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Fixing That Old Game System
larsoncc writes "Emulation is a great way to preserve past game systems, but what if you could keep these digital dinosaurs running for decades? Well, you can, and some of us do. It's not easy for me to 'let go' of that vintage (circa 1978) Magnavox Odyssey2, or toss my Atari 7800 in the closet because I don't have a power supply. Here's my article to help you solve common problems with 15 different systems, and general tips for the others. Viva la TI-99/4a!!"
I dont even bother with reparing my old systesm I just emulate them.
I wish I had the games I wrote for my timex sinclier. That wher on cassete tape. and an emulator that would run them. I was so proud when I ran out of room in the 2K built in memory and had to attache the 16K ram expansion.
http://Lenny.com
Here is what I use: Windex, Radio Shack component cleaner and Q-tips. Windex for the exterior and the RS component cleaner for RF leads and cartridge contacts. Occasional Amour-All to give it a nice shine if you're gonna advertise it on eBay.
How do I fix my old PSX? My Original Playstation. I know the "turn upside down" trick...but for the life of me, I can't seem to find any place that sells laser assemblies anymore. If I ebay or froogle for it, all I get is tons and tons of stuff for the ps2.
Damn technology.
You're all bastards!
Easier solution:
wget emulator.tar.gz
wget every_rom_ever_made.tar.gz
We used to blow on the contacts of those stubborn NES cartridges until blue in the face.
I probably expended enough air to fill one of those blow-up bouncy castles.
Never thought to actually try cleaning it with something.
I really like one of his suggestions:
"Demo Discs (XBox Magazine) Don't Play - I wish I was joking about this, but here's the solution. Boil the disc for 20 seconds (or less). It actually works. I've tried it, and I swear on my life it works...[snip]"
I can realise how it might work, but I really have to wonder what was the motivation behind the guy who first discovered the procedure.
"YOU STUPID CD, WORK OR I SHALL BOIL THEE!"
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
of every legacy Sega system just not "being supported" by the parent company. Is there anyway to make the 32x or Sega CD popular again?!
Google Cache link available without photos
Google Cache
Big Dig-ing until the money is gone...
Wait, did you say your server is an old game box?
You cant emulate the 'feel' of having the real thing in your hands.
Sure you get to run the *software*, but you lose everything that makes it special and worth saving.
Real history is lost when we lose the old classic hardware ( both games and computers ).
Really sad to see so many people that dont appreciate history for what it is, and consider it 'throwaway'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mirror
20 comments and it's slashdotted. They need to fix the broken NES that they're using to host the thing.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
perhaps they should concentrate on fixing their modern server :-P
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
"What if nobody's made an emulator for your favorite obscure system?"
There's not very many of these, although there are a few like the Jaguar that aren't emulated very well.
"What if the emulator doesn't play it right?"
Unless you're talking about the same few from the question above, you will find that most emulators play games perfectly down to the last pixel, and in some cases, they look a lot better (as is the case with the playstation games.)
"What if you want to use the original controller?"
They make adapters so you can use SNES, PSX, Genesis, N64, and other controller types, right on the USB port.
"What if you believe in respecting copyright law, no matter how ridiculous it may be?"
If you believe emulators themselves are breaking laws, well, go nuts I guess. But they aren't. Downloading ROMS of games you don't own is, but why said anything about that?
Lots of holes in your arguement, man.
Personally, I believe emulators will be the only way to preserve these games given enough time.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Here's the coral cache link, and here's a list of the systems included in the article:
Odyssey^2
Atari 2600
Intellivision
Atari 7800
TI-99/4a
NES
Genesis
Sega CD
Turbo Grafx
Saturn
Dreamcast
PS2
XBox
GameCube
GameBoy Advance
Wow, I really could have used this information 20 years ago! I was devestated when the power supply to my TI-99/4a blew out from overheating, and lord knows those Odyssey2 joysticks weren't built to last. Actually, any information about repairing and replacing hard-wired peripherals would have been helpful back then.
