FPGA NES and Famicom Solutions' Mapper Support Matrices

There have been several hardware devices released over the past four decades which play NES and Famicom games.  Any regular reader of this blog will know that the NES and Famicom have many, many different ways in which it supports memory management.  Hardware devices which support a wide variety of games use FPGAs to configure their logic to handle the various memory mappers used by NES and Famicom games.  Below I will give matrices of each device and identify the mappers it supports.  Both iNES 1.0 and NES 2.0 mappers will be identified.  None of these devices support UNIF format mappers and UNIF should be fully deprecated by NES 2.0 now.

Analogue Nt Mini : Audio Tweaking

The Nt Mini's audio has come under some criticism from such luminaries as the My Life in Gaming channel.  Kevtris has fixed NES audio issues in Jailbreak firmwares v1.0 (MMC5 pulse pitch), v1.3 (audio sweep bug), and v1.8 (crackling static issue).  The excellent MLiG video was using v1.2, so its statements may not hold true for the latest official or jailbroken firmware.  Even so, it is hard to diagnose and fix a problem without being able to define the problem or demonstrate it in a way that would illustrate the problem to the less-technical viewer.  The MLiG video said little more than "We feel that sound might be somewhat further removed from the original hardware experience than any other aspect of the system."  

That MLiG comment is so vague as to suggest that the Nt Mini could be outputting reversed-duty cycle pulse waves like a Famiclone or too low pitched noise as with the NES Classic Edition, which it clearly does not.  Nonetheless, a more articulate critic of kevtris' APU implementation in the Nt Mini and Hi-Def NES Mod is that in certain musical tracks, the triangle and noise channels are too quiet compared to the two pulse channels.  In order to talk about this claim, first we must discuss the mixing levels of NES APU channels.

Analogue Nt Mini : Browsing the Core Store Pt 2, AV and Future Predictions

In what is likely to be the penultimate article in my Analogue Nt Mini series for some time I intend to devote some time to a few of the more interesting cores remaining in the system, then discuss the video output from the NES.  Finally, I will offer my predictions for the future.

Analogue Nt Mini - Vs. System Support

Originally I was going to post a conclusion to my Analogue Nt series, but then I had an epiphany that was too long to attach to one of the prior posts.  Yesterday I was thinking about the Nintendo Vs. System and lack of comprehensive hacks available for the games that were released for that system.  I wondered if it was possible, given the Nt Mini's extraordinary capabilities, to get the pure Vs. System ROMs running on the system through its Flashcart functionality.  About six hours of testing later, I think can present a solution that can get many of these games working now.

Analogue Nt Mini - Browsing the Core Store

In part one of my Analogue Nt Mini series, I focused on the impressions I had of the hardware and the menu from the "official" standpoint.  In the second part, I focused on the most notable feature of the Nt Mini's jailbreak firmware, the NES Flash Cart capability.  In this part, I will discuss the other area in which the Nt Mini's jailbreak firmware is very impressive, Cores recreating other video game consoles.  The Nt Mini can recreate the hardware of many classic (and not so classic) 8-bit consoles like the Atari 2600, Sega Master System and the Game Boy by loading a Core into the FPGA.  Let's talk about what happens when you want to run games with one of these cores.

Analogue Nt Mini - Jailbreak Firmware as a NES Flashcart and Dumper

In the first part of my series on the Analogue Nt Mini, I gave my thoughts on my first impressions of the device.  In this article, I will continue by diving into the features of the firmware that allow you to play NES games on your Nt Mini.  The jailbreak software adds many features to your Nt Mini, but here we will concentrate solely on the NES features.  Features related to other systems will be covered in another blog entry or two.

The Analogue Nt Mini - First Impressions

Last Thursday my Analogue Nt Mini finally arrived.  I had discussed this FPGA-based console from afar when it was first released early in the year, but had no opportunity to review one first-hand at the time.  I ordered my Nt Mini during the second run of pre-orders.  Analogue planned to ship the second batch in September, but late shipping from the factory and a surprise customs inspection later, it ended up shipping the Nt Mini in late October.  Having paid full price for an Nt Mini, $449, plus $37 in shipping, I intend to do a complete and thorough review of all the device's capabilities.  Let me start by giving my first impressions of this high end recreation of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

HDMI Solutions for the NES - Mid 2017 Edition

If you want to play NES or Famicom games on a modern TV or monitor with a digital HDMI input, there are many options available.  In fact, there are far more options for the NES than any other console which did not natively have an HDMI connection.  In this blog article I will give a brief overview of the features and drawbacks of each method.  Going by cost and roughly analogous quotations from The Legend of Zelda, let's begin :