Famicom Dojo: Cartridges and Pins

Did Doc Brown teach you nothing?

Great episode, once again.

Graci for the plug and recognition. =D

I’ll have to actually get my hands on a copy of Akumajou Densetsu as opposed to the Dracula’s Curse I already have.

I can ask Vinnk to keep his eyes peeled for a copy (or two, so I can also have one). I imagine it was pretty popular, and so either difficult to find and/or quite expensive. That sort of challenge doesn’t discourage me, however. I’ll see what I can do.

I can get you a copy of the lose cart for $15 and one in the original box for $35.

You should really invest in a lapel microphone, camera microphones take away from the production value IMO.

hey, great show as always, fascinating stuff everytime i hear about it.
big into retro, in fact wishing more NES/SNES quality gaming could come to Wiiware, though i am sure it would be panned by the HD crowd, but the look and feel of the many timeless classics doesnt ever disappoint me. its incredible what they were able to do with so little back then.

cartridges really did allow for some unique things back then, like the FX chip on SNES, did sega have games with such extras on them?

These videos are great, thanks guys! I’m really enjoying reliving my childhood from an entirely different perspective… as well as LEARNING THINGS! Funducation!

That’s pretty awesome stuff. Nice work!

Another good one. I agree that using the camera mic kind of detracts from things, and I think that a few of the jokes were a bit too forced (though still amusing enough), but the information provided (the heart of things, to be sure) was very interesting. Many thanks.

I’d definitely prefer a lapel mic, but I gotta find one that does a stereo signal, or I’m going to have a fun time in post spreading the sound to the second channel, longer encoding times, etc etc…

And I suddenly find I prefer “funducation” over “infotainment”. Definitely.

sean, i always called it, edutainment, never heard of infotainment, nor funducation, and i like neither of those

edutainment combines better and you can tell what each part comes from, with funducation i dont get any idea what the second part is from.

Yeah. On second though, “funducation” sounds like “fundamental”, which is definitely not what I’m going for!

Edutainment works. Infotainment reminds me of infomercials. Blech.

Very interesting segment! I look forward to future episodes.

I also loved the TADA when opening up a nes cart to find out how small the insides were. I had opened up a Dragon Warrior cart (erm, gamepak) a while back, and was pretty surprised to find an adapter. I basically assumed they wanted to cut costs, as well as make the games larger, because back in the 80s, bigger meant better. Plus it allowed the packaging to be larger and take up more shelf space (but pc games beat em out on that, and look at all the good it did for them…)

You really redeemed yourself after the dismal Part 3; loved this one. And, I would like to add a little bit of my 2 cents in the technical department. Out of those 10 pins linked to the expansion slot, the 2 that are used for audio input/output are pin 51 on the NES, pin 45 on the Famicom(input) and pin 52 on the NES, pin 46 on the Famicom(output) for sound co-processors(by the way, you made an error on the page informing that Lagrange Point has the VRC6, it’s actually the VRC7, which is yet another FM synthesis chip based off the Yamaha YM2413). If you link the pins mentioned on the cartridge converter with a little bit of wire and some solder, you can get the sound co-processors to work on an NES, but as far as I know, the Top-loader NES doesn’t work, and maybe never will work, with any sound co-processors as some pins are missing on the slot, since, from what I can tell, all expansion hardware present in the Front-loader NES was removed from it(as well as A/V… yuck… but that’s an entirely different story).
Sucks that the previous Dojo Mailbag didn’t make it through this time around, however, I don’t have a name that can replace the old one. I actually liked it. Just… move it over to the end of the show.

Despite that I’ve taken four months to repsond to them, I really appreciate your comments. In fact, I’m looking for ways to demonstrate the pin soldering you mentioned just to see if I can get it to work.

A new episode is coming down the pipe which I hope strikes a better balance between the “edu” and “tainment” portions of that made-up word.

As for the VRC chip — I only JUST reviewed what you said, and I realized it was a typo; there’s already a VRC6 section above it. The one with Lagrange Point is SUPPOSED to say VRC7, but I must have copied and pasted it without incrementing the number. Oops! Thanks for catching that.

call the email orange bag.

I have most of the Famicom games that use sound expansion and with the NES Powerpak, you can FDS and I think VRC6 on a “Toaster” Front loader NES.

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=34

You may need the latest mappers which can be found at retrousb.