One console that's missing from the list was an early console (does anyone remember the name?) that competed with the original Odyssey. It was the ultimate in hard-wired madness. All of its games were built-in, and were selectable with a sliding knob. It had two hardwired sliding-stick controllers, and possibly the first console lightgun, which was made of pig iron and weighed approximately 185 pounds. The monochromatic games were all variations on table tennis and "shoot the square". And yes, that used to be fun. :)
Man,
.net).
I really wanted the ZX Sinclair. I never got one. But a few years later there was a machine that was sold in Sweden. I'm not sure if it ever made it out of Sweden, the Luxor ABC80. And it still has the best basic out there (and I'm counting VB
I wrote a break out game (you know, with the paddle at the bottom and the bricks at the top). Man, those were the days.
I think it had a Zilog Z80 cpu, or something like that. Man, I haven't thought about that for years.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Anyway, the weak link in th C-64 was not the computer itself, but the power supply, which was separated. Since it was somewhat complicated (fully regulated) and encased in a solid black epoxy box, most people didn't bothered to fiddle with it. This site has the complete schematic for a power supply, from where you can either fix it or build a new one entirely.
As I recall, me, my brother, and his best friend spent the better part of four years searching for the mysterious driver that would unscrew those triangular bolts from the back of the cart.
Shadowrun for the Sega was infinitly superior to it's SNES brother. It allowed for diffrent paths through the game, if, oh lets say, you wanted to play this Role Playing Game in any role other than the one Nintendo decided for you (Dog Shaman).
The problem was, though, the Sega cart's battery life was...less than shperical solid state water ball in Hades.
Extend the consolse's life all you want, but make sure you can equally extend the life of the carts.
There are no gods but ourselves.
Older gaming systems had very little power, so programmers would code the games in low-level machine language, and they would use many different hacks, tricks, and some games even time things based on counting CPU cycles and precise timing delays between different hardware subsystems. So it shouldn't be a surprise that games developed for these consoles play best on the original console.
The SNES is probably the best example of this because it was probably the most complicated and powerful game console, which was still programmed using low-level machine language. The aforementioned link describes inaccuracies in the best SNES emulator, ZSNES. Further comlicating matters is that some SNES games have separate co-processors built into the cartridge, and so the emulators must also emulate these separate processors, which have their own instruction set, protocol, timing delays, and communication bus. Since SNES games were written in assembler, developed soley for one fixed hardware platform, and then only tested on that system... it shouldn't be a surprise that the games play best on a real SNES.
Yet most gamers have never actually compared a real SNES to emulation. Some games are emulated better than others, but some are just downright bad. Of course, emulation is always improving, and in the distant future, when the real SNES's are all dust, emulation will be the only option. Hopefully it is perfected by then.
Of course, you can cheat and use a Flash Cart or Game Copier
(2), (3), with a real SNES, so that you get the best of both worlds: tons of SNES games on a real SNES with real SNES controllers all hooked up to a TV in front of a comy sofa!
worst designed system ever. The controllers weared out fast (OK, I played way too much Xevious) and if the tabs that were build into a 7800 cartridge to allow the added contacts to connect broke, you just downgraded to a 2600. I also curse the backwards compatiblity, since that was the reason I got a 7800 instead of a Nintendo at the time (that and it was $40 bucks cheaper). I've heard these consoles where just dumped on the marked to cash in on the resurge, and it showed.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
For the eraser suggestion. I would recommend an ink eraser (remember those?).
The disk drives (1541 and 1581) were notorious for getting out of alignment. There was actually a small BASIC program written to help "knock" it back into alignment. You can see it on this page, near the bottom.
Despite the promises or anything you have heard, never, EVER use Armor All on a plastic or vinyl surface that is not already dried/perished/damaged. Armor All is very good at removing the native polymers in the plastic and replacing them with itself. Once it has made it into the surface, you will continually need to replenish the Armor All or risk losing the plastic. I have seen this product ruin more dashboards, tires, motorcycle seats, trim rubber and so on than I would care to recall.
If you want an Armor All type finish on your plastics, use a hand glaze or plastic dressing. These products are available from auto stores, and auto paint suppliers. Slightly off-topic: if you want your old car/cycle tires to look like new, use a little brake fluid on a rag.. works miracles.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Emulation is choppy... even sometimes on my 2.5 GHZ beast!~
Totally unrelated, but I just tried to run my legal, paid-for copy of C&C Generals and my paid-for, legal copy of Alice Cooper's Goes to Hell (which I have bought at least twice - once on vinyl 20 years ago) popped up telling me to go to hell. I have 2 CD drives.
