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Thread: Status Update -Major Famicom Find: Brag and Questions w/pics

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    Pretzel (Level 4) Goblin's Avatar
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    Default Status Update -Major Famicom Find: Brag and Questions w/pics

    Today I had my first big find in quite a while. I found 2 big boxes of Famicom stuff. The first box contained an original Famicom, a 110-in-1 multi cartridge, a Famicom Disk System, and a "Turbo Game Doctor 4+ Game Saver Version 1" by venus electronics. This box also contained 2 famicom joysticks similiar to the NES Max, a famicom light gun, and an assortment of RF modulators, controllers, and adapters.

    The second box contained disks for the Disk System, and was completely packed. I have spread them out on the floor to take inventory and count well over 300 titles. About 95% are in jewel cases, the rest in paper sleeves.

    Go here for the rest of the pictures: http://home.comcast.net/~gamesfortrade/



    Now for my questions:

    1. What exactly does the "Turbo Game Doctor" do? It comes in 2 pieces. The first plugs horizontally into famicom, and has an exposed board with contacts coming out the back, a cartidge slot on top, and a socket for a power supply on the back. A little button is one the top in the front. Now the second piece plugs into the card in the back and stands vertical and has its own power supply socket. Which is a good thing since this blocks the plug on the first piece. Now what does it do as a whole, and can the first piece be used without the second.

    2. What does the above do in relation to the disk system? Inside the box it was assembled: disk system into game doctor (with back attachment), all plugged into the famicom.

    3. What is the likelyhood that these disks still contain any game data?

    4. What might the value of this lot be? I'm not a famicom collector, but I had never seen a disk system up close and figured I should pick it up when I had the chance.

    5. I've been searching this forum and a few others looking for information and have not been too successful. Does anybody have an english language links detailing how to get these items up a running. Perhaps a link to an English translation of the manuals. I realize that is probably pushing it, but I'll take any good links.

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    Apple (Level 5)
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    I don't have an answer to the questions, but I wanna see a picture!


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    interesting, I have never heard of that doctor thing before either, but I'm interested in finding out more about it and maybe seeing some pictures.

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    Flawless Rawkality Flack's Avatar
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    Default Re: Major Famicom Find: Brag and Questions

    1. What exactly does the "Turbo Game Doctor" do?
    It's a pretty old console copier. The "4" meant four Mb of RAM, which isn't much, and it didn't come with a disk drive either which made it pretty inconvenient. Apparently it's used in conjunction with the FDS. I've never seen one in person.

    Link: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache...+4%2B%22&hl=en

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) Blitzwing256's Avatar
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    unless those disks are yellow, they are basicly pirated disks made with the copier you have (I have a ton of them myself) the disks are mostly worthless, basicly japanese floppies with roms on them.


    if the fds system works, thats a nice find right there. Its very common for the drive belt to break (and very hard to fix it as well)

    either way it sounds like a decent deal.

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    ServBot (Level 11) Cauterize's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kuros
    I don't have an answer to the questions, but I wanna see a picture!

    Seconded! Pictures are good :P

    RetroCollect - PAL Rarity Guides, News, Reviews, Community & Forum
    View my Retro Game Collection: Click here
    My Trade List: Click here
    My Want List: Click here

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) Blitzwing256's Avatar
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    oh I forgot to mention, the part that goes on the top lets you use it without having to plug it in,.
    to get it to work you need a disk drive attached to it (differnet from the fds drive)

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    drowning in medals Ed Oscuro's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Blitzwing256
    unless those disks are yellow, they are basicly pirated disks made with the copier you have (I have a ton of them myself) the disks are mostly worthless, basicly japanese floppies with roms on them.
    Well, it's always possible you could find some development disks, which were, far as I know, blue, maybe white... No chance of that. Sounds like a run-of-the-mill find with some unlicensed/pirate stuff, still good of course.

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    Insert Coin (Level 0) Zach's Avatar
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    Wow! This is the first time I've seen someone one here mention that particular Game Doctor. I have the same one, but just the first piece, and lots of disks that were most likely pirated with it (none of them are readble with the FDS by itself) but I've never gotten the Game Doctor to work at all. When I plug it into my AV Famicom, all I get are garbled graphics that don't seem to respond to button presses.

    Yes, the FDS is prone to belt breakage! I have two of them, and they both had broken belts when I got them. I couldn't find a real Nintendo replacement belt, but a trip to a local VCR repair shop yielded a belt of the correct inner diameter. It was twice as wide as the original FDS belt, so I carefully cut it right down the middle, longways, and had two belts of the correct width. Both of my Famicom Disk Systems are now working! Tough replacement job, for sure.

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    RACES MINI MOTORCYCLES Videogamerdaryll's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cauterize
    Quote Originally Posted by Kuros
    I don't have an answer to the questions, but I wanna see a picture!

    Seconded! Pictures are good :P
    Third on the pics...

    And getting ready to because if you picked this up at a Flea market that I didn't decide to go to today I'm going to be sick.. ........ (New Jersey)

    ... Congratulations though on a great find..

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    Ryu Hayabusa (Level 16) rbudrick's Avatar
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    According to Kyuusaku, the absolute master of all things game copier:

    http://www.cherryroms.com/viewtopic....ghlight=doctor

    *Sigh* Sorry, you're a little lost. There is no disk drive for the Turbo Game Doctor 4 or 6. Famicom units use the original Nintendo disk drive to load games. Rob REALLY needs to change that caption because it is completely false.

