NESRGB board available now

[yxkalle]

the small push button idea is very nice indeed
normally though small momentary buttons only have 2 pins , so I guess you can send VCC to the PIC when you press it but it's not possible to have it grounded when the button is in it's OFF state ...

Just use a pull-up resistor then (10kohm). When the button isn't pressed the pin is connected to VCC through the resistor but when the button is pressed it is shorted to GND.

[keropi]

awesome, thanks! It's always nice to have options!!!

btw, what is the "nesrgb_no_passthrough.hex" ?
Also any chance of a pic where to cut the reset trace? I own an Everdrive so I don't think it needs any special reset code , it just writes sram the next time you boot it ...

[opt2not]

I'm not sure, I'm no engineer. but I am an ideas man, so would your mod be able to be activated by a momentary switch? A small button installed in the back that cycles through the palettes would be cool.

Yes, that would work, and you don't have to cut the trace if you do that. Just make sure that the switch ties pin 10 to ground when not pressed and Vss when you press it. I made a version that does exactly what I said earlier (0.5-2 second button press will result in a long reset of 4 seconds), but I haven't tested it yet...

Can somebody tell me exactly how long you have to press reset for the Powerpak to jump back to the menu?

The manual says 2-3 seconds (in the Saving Battery RAM section):
http://www.retrousb.com/downloads/powerpakmanual134.pdf

[keropi]

I have found a bug in the NESRGB , this hack awesome retranslation/improvement of Castlevania2 here: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/cv2fin/

the added intro only looks correct with PPUV. RGB and V are both wrong.













colors/brightness are completely wrong , looks like a CGA game
One can check with stock composite how it is supposed to look.

also as noted before, Orb3D runs in b/w for me too.

[TheRetromancer]

I'm not sure you have the right of it, Keropi. When hackers retranslate and quote-unquote 'Improve' a game, they tend to focus only on whether it will work perfectly in an emulator. Almost every emulator 'cheats' by gliding by on the premise that 'close enough is good enough'.

What does that mean for the end user of the ROM? It means that the emulator is not a command-for-command replication of the hardware it's imitating (unless byuu is writing it, in which case ignore this entire post). There are tricks and manoeuvers that the emulator undertakes that, not only would the actual hardware not do, but sometimes it does things that the hardware COULD NOT, under any circumstance, accomplish.

Again, 'close enough is good enough'. This hack was made to work on an emulator. I'm willing to bet that the problem you are experiencing is due to the hacker faffing about - ie, NOT the fault of the NESRGB.

That being said, does the hack work on an NES without the NESRGB?

[keropi]

You might want to read the hack page again or even my post.
The game works perfectly with original composite from the famicom AV or an AV modded original famicom. Just check it yourself.
I even build a MMC3 repro from this , it's not a mere coincidence that the author offers various choices for the mapper chip (which now especially with the everdrive anything other than MMC4 is obsolete)
This is not a N64 hack, it's a NES one...

I am not that senile yet to take shots from something that doesn't work on real hardware and claim it to be a bug when it never worked....

[Ed Oscuro]

Yes, I think the spiel was a little off-target.

However, the author of that hack claims that it is based off the "official NTSC/PAL code bases," whatever that means. But it should mean at least that the functionality of the game should not be changed from those original releases.

[keropi]

once again, just to be 100% clear : intro works fine with stock composite
the problem is ONLY the intro, not in-game, not the extra map. Only the intro is affected.

It shouldn't be that hard for people to accept something is not working fine when there are official games that run with problems. Orb3D is black/white on everything except the stock composite, is it classified as an emulator hack as well?
And it's not hostility/disrespect to Tim when you discover something not right , these discoveries lead to improvements you know...

I would love though someone else to check it as well, just get a clean PAL or NTSC rom (the codebase) and apply the IPS with correct PAL/NTSC settings and MMC4 since it works faster for the game's need. Check the intro option and anything else you like and just leave it for 3-4 seconds after boot. The intro sequence (no music yet though) will begin)

[CkRtech]

Dang. I think the 8 pin mini-din cables I picked up off eBay might not be good enough. The image is vibrant, but I have diagonal lines (only visible on solid color screens, really), as well as some swirly horizontal lines at about 1/3 and 2/3 down the screen.

Sound like electrical interference getting into the lines to you guys?

Granted, my "incredibly temporary" hook-up to the Framemeister looks like this right now as well. Ha!

