Retro Duo.. ? - NESdev BBS

Retro Duo.. ?
by frantik on 2009-03-12 (#44191)

Hey I've never seen this before.. looks like a famiclone, but on Amazon?! And it plays both NES and SNES. I dunno how Nintendo hasn't sued them yet..

http://www.amazon.com/Retro-Video-Syste ... B0012NZGJE

anybody know anything about it? is it useful as a dev machine, or is it just a hardware emulator? my old NES toaster isn't very reliable..

by Celius on 2009-03-12 (#44192)

For the NES side of things, I'm pretty sure their patents expired or something so that it's not illegal for us to do NESDev. I have 2 famiclones made by Yobo. Though I don't know about the legality on the SNES side of things...

As for getting it, it's good if all you want to do is play some NES games and don't care about accuracy. However, you won't be able to play games like Castlevania 3 that are hard to emulate. It is basically a hardware emulator.

Your old toaster NES is the most accurate (well, duh). I really doubt anything is wrong with your system other than the connector. You can get replacements or flip it upside down. I made a thread here called "Getting games to work in the front loading NES" that you can read to figure out how to do this. People say the trick didn't work for them, but me and like 1 other person have been using the trick for a long time now to get games to work pretty much 100% of the time.

by Wkter on 2009-03-12 (#44193)

Celius wrote:
I have 2 famiclones made by Yobo.

I've been looking for the Yobo FC, know anything about that?

Celius wrote:
I really doubt anything is wrong with your system other than the connector. You can get replacements or flip it upside down.

The connector change did not work for me. I have 8 diffrent connectors, and no one eliminates my problem
(I get scrambled graphics, but game runs fine else)

About the Retro Duo system,
The patents have, as far as I know, expired for the NES, and the NES part is nothing more than a NOAC slapped on a SNES clone.
The SNES version have some color problems, as far as I know, but should run smoothly.

by Celius on 2009-03-12 (#44194)

I got a Yobo for Christmas and I bought one from some random site. I just googled it and found it. You can probably find one on eBay.

For every single game are the graphics scrambled with your connector changes? If it's every game, then there might be something wrong with the NES itself (or the games).

If you get a Yobo, you should know the square waves' duty cycles are all swapped (seemingly). So everything sounds kind of weird.

by Wkter on 2009-03-12 (#44195)

Celius wrote:
For every single game are the graphics scrambled with your connector changes? If it's every game, then there might be something wrong with the NES itself (or the games).

The sprites are somehow showing correctly, and the background likes to show lines (Does in SMB and SMB3). I have about 8 games too, so it must be the the NES itself. I'm currently looking for a new one.
Celius wrote:
If you get a Yobo, you should know the square waves' duty cycles are all swapped (seemingly). So everything sounds kind of weird.

I just want a NOAC, because I'm working on a portable NES, and all I'm missing is the system
And I don't like to buy things off eBay, it's quite overpriced.

by frantik on 2009-03-12 (#44196)

Celius wrote:
If you get a Yobo, you should know the square waves' duty cycles are all swapped (seemingly). So everything sounds kind of weird.

the sound "being off" seems to be a common complaint on amazon about this one as well

Quote:
I really doubt anything is wrong with your system other than the connector

yeah i bent the connections and it improved but it still doesn't like every game. I'm sure a new connector would improve things, as would disabling the nes-10 chip. but it's still 25 years old...

if this FC is just an emulator then it's less appealing, since you don't know about accuracy

edit: i found this about CVIII

Quote:
It also plays all Dragon Quest NES games, SNES Kirby Superstars, SNES Mario RPG and every NES game I currently own.

A lot of the other clones don’t play every NES or SNES game. One game in particular is Castlevania III - but guess what? The Retro Duo plays it with perfect sound and colors. Take that FC Twin!

The only game I can see an issue with is my copy of Nintendo Paperboy. It loads up but I can’t seem to control the paperboy on the bike.

http://www.recycledgaming.com/retro-duo ... es-hybrid/

by Super-Hampster on 2009-03-12 (#44205)

So the big question is, will it work with a powerpak?

by Bregalad on 2009-03-13 (#44214)

I guess it is a common problem to get vertical lines on the screen and scrabled graphics. This is due to one of the CHR Dx not being connected, so the PPU fetch data that has always one bit set to '1', so vertical lines happen and wrong tiles are picked half of the time.

The connector is probably the problem here, not the NES. I have a NES that doesn't work at all any longer, with an oscilloscope I could see that the CPU is running as exepted, but nothing shows on the PPU.

So yeah this is a common problem, the NES connector is pure crap, and altough many people came with hundreds of miracle solutions (new connectors, clean it with anything or flip it vertically), none of them really works. Kind of like tricks to cure hiccups, there is hundreds of them (stop breathing, drink water, be scared, etc...) but none of them really works, they are all rumors.

by Celius on 2009-03-13 (#44246)

Bregalad wrote:
So yeah this is a common problem, the NES connector is pure crap, and altough many people came with hundreds of miracle solutions (new connectors, clean it with anything or flip it vertically), none of them really works. Kind of like tricks to cure hiccups, there is hundreds of them (stop breathing, drink water, be scared, etc...) but none of them really works, they are all rumors.

The truth behind it is that for some reason, they work for some people but not others. Ironically, holding my breath has always cured the hiccups. You just have to hold your breath until you really need to breathe again. And flipping the connector should work if you do it correctly. And nothing should break. And unfortunately, people have 1-bit precision mentality when it comes to things not working. I mean they see either:

1 - It works
or
0 - It doesn't work

People need to start seeing functionality of things with more than 1-bit precision. See, because something might be sort of broken, and not absolutely broken. Say the high bit is the "it works" bit in the following example. Someone says their "NES doesn't work". They see its functionality as:

00000000

When it's only the connector that's broken, so in actuality the functionality is something like:

01111011

Where it mostly works, just one little thing is broken. Forgive the wacky analogy; that's just how I see it . If you didn't get it, all I'm saying is when something "doesn't work" that doesn't mean it's completely not working. There may be a small part that doesn't allow it to work, and you have to find out what that is and fix it.

by Super-Hampster on 2009-03-15 (#44329)

I have a new connector in both of my NES's and they both work like new without fail. Why is this not a good solution?

by Celius on 2009-03-15 (#44346)

Because those connectors suck and for lots of us wear down after the first couple of days. They usually work perfect at first, and then quickly decline because the way it works is so stupid and unreliable. It is obvious to anyone who owns a Gameboy, SNES, Sega Genesis, etc. that relying on tension for the connector proves to be much more reliable. That's why I flipped mine over to use the tight end for games, and the loose end for the thick motherboard.