Yeah, I'm clueless - remember when Klaatu was said to be the Beatles? I got sucked into that one also.
I'm guilty, I guess.
Hunt the Wumpus for ever!!!11one
As seen on abadonware: PSOne
Where are all the replies complaining about this not being a news item that inexplicably get modded up?
And look - its down. Got a bit of slashdotting and IIS presents a funny little 403.9 error (dot 9 ? dont remember seeing that in RFC2616) about "too many users". boo-hoo.
Looks they can be purchased online here..
Yeah, there were games for it, but I've never seen a game console with a dot matrix printer and a 5.25" floppy drive. I also wrote some BASIC programs on it. I never did that with my Atari 2600. Yep, I had one. :P
The connector for the peripheral expansion box gave me worries when I had it. It was a thick sheilded ribbon cable with a heavy plastic connector hanging off the end of the keyboard. I think I used a chunk of wood to support it.
I do remember the video being horrible though. (the tip in the article is about the video). I even bought the TI brand monitor. I think it was a 13"?
Wow, you wrote a friggin essay on two words I used, "pixel perfect."
While, no, I have not studied an SNES game with a magnifying glass on both an emulator and then on the real console system, hell if I can tell a difference on the 100 or so games I own.
I can't tell the difference on the Genesis, NES, TB16, Atari 2600 - 7800's either.
So fine, maybe that wasn't the right word to use - so how about this: "Pixel 'I can't tell the fucking difference so it might as well be perfect to 99% of the people playing them.'" That work for you?
You also mentioned that "almost" all of the adapters for the SNES suck, well, that insinuates that SOME don't. Hey, I never said buy a shitty convertor.
" but if we all throw away the real thing too early, we will end up with subpar emulation that isn't as good as the real thing. "
I didn't say we should. But these systems WILL die out, some day. You won't be able to get them easily, the games won't work, etc.. And even if you could, who cares? If emulation is as good as it is with some game systems, I don't see the point. Why would I have 12 game systems all wired up in a big mess to my TV when I could just run them all on a single XBox or PC?
And, I don't know too many people that play SNES games all day long anymore. It's usually every once in awhile to play a few of their favorites for a little while, then it's back to the Doom 3's, Far Cry's, and Everquests.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If you learn to read, you would have seen I wasn't just talking about games, but all old hardware.
So don't preach to me you twit. Bet you aren't even old enough to even know what the hell I'm talking about when I mention old hardware.. to you ' a 486' is ancient.. Even know what a 8080 is? Or how about an 1802? "pong when i was a wee one" ? Doubtfull.
You have no appreciation for what it took to get here. No concept of history.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe some people (you, apparently) are all nostalgic about seeing the old Nintendo or Coleco under the TV, but most don't seem to care.
I don't. I can use my old controllers on my computer and beam the picture to my TV from this infra-red video thingy. It "feels" like I'm playing Super Mario Bros. The picture and the sound are both exactly like the original..
I like computer hardware like the next guy, but talking about preserving hardware and talking about emulation are two seperate subjects, and I think you're getting a little too outwardly defensive about it.
I've given away or tossed some old game systems, because I don't use them anymore. Just like how I throw away a VCR - I keep the movies (as I keep ROMS on my PC) but I don't keep the old VCR that's just taking up space in the closet, forcing me to move it all whenever I move to a new place.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I've been trying to find a way to fix my TI-99/4A's RF converter for years... little did I realize I could just make a simpler adaptor myself! Thanks for the info! Time to go play some Parsec now... :)
i can understand the appeal of playing pong on some retro hardware, but emulating that hardware so you can play pong on your desktop is a little overboard
All the torrents you could want.
No, you know what *I* think is funny? The fact that you've turned to personal insults to back up your weak ass arguement - the true sign of an internet newbie.
Good luck in your future endeavors.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Anyone who would do this instead of emulating or contributing to the (largely open source) emulator community is missing alot of things about how fun classic gaming has become.