[Ed Oscuro]

I would love though someone else to check it as well,

The thrust of my comment was to hopefully imply that you should check a Castlevania 2 / Japanese game to see if it performs the same way, so you can discount some kind of problem with your particular unit or installation (though if somebody else tests and gives the same result that could show it too). Also I am wondering if the implementation of the patched ROM on cartridge, or the implementation of the NESRGB, breaks something here as well. Like you, I just want to see some new discoveries (and fixes if feasible).

[keropi]

Well, none of the JP/EU/US castlevania2 games has an intro. You can't really check it.
The hack and the original are fine in-game, that part is the same in all of them and it works correctly.
If you disable the NESRGB and use the stock composite the hack displays the intro correctly, hence my definition of "bug"

edit: just try it, this is a NTSC rom: https://www.mediafire.com/?2s7294sxp824yqw

[eightbitminiboss]

Do we really need to raise fire alarms for romhacks that look off? Seems like a waste to me personally. For all you know that intro could have just been hacked together badly, I mean it's using assets from the first Castlevania.

[Vigormortis]

Check the PPUV output while a palette is selected on the NESRGB. I bet that hack uses some voodoo magic to get color to PPUV when the NESRGB is expecting black and white, just like Duck Maze and Linus Spacehead .

[TheRetromancer]

Already pointed that out, eightbitminiboss, but he says that it works with the standard composite, so by all terms and definitions, it IS a bug - it's clear the the NESRGB board is causing a negative change to occur.

Now that it has been verified as an NESRGB-specific problem, it means that, in all likelihood, Tim can hunt it down and hopefully eliminate it. Upshot? A better product. I don't know about you, but that sounds all different kinds of awesome.

[keropi]

@Vigormortis

That my friend I checked and I posted about on the pictures post, PPUV works fine in the intro (and only in the intro, as expected the rest of the game is in "b/w" mode) .

Please, anyone that has means and can spare a little time, check it, I posted a NTSC rom link

[Ed Oscuro]

so by all terms and definitions, it IS a bug

It does seem like it - but keep in mind that some of the apparent dismissals of the problem are actually informed by familiarity with Tim's response (quite warranted, I'd say) to similar behaviors (like Duck Maze). I don't want to say that keropi hasn't done due diligence, but fixing this problem could be difficult and not high priority, so any thing that can be done to validate or show the case of the problem could only be helpful in promoting a fix.

[eightbitminiboss]

keropi, have you at least tried the other mapper versions of this romhack? Or are you using the MMC4 version because you have a PowerPak as per the page's recommendation?

[keropi]

^ what did Tim wrote on similar problems? I haven't followed the thread completely.

[mickcris]

^ what did Tim wrote on similar problems? I haven't followed the thread completely.

He looked into the Duck Maze issue a little when it was 1st reported, but as far as I know has said nothing about it since. I asked a little while back about it again and I think someone else did also, but Tim never responded. Since there are more boards out in the wild now, it may show some more bugs as more games are tried. I was thinking it may affect more than just Duck Maze which was why I had asked again. I have never actually played Duck Maze and probably never will. Not sure if the issue you are having is related to the Duck Maze issue though.

[keropi]

I've got a reply from Bisqwit , here is some tech info for Tim, maybe it helps:

I have no intention of making this an emulator-only patch, and any situations where it only works on an emulator and not on original hardware are errors that need to be reported so they will get promptly fixed.
Now this patch has already been reported to work on original hardware several times. But this bug report is about non-original third-party hardware.

As for whether there's anything special in the way the intro deals with the palette... Let me see.

Yes, one potential oddity is that the PPU transfer code depends on writes to $2006 ignoring the top 2 bits of the address. I.e. it assumes that an address $BF00 will be interpreted as $3F00, as the PPU memory address is 14-bit indeed. This is true for all versions of the NES known to me so far. Yet, this seems like the strongest candidate cause. Other candidates are dependence on proper palette mirroring, but failing to handle that properly would cause problems in more games.

What could the NESRGB possibly be using the bit15 of the address for? Maybe it's just a bug in their design.
I could workaround this problem with a few additional instructions in the prologue code. I believe there might still be room for it. Since this is not a high-priority problem as it concerns unofficial third-party hardware compatibility, I'll see about it when the time comes to work on the next release (which unfortunately is not around now).

[thebert]

In Ninja Turtles, if you want Leonardo to be blue colored with green bands, you should accidentally swap the B & G wires. That's what I did, and I'm an idiot!

