Has anyone successfully built a 72-pin to PC10 adapter and booted a standard NES cart on a PC10, using Achten's BIOS? I've been unable to find the necessary pinouts to make the adapter, and Oliver Achten didn't respond to my e-mail asking for info. (The file's old enough that I wouldn't be surprised if his contact info is no longer current.) Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Damn, I never heard of such an adapter project, but the benefits would be great: pure RGB NES. I saw a guy that hacked a PC10 PPU into his NES for some RGB goodness.
Yeah, that's one of the nice parts.
The address and data pins are obvious enough, and I think I've gotten most of the others, it's just a few that I'm uncertain about.
Interestingly, the PC10 appears to have the Famicom sound pin that's missing on the NES; good to know in case I happen upon any Famicom carts in the future. (Or decide to wire a FDS into the thing.)
FDS, PC10?
Now that would have been awesome!
Oh how I wish the FDS came to the US, it would have been called the NDS (Nintendo Disk System, not Nintendo DS).
You could put your Famicom Disk in the PC10, and either play it or rewrite a new game.
Here's what I have so far. Sorry about the alignment on the right side.
(The two previous guest posts are mine, btw.)
Edit: Second update.
Code:
NES to PC10 connections
By Kufat (kufat(a)hvc.rr.com)
Adapted from Kevin Horton's NES pinout (khorton@iquest.net)
This design has not been tested yet.
Top Bottom
----------------------------
+-------+
*32 GND |01 37| CLK 21.47727Mhz (NTSC) NC
A25 PRG A11 |02 38| M2 A21
A24 PRG A10 |03 39| PRG A12 A26
A23 PRG A9 |04 40| PRG A13 A27
A22 PRG A8 |05 41| PRG A14 A28
C30 PRG A7 |06 42| PRG D7 B23
C29 PRG A6 |07 43| PRG D6 B24
C28 PRG A5 |08 44| PRG D5 B25
C27 PRG A4 |09 45| PRG D4 B26
C26 PRG A3 |10 46| PRG D3 B27
C25 PRG A2 |11 47| PRG D2 B28
C24 PRG A1 |12 48| PRG D1 B29
C23 PRG A0 |13 49| PRG D0 B30
B22 PRG R/W |14 50| PRG /CE (/A15 & /M2) B21
C22 /IRQ |15 51| EXP 9 NC
NC EXP 0 |16 52| EXP 8 NC
NC EXP 1 |17 53| EXP 7 NC
NC EXP 2 |18 54| EXP 6 NC
NC EXP 3 |19 55| EXP 5 NC
NC EXP 4 |20 56| CHR /WR A19
A20 CHR /RD |21 57| CIRAM /CE C12
C13 CIRAM A10 |22 58| CHR A13 A18
C15 CHR A6 |23 59| CHR A7 C14
C16 CHR A5 |24 60| CHR A8 A13
C17 CHR A4 |25 61| CHR A9 A14
C18 CHR A3 |26 62| CHR A11 A16
C19 CHR A2 |27 63| CHR A10 A15
C20 CHR A1 |28 64| CHR A12 A17
C21 CHR A0 |29 65| CHR /A13 B12
B20 CHR D0 |30 66| CHR D7 B13
B19 CHR D1 |31 67| CHR D6 B14
B18 CHR D2 |32 68| CHR D5 B15
B17 CHR D3 |33 69| CHR D4 B16
NC SECURITY |34 70| SECURITY NC
NC SECURITY |35 71| SECURITY NC
*31 +5V |36 72| GND *32
+-------+
Notes:
A30 is the Famicom-only sound pin.
C2-C10, A7-A10, B4-B11, and others are used by the game selection subsystem.
A/B/C on 31 and 32 are all VCC and all ground respectively.
Won't it refuse to boot wihout the security chips connected?
If the PC10 requires security chips on its 'game cards' (which I don't think it does), they certainly would NOT be compatible with the ones in consumer NES cartridges; besides, the lockout chips on NES carts are there ONLY to prevent the NES console itself from constantly resetting - they could have been wired to disable the ROM if no chip was detected in the console itself (and the CIC patent apparently describes exactly this), but for whatever reason, Nintendo decided not to do that.
Quietust wrote:
[CIC chips in NES carts] could have been wired to disable the ROM if no chip was detected in the console itself (and the CIC patent apparently describes exactly this), but for whatever reason, Nintendo decided not to do that.
Nintendo eventually did that in Super NES games using the SA-1 chip (
Super Mario RPG;
Kirby Super Star).
The PC10 does require its own security chips. There are two options for dealing with this:
1. Use OA's PC10 BIOS and make the PC10 to NES adapter from scratch. This will completely bypass all security, but will disable the display of game names and instructions for legitimate PC10 games where they're present.
2. Make the PC10 to NES adapter out of a PC10 cart, and leave the Z80 sections intact. The cartridge in the adapter will show up as whatever the PC10 game was; it and all other PC10 games will still display their instructions. The security ROMs are interchangeable between carts; no checksumming is done. I intend to use this method so that the instructions will show up and because I don't have easy access to EPROMs or an EPROM programmer.
By your description, the PC10 does not use a security chip as the NES does - it simply uses a (possibly signed) descriptor ROM. Without that ROM, the BIOS program doesn't know what game is plugged into the slot (or that a game is even plugged in at all!) and treats it as empty.
The security rom/chip appears to be distinct from the instruction/ID ROM, although I'm not at all certain of that. It's definitely nothing like the NES sysem, though.
Any luck on your tests building this apdater?
I won't be getting my PC10 until late August or early September; I'm picking it up on my way back to school in the fall.
Cool, I look forward to seeing your progress.