Alot of people have trouble setting up emulators. This is due to the fact that most games play much better with 3rd party plugins than the original included plugins. Do a little research, or just try this:
Get yourself a boat load of roms. (shareaza, irc, google, there are ways). Then install zsnes, set the video to 1024x768 and turn on hq3x.
This improves the playability of old snes roms so much that it is amazing. Especially with a high quality usb controller (i like the saitek p2500), and a projector. Mario is over a foot tall and not jaggy at all! People come to my house ALL THE TIME, just to play dr. mario with foot long pills.
Another big favorite is mortal kombat 4 (n64 edition) on 1964 with the jabo video plugin, at 1024x768, with 8x AA and 8x ansio enabled. The people are nearly as tall as real people and their blood sprays all over the room.
Another key element is a good little surround sound system. I like the logitech z640 set of speakers and a cheap audigy, but there are other options.
It's cool to restore old consoles as a hobby, but for raw playability and user experience, a kick ass PC set up right with a projector and wireless gamepads, seriously takes it. None of my friends even play their xbox/ps2/gamecube anymore! (They do play vice city ALOT on this particular pc setup, can't wait for the pc version of san andreas!!!)
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
And on the flipside.. emulation is sometimes better, at least in my opinion.
My PS2 dualshock controller with USB adaptor is more comfortable in my hands then any older controllers. With video filters like SuperEagle, many games look much better without losing their charm. The ability to save anytime is a massive improvement to many games (sure you can abuse it to beat any game easily, but thats a choice), good bye long winded code inputs. Built in gameshark support with downloadable codes.. Some emulators even have half way decent online functionality..
The article's section on the NES mentions the "Blinkies" ("You put the game in, turn your Nintendo on, and the screen alternates between blue and white.") but doesn't explain the real reason why this is happening: the original NES has a lockout chip to prevent people from playing unlicensed/third-party games on the system. When a game blinks, but you can still see the game's title screen in between each blink, it's because the lockout chip is freaking out.
Fortunately, there's a very easy mod to disable the lockout chip by opening the NES up and cutting a pin on the PCB. It used to be really easy to find the mod on Google, but it seems to have disappeared (could Nintendo's legal department have squashed it? That'd be ridiculous if so, this is well within fair use). Regardless, you can get it at archive.org -- I'm pretty sure that's the how-to file I used when I did the mod a few years back. It worked like a charm, and I highly recommend it!
IIS goes down even you just glance at it sideways, I was just surprised it didnt happen sooner.
mattdev@server$ touch
cannot touch `/dev/genitals': Permission denied
Blow on the cartridge.
Failing that, blow in the console.
One of the things I've found a bit interesting is how awful some older games look on a VGA/SVGA or higher resolution display that were designed with TV monitors in mind.
I fondly remember games on my 2600 and C64 that looked cool, but when seeing them on a high res monitor they looked like crap (emulator also).
It seems many designers back then took into account the low resolution nature of monitors and low scan rates to kind of use a natural form of anti-aliasing.
So when using that emulator of old games be sure to lower your monitor refresh rate (if possible) to what the game was originally ment to play under and it will look as you remember it!
Actually, for what I want it to do, most of the time it is.
I think you must be looking at these things through rose-colored glasses. I still remember the Nintendo skipping frames (not really frames, but it's a simplification that makes sense) a bit when there were more than 10 enemies on the screen. I remember some old games that were impossible to beat with no save game feature. Worst of all, I remember when my games got too dusty to use, and I'd have to fiddle with them for twenty minutes or so to get them to work.
None of these are problems on modern emulators, and the good ones have other features I like. Zsnes has the most features I really like, such as searching (to cheat) and a fast-forward button (for cutscenes I've watched a bazillion times).
I don't see what's so great about having the original controller. Personally, I like the controller that I have. I can use it on all my old game systems without having to get used to the feel of the new system. To me, being able to use a PC gamepad is a feature that is lacking in the old console systems.
In fact, I'd probably be willing to, for instance, buy a modern gaming system if I could get it in the form of a graphics or PCI card and DVD drive specifically because I like the features that an emulator provides so much that I don't really want to go without them.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
did you know you can keep an original Nintendo Entertainment System running forever by: 1) Blowing as hard as you can on the bottom of the cartridge, where the connector pins are.
