to really know how it will affect things in practice but now I see what you're referring to.

If the input/output trick works on Arduino there probably isn't much worry to do any other shenanigans so I think I'll try that first since I have all the stuff I need to get it going I think and I can go from there. Since this would be for stage and studio, I'll want to built something that is hardy enough. On that note, it sounds like MCTRL is doing very similar things so I'm guessing it would be useful for controlling FamiSlayer if I wanted to buy over build?

By the way, thanks again! I've been wanting to do this for years now and the detail and time taken to explain all this is much appreciated!

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15 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Wow thanks so much for all that awesome info, yogi!

Hmm so timing wise, if I'm at a BPM other than 150, I should generally be ok although going above 150 I might have issues? I actually don't know how much of the timing has been looked at in FamiSlayer or how much that would be an issue.

I'm also a bit confused on having to set the pin to INPUT or OUTPUT mode - is this is due to the CD4021? Bypassing it won't necessarily fix the issue directly will it and just hitting the serial interface directly?

Good call on Midi Thru. I new it was a simple mod, though I've never actually had to do it yet smile

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16 Reply by m00dawg

(54 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Yeah I'm trying to compile all this somewhat disparate data together. It looks like most solutions are just sending pulses? So all I would need is to add in the NES output section to the routine that handles LSDJ slave output to the GameBoy, maybe plus start/stop - I think smile

While I've made some updates to the ArduinoBoy code to better fit my needs for my custom one, I haven't dug super deep. But it looks like there is room to spare as far as code size and processing power to add in the NES functions.

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