Famicom

In 2006 a Famicom's cartridge manufactured by Tengen was opened. The cartridge contained a clone of the Nintendo's CIC chip, called "Rabbit", which allows to play bootleg games on the Famicom console. Below are the images of the Tengen's chip made with an optical microscope. In late 2006, Tengen's "Rabbit" chip was completely reverse-engineered and a PIC-based clone was successfully made.

By looking at some old discs, I came across this interesting text, written by Leo L. Schwab in 1989! Truth is stranger than fiction. I'm in the local supermarket, in the breakfast cereal aisle, minding my own business, when I spot the latest offering from Ralston Purina breakfast cereal division. My jaw drops. I suppose I should have expected such a thing to happen sooner or later, but I'm still incredulous. I stare at the title of the box (I swear I am not making this up): "Nintendo Cereal System" I try to picture in my mind's eye what form of life could have thought this up. Images of a fat rich guy in a 3-piece suit come to...

Standard Codes: [a] - Alternate [b] - Bad Dump [BF] - Bung Fix [c] - Cracked [f] - Other Fix [h] - Hack [o] - Overdump [p] - Pirate [t] - Trained [T] - Translation (Unl) - Unlicensed [x] - Bad Checksum ZZZ_ - Unclassified [!] - Verified Good Dump (???k) - ROM Size Special Codes: [C] - Color GameBoy [S] - Super GameBoy (M#) - Multilanguage (# of Languages) [M] - Mono Only (NeoGeo Pocket) (PC10) - PlayChoice 10 (NES) (1) - Japan (Genesis) (4) - USA (Genesis) (5) - NTSC Only (Genesis) (8) - PAL Only (Genesis) (BS) - BS ROMS (SNES) (ST) - Sufami Turbo (SNES) (NP) - Nintendo Power (SNES) (Adam) - ADAM Version (Coleco) (PAL) - PAL Video Countr...

Tools required: Replacement belt Medium sized Phillips head screwdriver Small precision Phillips head screwdriver Small precision flat head screwdriver 1.5mm Allan key Tweezers Pliers Cotton tips Isopropyl alcohol (or another cleaning solution good at removing melted rubber) SECTION 1: Drive Removal 1. Flip the unit upside down and remove the following 6 screws: 2. Turn the unit over, right side up, and gently lift off the top half of the case. There are no wires attached to this bit so it's safe to remove completely. 3. With the unit now open, proceed to remove screws 1 & 2 from the battery tray compartment. Now gently lift the b...

Follow this simple diagram to add split audio outs to your NES or Famicom… Open up your NES and disassemble it down until you have it sitting there on your work surface as a bare motherboard, locate chip 2a03 and check the following diagram: Once you have done the mod, the NES/Famicom’s sound channels will output separately on one jack split as follows: Channels 1+2 will output from Jack 1 Channels 3+4+5 will output from Jack 2 Using a split Y cable to headphone jack plug you can record the NES’s sound into your computer now at a MUCH higher quality than before… You will have to mix the audio down to Mono tho - as the NES is a MONO sy...

I recently got a Sharp Twin Famicom for around 70€. This is rather cheap, they usually go for over 200€ in good condition. The Twin Famicom is a Famicom with a built-in Famicom Disk System drive. This was a floppy disk system for the Famicom that was only used in Japan. The one I got worked well with carts (at least with 8BIT MUSIC POWER FINAL), but disks wouldn’t read at all. The drives on these systems are famous for using really bad belts. I hoped that the only thing broken with my system would be the belt, so I opened it up (it’s very straight-forward), and sure enough, the belt was half ripped apart and half fused with the gears. I o...

Nintendo made a neat little device called a "Card Cleaner" to clean up your Famicom Disk System game disks. The cleaning process is entirely a manual process: You open up the card cleaner, insert the famicom disk, close it up and rotate the knob, spinning the disk and cleaning the underside of the disk. You then have to repeat with the top side. This was definitely needed, because most FDS disks do not have shutters. So if you don't remember to put them back into their protective sleeves every time, they're gonna get dusty and dirty quick.

In the 80’s, the American video game market was initially booming, then tanked under the weight of too many consoles and a flood of poor quality bootleg games. In 1985, Nintendo would pull the American market back from the brink when they imported their popular Family Computer (Famicom) as the Nintendo Entertainment System. We’ve all heard that story a million times, but what about the Famicom itself? What was different and interesting about it, and what was maybe improved by the NES? I had long been curious about the Famicom. Nintendo Power briefly mentioned it a couple times, giving glimpses of the nature of this mysterious machine in t...