Don't. Instead, rub a cotton swab moistened with water or diluted rubbing alcohol several times across both sides of the connector, and then run the other end of the swab to dry the connector, as recommended in The Article.
Now let me go back to Balloon Fight. (listen to remix)
It's not easy for me to 'let go' of that vintage (circa 1978) Magnavox Odyssey2, or toss my Atari 7800 in the closet because I don't have a power supply.
Well, you sure make it sound easy. The effort it takes to go to Ebay and buy one must be overwhelming.
Such comments haven't been posted because users seem to have found the article interesting enough that nobody gives two flying fist f***s that it's not news.
The SNES has copier's that can do cheat searches, real time save, fast-forward, etc. Also, all of the emulators emulate the SNES slowdown, flicker, etc, which you describe. So they have the "problem" you mention because not emulating that would make some games no longer run correctly. Have you even compared an emulated SNES to the real thing? I think most people who emulate have not compared them side-by-side. It is not rose colored glasses. I play allot of SNES games on a regular basis, and I have powerful computers that emulate the SNES, as well as a couple SNES systems, about a hundred SNES carts, a flash cart for playing downloaded ROMs, and two copier devices, also for playing downloaded ROMs.
A SNES along with a copier (so you can play downloaded ROMs on your SNES) can be had for $60. A emulator setup requires controller adapters, motherboard, cpu, memory, harddrive, video card, sound card, chasis, and power supply. The end result is far more expensive, larger, noisier, less power efficient, hotter, and harder to setup than a SNES + copier... not to mention the fact that the PC takes a long time to boot compared to the SNES + copier.
Your the2d.com kind of misses a few points. He claims to be a snes programmer rather than an emulator programmer. If that is true than it would explain a little bit of history that he seems to have missed out on.
I don't think that many people care now, but back when the snes emulators were extremely primative a guy working for Nintendo lost his job because his project was canned. The project was to improve code from a snes dev suite to produce an emulator that would run encrypted snes roms that nintendo would sell. When he lost his job he took the program with him. He stripped the encryption and posted a binary of what he had working as well as a text document explaining how the internals of the snes worked. This document should still be available for download at www.zophar.net
This was a great boon to snes emulation. Information from his document was quickly incorperated into a number of emulators yielding vast improvements. However, his document had several techinical flaws in it and Nintendo threatened to sue if he ever released a corrected version of that document. Many of the flaws were found by the emulator writers, but I bet that a lot of the persistent issues (especially ones that do not visibly 'break' any commercial games) in snes emulators are decended from poor info in that document.
Also, consider the fact that the snes is rather complicated with a lot of wierd timing. Combine that with the fact that all the current info about the system is derived from a faulty document and reverse engineering of commercial games (that for the most part aren't going to try the crazy things that guy is talking about) then it is no suprize that some of those wierd little things are not emulated correctly.
If it is so choppy on your 2.5 ghz 'beast' then why does it worked so well on a soft-modded xbox? NES, SNES, GB, GBC,GBA, Atari, NeoGeo (a few hickups on one of the emus), TG16, CPS1, CPS2. It all works good. The main system that gives me problems is inproper emulation of space harrier (both gba and sms versions, strangely enough).
:P
Let me guess, your 'beast' is using an integrated graphics card.
I'm a big fan of the SOYO Kiky X-Series USB adapter. It works in Linux, Windows and MacOS X, and has allowed me to use the PSX pads I like with my games.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
When I read the title, I was interested because I wanted to fix up my old snes which has just been absorbing dust in my room for the past couple years. I was disappointed that they didn't talk about it in the article, but could someone show me a good site to which I could refer. I'd be very pleased.....
"Guns don't kill people, bullets do."
The server is an original Pentium with the floating point bug.
or...
An error 403.9 is almost a 404 error. It means the server hasn't quite burned to the ground yet.
One key universal fixit that I didn't see mentioned is to reseat the socketed chips. I've fixed so many old systems by applying a little force to socketed chips until they "crunch".
