Modding NES for famicom enhanced music

[theoakwoody]

You know how some games such as Castlevania 3 and Gradius 2 had better sound chips installed in the cartridges in japan? I've heard that the NES has the hardware capable of playing the music but it is untapped. Something about the serial port underneath the system. Anyways can anyone shed any light on this subject?

[TheRedEye]

It's a HELL of a lot more complicated than that. Your best bet is to get an AV Famicom. It's a toploader with perfect Famicom sound and AV video output that doesn't look like crap

[Bratwurst]

It's a HELL of a lot more complicated than that.

Please humor us interested hellbound types, Senor Red.

[Lord Contaminous]

Had Nintendo of America decided to make a NES Disk System, there would've been use for that mysterious port on the bottom.

[Lord Contaminous]

BTW I mentioned about the games twice before.

No way you can mod your NES to support the custom chips.

[TheRedEye]

BTW I mentioned about the games twice before.

No way you can mod your NES to support the custom chips.

I have a buddy who's been attempting this for a while. I think he made some kind of weird adapter that goes on the end of the cart AND into the expansion slot, and it's still not completely functional.

[theoakwoody]

Yeah redeye, I've already got a av toploader and I love it. I paid $ 50 for it brand new, why does anyone waste $ 100 to $ 150 on a US toploader that can't even output AV unless its modified? This question was out of pure curiosity, I would never attempt this it's just fun to know what if.

[TheRedEye]

Yeah redeye, I've already got a av toploader and I love it. I paid $ 50 for it brand new, why does anyone waste $ 100 to $ 150 on a US toploader that can't even output AV unless its modified? This question was out of pure curiosity, I would never attempt this it's just fun to know what if.

Good man. I want one of those myself, but I can't find one outside of paying like $50 shipping from Japan. My poor Disk System is hooked up to a cheesy Sachen-made Famiclone.

[rbudrick]

Had Nintendo of America decided to make a NES Disk System, there would've been use for that mysterious port on the bottom.

That is actually a misconecption. You can already use the FDS on an NES...you just have to convert from 60 to 70 pins and maybe lenghten it a bit somehow. The bottom port on an NES has nothing to do with the FDS. The fds plugs into the cart slot on a famicom...the disk system basically feeds the game to a blank ram cartridge...that's about it.

-Rob

[Graham Mitchell]

Then what IS that serial port for?

[davidleeroth]

That is actually a misconecption. You can already use the FDS on an NES...you just have to convert from 60 to 70 pins and maybe lenghten it a bit somehow. The bottom port on an NES has nothing to do with the FDS. The fds plugs into the cart slot on a famicom...the disk system basically feeds the game to a blank ram cartridge...that's about it.

-Rob

Yeah, I remember seeing some guy who cut a whole in the back of the NES to attach the RAM adapter.

As fo the bottom port, Baton made a modem for that. Tele.. something it was called. Haven't heard of anything else use it.

[theoakwoody]

Redeye wasn't suggesting that you couldn't use a famicom disk system with your nes. He was merely saying that if they had made an official disk system for the US, it would have probably connected to the serial port on the bottom of the nes thus taking advantage of the superior sound capabilities contained in the NES's brown eye.

[Ed Oscuro]

Interesting idea as always, but with the number of adapters needed - including those needed to make FC carts play on a NES in the first place - and the bad reliability, just buying a Sharp Twin from a Hong Kong seller doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

[rbudrick]

Theoakwoody, Lord contaminous was saying that, not Red. Bwa HA HA...the thought of Red making an error concerning NES/Famicom stuff amuses me!!



As fo the bottom port, Baton made a modem for that. Tele.. something it was called. Haven't heard of anything else use it.

Yep. never came out tho. I think someone else made a modem for that same purpose, and m,aybe one other company did something else with it...I think I saw an article on this on maybe the Warp Zone? Dave, you out there? Was it the Warp Zone?

-Rob

[Ed Oscuro]

As far as your average cartridge moistener is concerned, the bottom port is useless. I know of the ability to plug a FDS into it, but I still consider it not much of an bonus since it's a poor second to getting a real FC/FDS, and they aren't pin compatible for further troubles. I think C-dawg has the right spirit on this issue. No doubt, the Baton Teleplay modem, the FDS, and any other possible peripheral CAN make use of the slot, but it never really did find a practical use...Even the Aladdin Deck Enhancer seems to have had more use.

Edit: not really useful or courteous post, as I know rbudrick is just spreading the word; only leaving it for name of the Baton peripheral.

[TRM]

Okay, to clear a few misconceptions up...sorry about not being on topic, I am just replying to a few things said about the bottom port on the NES system.

#1. The sole (only?) purpose of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer was to manufacture the games cheaper. Richard Darling of Codemasters fame had the following to say on the issue:


"The idea came from looking closely at the make-up of NES cartridges with a view to trying to get the manufacturing costs reduced so we could sell them at the lowest possible price. In overview, there are several components of each cartridge that are generic: the Graphics RAM chip, the memory management chip and a few other parts. The only part of the cartridge that needed to be unique for each game was the game ROM chip. So, we thought that if we could put all the common parts onto an adapter we could make the cheapest possible cartridges by packaging just the ROM chip onto a mini-cartridge. When this mini cartridge was combined with the adapter it would effectively be identical to an ordinary cartridge of the same game."

In regards to the Baton Teleplay Modem issue, I did write an article about this modem.

http://www.planetnintendo.com/thewarpzone/teleplay.html

My article was good for its time, until TheRedEye came along and antiqued it with his:

http://www.lostlevels.org/200310/200310-baton.shtml

Maybe if we all worked together in bring the news out, instead of always re-inventing the wheel, we would get more accomplished as a whole. But I know that that will never happen.