[keropi]

and I've got an update on the LG flickering stuff...
I've sent my friend his famicom AV with the nesrgb I installed for him and it works perfectly with his LG lcd set.
From all the tv sets in the world it appears that 2 out of 2 that I own just don't like the nesrgb

[opt2not]

and I've got an update on the LG flickering stuff...
I've sent my friend his famicom AV with the nesrgb I installed for him and it works perfectly with his LG lcd set.
From all the tv sets in the world it appears that 2 out of 2 that I own just don't like the nesrgb

How old is yours? Any chance of an upgrade soon?
I just upgraded my main TV this past Christmas, after 8 years of owning it. It was an earlier 49" Toshiba LCD, that I paid $3000 for back then. I ended up replacing it with a 55 inch LCD at half the cost...crazy!

[CkRtech]

And in totally unrelated news, keropi has a new kickstarter for a replacement TV....

[keropi]

LOL
it's a 2008 model IIRC... a 100hz 2ms panel one... I am looking at getting a framemeister at some point

[leonk]

LOL
it's a 2008 model IIRC... a 100hz 2ms panel one... I am looking at getting a framemeister at some point

Any software update for it?? Most run Linux and have updates.

[leonk]

and I've got an update on the LG flickering stuff...
I've sent my friend his famicom AV with the nesrgb I installed for him and it works perfectly with his LG lcd set.
From all the tv sets in the world it appears that 2 out of 2 that I own just don't like the nesrgb

How old is yours? Any chance of an upgrade soon?
I just upgraded my main TV this past Christmas, after 8 years of owning it. It was an earlier 49" Toshiba LCD, that I paid $3000 for back then. I ended up replacing it with a 55 inch LCD at half the cost...crazy!

My main TV is a Sony 3LCD rear projection 1080i. I paid 3000 or so for it in 2004. A month ago I replaced the bulb as a precaution. 12,000+ hours on original bulb! New one is so much brighter!

[opt2not]

LOL
it's a 2008 model IIRC... a 100hz 2ms panel one... I am looking at getting a framemeister at some point

I love my framemeister.
SNES on a Panasonic Viera TC-P55ST60:


When I hook up my NESRGB, I'll post some more pictures.

My main TV is a Sony 3LCD rear projection 1080i. I paid 3000 or so for it in 2004. A month ago I replaced the bulb as a precaution. 12,000+ hours on original bulb! New one is so much brighter!

I like these TV's, we had one at my ex-employer's office. It was also 10+ years old with a new bulb, and the image looks great! I'm sure it'll continue to outlast all of these "SmartTV's"!
They're just so big by today's standards. Even my old LCD was 3x as thick as the one I have now.

[TheRetromancer]

I don't mean to derail this thread into a tangent, but I've always wondered - what's the big allure of the Framemeister? I mean, we're already going RGB, which is pretty much as badass high-quality as we can get, right? From what research I've done on the thing, its draw seems to be relegated to its (admittedly) amazing ability to accurately upscale lower-quality video sources (I've seen videos of it doing wonders with composite), and the addition of scanlines.

Now, I'm by no means a video purist, but I happen not to like scanlines myself, and in my setup, my NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Genesis, and Saturn are all connected to an Automatic SCART selector switch, which runs into a SCART-to-HDMI converter, which shoots right into my 46" Samsung.

It looks bloody brilliant, and I have a seriously difficult time imagining it being any better, so...

[eightbitminiboss]

I don't mean to derail this thread into a tangent, but I've always wondered - what's the big allure of the Framemeister? I mean, we're already going RGB, which is pretty much as badass high-quality as we can get, right? From what research I've done on the thing, its draw seems to be relegated to its (admittedly) amazing ability to accurately upscale lower-quality video sources (I've seen videos of it doing wonders with composite), and the addition of scanlines.

Now, I'm by no means a video purist, but I happen not to like scanlines myself, and in my setup, my NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Genesis, and Saturn are all connected to an Automatic SCART selector switch, which runs into a SCART-to-HDMI converter, which shoots right into my 46" Samsung.

It looks bloody brilliant, and I have a seriously difficult time imagining it being any better, so...

It would have been better to ask in the actual Framemeister thread in this very same subforum.

Personally I was not impressed with the image quality I was getting with a SCART to HDMI box. Looked better with the SCART to component in my experience. The other reason for me on why I have it is I stream and record some stuff (rarely) and some capture cards just didn't like 240p particularly the Blackmagic Intensity product line. The Mini just simplified things as well making 240p/480i stuff look amazing on a HDTV.