A few other tips:
Always unplug power supplies when they're not in use. It says this in the old manuals, and my experience is that it dramatically increases the life of the supply.
Also, since I deal the most with the Atari 2600, a common problem is that the switches start getting sketchy. This is usually that the solder joints have cracked (which can be fixed by just re-heating them with a soldering iron) or just that the switches need a little contact cleaner sprayed in them. And the paddle controllers almost always need their pots sprayed with contact/tuner cleaner.
It's amazing how well those old systems hold up if you take good care of them.
-paul
I only read the first paragraph and already disagree..
Battery corrosion can and must be cleaned up.
Yes you need an acid. But this does not sound as bad as it looks.
Vinager wil do the job.. I neutralised some battery-corroded cpu boards of 25 year old pinball machines this way.. www.marvin3m.com/fix.htm explains how to deal with battery corrosion.
Leaving the problem like the author suggests is the worst thing you can do ! Because battery corrosion just keeps on burning and traveling over pcb's and if you wait long enough, nothing will survive anymore. It can even travel through connectors and wires and attack other pcb's which are connected to it.
I recently fixed a pinball cpu with battery corrosion.. bought the game cheap, 'it always worked and stopped working one day'
the cpu looked ok, no obvious signs (green color) of leakage, battery had even be removed in the past..
however 2 ic sockets didn't make any contact at all anymore.
So my guess is that the battery had leaked and it had been cleaned off but not really neutralised, and the stuff that got under the ic's kept burning away..
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
I remember reading about a program which - using scanned images of records, could actually gauge the pit depth and play the record back from the digital image. Probably not entirely accurate, but it's rather amazing some people with a little spare time are able to do to keep their favorite media alive beyond the original hardware.
That being said, I've always wondered about how games get transferred over from old console systems. I know there's hardware to interface with PC's etc, but is it home-made or the same stuff that the big-boys use?
Of course nowadays we've got it easy, emulators play the original media for PSX games, etc
Wow, quite the perfectionist aren't we.
I've written CPU core emulators before, so I know what I'm talking about when I say that the NES emulators you hail aren't the paragon of emulation either. Heck just load up Micro Machines and you'll see a misplaced line or three due to hblank timing issues! The horror!
Give up this dream of true hardware emulation - the interface is what matters, the *appearance* of true abstraction, and the fact that a user cares about pixel-level details (when the artists who worked on the game probably could care less) speaks more about obsessive traits than about the ability of modern PCs to perform cycle-exact emulation.
When these systems are actually a piece of *history*, people studying them through emulators won't give a damn about pixels here and there, since the specs will likely be available as well. I mean seriously. "These ancient games used a custom co-processor and none of them used this particular opcode, so it was never implemented! If only we had that missing and useless code!"
It sounds like audiophiles who swear by their $800 gold-plated diamond-filament USB cable that carries a digital signal as well as any $5 generic one, if not worse.
- HOORAY!
It had tracks written deliberately out of alignment - track 0 and 1 (iirc) were written very "broad" so any drive would read it, then the subsequent tracks were written "too far in" gradually moving into correct alignment, then going "too far out". So - you put the disk in, it would boot, upload special firmware to the drive, then it would step through the disk counting which tracks gave it the "best" read (least CRC errors).
Then - and this is the truly horrifying bit - it would gently wind the head all the way to one end, and then very, very quickly slam it into the other end stop. It would do this a few times, then read the alignment tracks again, then slam the head a few times, then reread the alignment tracks... and so on, until the head was absolutely bang on centred.
The guy I worked with told me to never, ever, *ever* run that disk with a customer in the shop...
ZX Spectrum common faults and fixes
Flashing squares, garbage on screen, colours OK - ULA has failed. That's the big 40-pin chip beside the video modulator. It runs very hot - maybe a heatsink would be a good idea. There are a couple of versions - everything from Issue 3 boards onwards uses the same ULA, near as I can see.
Flickering garbage, possibly with a corrupted copyright message, colours OK - faulty 4116 RAM chip. This is the row of eight, on the bottom left side of the board. One will be faulty - guess which one? Sometimes you can identify the faulty bit from the position of the dots in the screen. Sometimes the faulty chip is noticeably hotter than the others.