    The expansion port on the back of the TGD is for expansion hardware (home made stuff) not a disk drive. There are no disk drives for Famicom Game Doctor units. This 50 pin connector is simply an extension of the cartridge port allowing the unit to interrupt the game and hand control over to attached hardware. The expansion was used with two devices: the Venus Save Card, and a inhouse device allowing Venus to link the TGD6 to a PC/XT (386)

    To use a TGD6 you need:

    A) Famicom Disk System
    B) Games hacked by *VENUS THEMSELVES* for the unit

    The order of operations is:

    A) Place Disk System RAM adapter on top of the TGD6
    B) Turn on system
    C) Insert TGD6 game disk (Side A) into FDS

    If it loads, it will prompt for you to insert "side B", then "side C" (disk 2, side A) etc until complete. Immediately after that, the game will load. There is no graphical interface and absolutely no way to load games from a floppy diskette.

    To get original Venus game disks you'll need to:

    A) Buy them (look at eBay, sometimes people think they're normal FDS games)
    B) Buy a few of them, learn how to read/write 2.8" Nintendo disks and reverse engineer the disk format. To do this, of course you'll need to understand 6502 assembly and low level hardware to discover the TGD6's different hardware functions.

    Because it's insanely hard to find any Game Doctor 2.8 diskettes, and generally pointless since 99% of them died 10 years ago, and even worse when 99% of those games are pre-1988 games, you'll need to make the game disks yourself.
    Of course, theat's the TGD6, but the idea is basically the same.

    They are worth around $50. PM me if you want to sell. I'd wouldn't mind adding one to my collection.

    -Rob
    The moral is, don't **** with Uncle Tim when he's been drinking!

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    Just so you know what to expect:

    That drive is going to make whirring noises and sputter and do anything it can that doesn't involve actually running a videogame. And on the off-chance that it does still work, it's not going to read those shoddy pirated disks anymore. And on the even more unlikely chance that it does, you're not going to find anything interesting. They'll just be common FDS and early Famicom games.

    On the plus side, it's likely that you have a disk with a blank label that reads "TURBO DICK." Enjoy it.

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    Thanks for the information. - Keep it coming.

    I have snapped a few pictures. A few I did in "santulli" style where all the titles are spread across the floor. Only problem is that my internet at home was down pretty much all Sunday from the time I first posted until I left the house this morning. I am currently on a bussiness trip so if someone can do me a favor and host the pictures I would appreciate it. PM me and I can email them.

    The disks do look like they are pirates, but almost 275 of them have nice color inserts and look rather impressive. Only a small subset have white generic labels and much of the writting is in japanese so I can't read them. I'd like to get it working since a number of the titles look to be japanese games I've never heard of before. I haven't even tried it yet, I've just been too busy since I got home.

    I'm hoping the pictures can generate a bit more information. After I understand how it works, I'll probably sell it or trade it, only problem is the disks are heavy so I'd hate to get a shipping quote on that. If it gets to that point, people in the NJ area probably will get first crack since they can pick it up. Right now I just want to get home and get a chance to play with it.

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    Pretzel (Level 4) Goblin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Videogamerdaryll
    And getting ready to because if you picked this up at a Flea market that I didn't decide to go to today I'm going to be sick.. ........ (New Jersey)
    I'll make sure to stand back then.....

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    Initial post edited to include pictures. The picture of the turbo game doctor 4+ and a bunch of others can be seen at the link:
    http://home.comcast.net/~gamesfortrade/

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    well well, most of those are the pirate disks I mentioned before,

    but the yellow disks are real fds games as far as I can tell.
    those should work just fine in your fds without the copier (unless the belt is broken of course)

    zelda 2, castlevania and simons quest are nice finds alone,
    I'd be interested in a few of those if you wanted to trade/sell them at some point.

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    Apple (Level 5) Lord Contaminous's Avatar
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    Let me get this straight, with that copier you can convert data from a Famicom cartridge to a disk to play on your FDS?

    I noticed Layla and Air Wolf were on disks. And I believe those games are really on cartridge.

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    Ryu Hayabusa (Level 16) rbudrick's Avatar
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    Default d

    Goblin, please let me now when you sell, I'd really be interested in a lot of those.

    -Rob
    The moral is, don't **** with Uncle Tim when he's been drinking!

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    Pac-Man (Level 10) Blitzwing256's Avatar
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    the copier basicly makes roms and puts them on the disks.
    so most of the games are just cart games on disks but they don't load in the fds (you need an external drive to load them)

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    Is there a problem with playing copied disks on a stock FDS? I finally got a Disk System working last night and a whole bunch of copied disks I have don't work. There almost all light blue and a few black ones. My Nintendo brand disks almost all work and one of the black copied disks works but I tried about 40 of the blue disks and most come up with errors. 3 of them loaded side A but had errors on side b. Is there a specific problem with copied disks or are they just of lower quality so they have wen't bad? Another completely sperarate problem I had last night was a Disk System belt not tracking properly. It would either run off the top of the plastic pulley and rub on something or go below the groove on the motor pulley. It would load the game if I put pressure on the belt so it wasn't rubbing on anything but I could never get the belt to track properly. I was getting very frustrated but luckily I have 3 Disk Systems and 3 Twin Famicoms right now so I took the belt off and put it in another Disk System and it works perfectly. I didn't even have to adjust the speed of the motor. Has anyone else had a similar probelm? Is there a way to fix it? To put this back on topic I am also interested in the official Nintendo disks and if you need any help getting your Famicom setup going PM me.
    Thanks, y-bot

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