Okay, back to the original topic. As a few others had mentioned, I think it would be a much easier solution just to buy a Famicom system. It seems as though all of the modications would make playing a famicom game on a us system with famicom sound quality, very unstable.

[Ed Oscuro]

Maybe if we all worked together in bring the news out, instead of always re-inventing the wheel, we would get more accomplished as a whole. But I know that that will never happen.
???

As for the Aladdin deck enhancer, perhaps it wasn't clear that the sentence meant "...saw more use than the NES expansion port?" That's fine...I can understand the confusion on that count.

[theoakwoody]

Redeye,

I appreciate your feedback on this topic and if you ever hear any updates about your friend who's trying to tap into the serial port please post or put something up on one of your websites.

To everyone else, I know that the easiest way to hear the sound is to buy a famicom av or twin but I didn't ask for the easiest way. I was just curious if the NES's hardware was indeed the same as the Famicom's. If the NES could somehow interpret the enhanced music then in my mind the hardware should be damned close including that kareoke mic thingie(I guess I shouldn't of opened that can of worms)

[_zane]

No way you can mod your NES to support the custom chips.
Are you sure?

There was actually some discussion in the NESdev hardware forum on this exact topic about a month ago. You might be interested in these two threads:

http://nesdev.parodius.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showpost.pl?Board=hardware&Number=692&page=3&view=collapsed&mode=flat&sb=5

http://nesdev.parodius.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showpost.pl?Board=hardware&Number=810&page=2&view=collapsed&mode=flat&sb=5

I know that the modifications worked on my toaster NES -- the extra FM sound in "Lagrange Point", for example, came through loud and clear after the modifications -- although playing on an actual Famicom is still likely to be more accurate with respect to how the sound channels are mixed internally.

If there's anyone else here who's tried out these modifications, I'd be interested to hear what they think of the volume of the external audio channel on a modded NES compared to on a plain-jane Famicom. On my NES, the internal (2A03) sound seems louder than on my Famicom, but maybe that's just my imagination.


--
_zane

[Ed Oscuro]

If the NES could somehow interpret the enhanced music then in my mind the hardware should be damned close including that kareoke mic thingie(I guess I shouldn't of opened that can of worms)
What about the microphone? I've never heard of it being used. If anybody has information about that, let's hear it! What's more, why would Nintendo actually include the mic standard? It's always been a mystery to me.

As for "somehow interpret the enhanced music," remember that the main CPU in both systems and much of the rest of the internals remain unchanged from one system to another - they're close enough that instead of crashing when you feed it sound data with extra channels, it just omits the extra sounds. It's a matter of having extra hardware inside hooked up, really. Have to be that way, or else porting games from FC to NES would've caused problems and it was in Nintendo's best interests to make that process easy. From what I've heard, many reverse-engineered Famiclones also drop extra channels, but at least one also has tone differences.

[Lord Contaminous]

_zane, you got a real copy of Lagrange Point??!!!

Where did you get that at? Did you make a trip to Japan and stumble on it?

Even ebay doesn't get it. I've looked for it so extensively that I eventually gave up and sadly didn't care anymore.

I have one Namco106 driven game and that's it.

[TheRedEye]

???

Seriously.

[Ed Oscuro]

Perhaps I don't have time to link to the page? Seriously!

If people want to know more about it badly enough, they can ask or Google. I'd point them to those pages if asked.

[rbudrick]

As far as your average cartridge moistener is concerned, the bottom port is useless. I know of the ability to plug a FDS into it

Could someone please explain to me how one can plug an FDS into an NES using the bottom serial port? This is news to me...

As for the Microphone, it was used in a few games. The only one that comes immediately to mind is Kid Icarus...I believe it did something in the shops...maybe even lowered the prices like that trick in the American version with controller two...but I'm not sure...

-Rob

[Ed Oscuro]

As for the Microphone, it was used in a few games. The only one that comes immediately to mind is Kid Icarus...I believe it did something in the shops...maybe even lowered the prices like that trick in the American version with controller two...but I'm not sure...
Strange, but I'm interested to hear that. If I cracked open my copy I could probably test that out, but...

[Ninja Blacksox]

Interesting idea as always, but with the number of adapters needed - including those needed to make FC carts play on a NES in the first place - and the bad reliability, just buying a Sharp Twin from a Hong Kong seller doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

Mine arrived in the mail today.

I can't recommend the purchase of a Sharp Twin enough.

The FDS might be my new favorite system.

I prefer my Nintendo games with loading times.

I got mine here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=62054&item=8133361923&rd=1).

Quite a deal.

-A Boy

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm not sure about that Volleyball game, but the other titles are excellent. I sure would like those Famicom carts, don't have them yet :)

[_zane]

_zane, you got a real copy of Lagrange Point??!!! Where did you get that at? Did you make a trip to Japan and stumble on it?
I came across it on eBay about a year and a half ago, actually. Now if I could only find a copy of "Gimmick!"...


--
_zane

[TheRedEye]

_zane, you got a real copy of Lagrange Point??!!! Where did you get that at? Did you make a trip to Japan and stumble on it?
I came across it on eBay about a year and a half ago, actually. Now if I could only find a copy of "Gimmick!"...


--
_zane

You can have mine when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!

[Lord Contaminous]

In a few days I'm getting my first Konami VRC6 driven Famicom game.
This is it. Unfortunately I'm getting it cart only. But I promised I'd grab the first VRC6 game that comes my way no matter what.
http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/fc/madara-b.jpg