Flickering garbage, smeary black-and-white, no "purring" from the expansion slot - The chopper isn't running, so the 4116es (lower 16K) aren't being fed +12V and -5V. This may be caused by a failed 4116 (they go for a pastime). Desolder the power pins of each chip in turn (not Ground though). When the chopper starts up when you connect power after desoldering a chip (that's the purring sound), you've found the faulty one.
If the chopper *never* starts up, you may have a blown chopper transistor. Look for the little round ferrite transformer near the heatsink - near that you will see a transistor marked "ZTX 650". Any NPN transistor with fairly high gain and a rating of a couple of watts will do here.
Hope this helps someone. If you decide to stick this info on your own website, please credit me.
I can say that every SNES adpater lacks support for SNES peripherials such as the Super Scope
Hell, it's not like Nintendo supported it either....
I was hoping for some info on how to UN-suckify the laser on my Saturn, if just a recommendation on an after-market bit that will LAST unlike the stock. =\
Here's a modeline you can use for XFree86/X.org to get a TV-like 320x240 display, a la NES or low-res SNES (note that vertical refresh is 120Hz, make sure your CRT can handle it):
Modeline "320x240" 12.588 320 336 368 384 256 261 263 279
256x256 would be even better but there probably aren't that many monitors that can handle that high a refresh rate (or video cards that can handle lower data rates).
Well, yeah, if you bought your computer just to be a SNES emulator, you're crazy. Even assuming you bought your machine as a purely entertainment device, you can do a lot better than that.
Along those lines, I do eventually have a purely entertainment machine, probably a Micro-ITX, equipped with five or so of my favorite emulators, a DVD burner, and TV card. Yes, it'll cost more than $60. However, it would be cheaper than if I got all of the features such a system would provide separately. However, it'll be smaller, and as quiet, with only 60 watts of maximum power consumption.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
For more details about how to clean your NES without a cleaning kit, I wrote up a set of instructions back in college: How to Clean your NES and Games.
Alex.
"Really sad to see so many people that dont appreciate history for what it is, and consider it 'throwaway'."
Well there goes grandma.
Yes, you need a special thingamabob to play Star Ocean correctly because it was an unusual title and encoded differently.
There IS lovely emulation for it. And a fan translation so you can play it in English.
I ought to know, I've been playing it for the past few weeks!
The 1571 was a double-sided, better 5.25" drive. I don't know if it got out of alignment either thought.
...I recommend Ray Carlsen's Home Page
We have to look at why these emulators are made.
The C64 is a computer system with thousands and thousands of programs and games. CB64 itself has over 16,000 games in it's library.
With this in mind, yes, we really need an emulator that's perfect. There's a ton of C64 hackers out there, and if the emulator wasn't 100% perfect it just wouldn't be useful. Because there's so much software for it and it was developed for for so long people have used every trick in the book to get it to do things.
But, when it comes to game systems the story is often different. Most console emulators have this objective: To give you the ability to play the games. Since no game console has nearly as much software as the C64 nor the same type of user base, getting the games to run "almost perfectly" is certainly good enough.
So there's really different goals there. I'm sure most emulator developers would LIKE their software to be perfect, but if it's not necessary to get that last 4% of perfection out of the thing then nobody will bother - it plays the games.
Personally I think the SNES emulators are great. They let me play the games I used to like a lot, and they look fantastic. This is what I think console emulating is about - bringing you back to the games you used to love, not the system.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Older consoles consume under 10 watts of power. Open up any old console and you will notice that they don't even need heatsinks, which even the Eden versions of the mini-itx systems need. Btw, none of the mini-itx systems are powerful enough to emulate the SNES, Genesis, and many other systems at full speed. A much better option is to use a software hacked Xbox, which costs $150 new and $99 used. (Of course you don't buy them hacked, so you do that yourself, but its free.) It has emulators for many console systems, and they all play at full speed, cuz the Xbox has the power to pull it off. I am not sure how power efficient an XBox is, though. It is funny... I barely have any Xbox games, yet it is one of my most used consoles because of the emulators that run on it.
