What does the N, CN, and UN stand for?
Is this
http://everything2.com/title/NROM a good explanation of what they are?
I used to post on Everything2, but those articles are way old. Newer and more detailed information about
simple mappers and
sophisticated mappers is on our wiki.
Seems that the board names are just as arbitrarily named as the mapper numbers the pirates assigned to them. The brief descriptions found in Nesticle are probably better names for them (No Mapper, Simple Rom Switch, VROM Switch, etc.)
You need reference material to know that "TLROM" means that it contains an MMC3 chip. Just like you also need the mapper list to know that is Mapper #4.
Ah, thanks. I hate it when things are seemingly arbitrarily named, I always want to know why things are called what they are. Thanks for the help guys.
The first letter indicate the type of the mapper, and the second letter (not always present) the type within this mapper. Then it just always end ends with ROM-xx where xx is the revision number of the board.
There is no apparent logic for the second letter... SNROM and TNROM are large PRG-ROM, CHR-RAM + SRAM + battery, UNROM, ANROM and BNROM are large PRG-ROM, CHR-RAM but no SRAM or battery, and PNROM is PRG-ROM and CHR-ROM...
Specifically it's the name Nintendo printed on the circuit board.
e.g. look at the top right corner of the board photo for Super Mario Bros:
http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=270