Compatibility Issues within the Game Boy Line

In the beginning, Nintendo released the Game Boy and it took the world by storm.  Since 1989, Nintendo has released no less than 9 major followup products in the Game Boy line sold to the public in the eighteen years to follow.  The Game Boy line has a reputation for rock-solid backwards compatibility, but here we will explore issues with backwards compatibility in as much detail as I can find.

Super Nt - Testing and Capturing

I had not planned on publishing a second blog entry on the Super Nt, but there were one or two issues I wished to address and the first blog entry was becoming very long.  So here is another blog entry discussing testing and capturing games on this increasingly wonderful device.

Super Nt Review - The Ideal FPGA Console?

In the four months since the announcement of the Super Nt, there has been a lot of anticipation over the final product.  Will it ship on time?  Will it be as good as the Nt Mini?  Is it worth the money?  Can I put my original hardware away?  Now that I have had mine for about four days by the time this blog entry posts, I can try to answer those questions and give my own impressions of the system.

StarTech USB3HDCAP Review - A Jack of All Trades?

The StarTech USB3HDCAP (courtesy of Amazon.com)

Capturing real hardware has always been something of a challenge, especially when it comes to retro video game consoles and computers.  I have been seeking an affordable "all-in-one" capturing solution for some time.  Recently I read about the StarTech USB3HDCAP and remarked that it could handle odd inputs like 15KHz RGB, 240p Component video and even 320x200 70Hz VGA.  I also read that the StarTech uses the same hardware as the more expensive Micomsoft X-CAPTURE 1 and the less-featured Elgato HD60 S.  I purchased a card recently and found that getting the best out of it is not quite as straightforward as I expected.  Here let me discuss what I have tried and how well it works.

sd2snes and MSU-1

The MSU-1 was a software memory controller (mapper) created by byuu for the bsnes/higan emulator to allow for vastly increased storage for SNES software.  The MSU-1 allows for ROMS up to 4GB in size whereas ROMs for the SNES were limited usually to 4MB without extra hardware.  FMV playback became possible due to the DVD-like storage capacity provided by the MSU-1.  In addition to the size increase, the MSU-1 allows for streaming audio in the same format provided by a CD, namely 16-bit uncompressed stereo audio at a 44.1KHz sample rate.  The ill-fated SNES CD-ROM system that Nintendo and Sony collaborated on was not nearly as powerful and would have suffered from noticeable load times.  In this blog post, let's talk about the hardware behind the MSU-1 and some of the more interesting hacks available for it.

Famicom & NES - Simple Tweaks to Restore Audio Balance Levels

Audio balance levels in the NES and Famicom can cause some consternation and official hardware is not always consistent.  Here I will discuss some simple modifications you can do to your console to restore the balance between internal audio channels and internal audio channels and external cartridge audio.

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.

OPL2/3 Frequency - The 1Hz-ish Difference

The nature of FM Synthesis sound is based on sine waves.  Sine waves create sound by oscillating at a certain frequency and amplitude.  So a sine wave oscillating at a frequency of 440Hz (the pitch) would sound like an A note (A4) hit above the middle C (C4) on the 4th octave of a full 88-key keyboard.  But a sine wave in and of itself is not very interesting musically, so FM synthesis modulates two or more sine waves to create a much more complex sound.  The sine wave's frequency is programmed into the FM Synthesis chip and the modulation of the two frequency, combined with other methods to shape the waveform such as ASDR envelopes, make a sound more complex and realistic than the Programmable Sound Generators that were used in computer and video game music before FM Synthesis became popular in computer music.