My posts detailing the cons of emulation don't mean that I don't extensively use emulators. I emulate Arcade, Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, NES, Gameboy, and a few others. But I don't emulate the SNES and 3DO because those emulators aren't accurate enough... yet. So I have a SNES + copier (so I don't need to juggle hundreds of carts), an hacked Xbox, and a 3DO all hooked up to my TV.
Emulation is great, it has its uses, but a serious gamer needs to realize that sometimes emulation sucks compared to the real thing. I can't believe I am the only person that has compared various emulators to the real thing. Anyway, I have the real thing supplemented with emulation... and as the emulators improve I gradually put more consoles back into storage to save space.
I mean, it is not like people are stupid enough to throw away their old game systems and games, right? Those used game shops will rip you off, giving you pennies for good older games and systems.
Good one :) The Super Scope had only around 10 different games that made use of it. The mouse also had about the same level of support.
In case anyone's interested, I finally indentified the model in question. My memory was a bit fuzzy, but this is definitely it: Unisonic's Tournament 2000 (T-2000-JR), the first game console I ever played.
I have several SNES games that use batteries for game saves. There's nothing more frustrating than losing your progress because of a battery failure. Is there a way to replace these batteries?
There are good reasons for both emulation and keeping old consoles alive. Both are reasonably mutually exclusive. To suggest that one is to the detriment of the other is plain crazy.
I love my collection of old consoles. I regularly play Shining Force 3 and Radiant Silvergun on my one of my many Saturns. I also play my SNES, Megadrive and Dreamcast fairly often. I keep them because I like to collect computer game stuff (and some of the games were just awesome), but I really hope to one day show my grandchildren the collection of consoles that I grew up with, that is if they still work. Sure they will laugh at the crappy graphics of Mario and Sonic (and even more so at the c64), but they may appreciate seeing how far things have advanced in 50 years. Showing people the hardware is important in my opinion, since its something they can see, and the actual thing represents itself better than a bunch of code.
On the other hand, I also love whipping out Winkawaks and playing Puzzle Bobble or Money Idol Exchanger (check this out if you like Puzzle Bobble!) with my friends (convenient, since I don't own an arcade cabinet/console version). Emulation is great because you can play all your games on one machine, use whatever control method you want, save states, easy home development, hacking, and in 100 years time when no one's hardware works anymore it will be the only way to play the games.
Current emulation is not perfect however, and will not be for a long time. A few people have touched on the issue of sound emulation. Wave based playback is a no-brainer to emulate, but the older consoles that synthesize their sound are much much harder to emulate 100% correctly. Comparing a game on Megadrive and Genecyst (I haven't tried a more recent MD emu), the sound difference was very noticeable. Emulation of synth chips is hard in software. Because 100% emulation is still a fair way off for many of my consoles (especially Saturn and Dreamcast - I hope these improve soon!), I'll still keep playing my hardware versions.
So back to the point, we should look after our old hardware as best as we can, but also strive to develop emulators that can be considered perfect so that when the hardware dies, the games will continue to live on.
I think this article should make the point that VMU's don't need batteries to work as memory cards. Assuming you don't mind them beeping when the system is switched on or you plug a controller in (I assume that's the "scream" noise described in the article), just remove any dead batteries so they don't leak. It's not like there are any mini-games actually worth playing on the VMUs. The screen and buzzer will still work when connected to a controller.
You may as well remove the batteries from any new VMUs you find, they're far more useful for things like Sega Saturns and Neo Geo Pocket Colours, which use the same batteries for more useful things (the NGPC won't work without one). If you do want to use a VMU game, just fit batteries while your playing it, otherwise you'll just waste batteries.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
I can't believe how many people are saying old consoles are pointless because of emulation.
Mame etc. are great, bt there's nothing like the real thing... If only for the nostalgia factor, getting in touch with the teenage you who spent hours with the console. I guess if you're the type of person who doesn't get excited finding a cache of musty old cartridges at a thrift store, you wouldn't understand.
There's also one thing emulation can't easily do, and that's multiplayer. Getting out the 2600 to play Warlords, the SNES to play Smash TV or Super Bomberman, the N64 to play Goldeneye-- in the living room, on a TV instead of a monitor, with four people playing at once...
my password is private, but unchanged.