NES Cart Converters « Famicom World. Way back in the early days of the NES, so the story goes, Nintendo Co., Ltd. It’s not clear exactly what happened, but there weren’t enough of them for the production and release of games in time for the Christmas shopping season. With sales expected to pick up, they were pressed with a question: Would young Timmy be without his Gyromite on Christmas morning? Instead of using the regular 7. NES boards in games to be released in the United States, Nintendo combined 6. What you see on the left side is my finished homemade Famicom to Nes converter with the Ballon Fight Famicom. It’s like buying a Famicom to NES Converter. Like Gyromite and other games with a converter. Gyromite, also known as Robot. Famicom games had 60-pin connectors, so the adaptor converted the game so it can be used with the 72-pin connector in an NES. Professor Hector and his. Gyromite Famicom Converter Nintendo NES used video game cart for sale. Original classic 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System game from 1985, Collectible condition, 120 day warranty, low prices, Buy Online. Some Notes on Using Your New Famicom Adapter. I did some simple testing using the FA Gyromite ROM board and the adapter itself. First of all, I plugged a Famicom cart, Zippy Race into the FA Gyromite's adapter and tried it in. This Famicom to NES Adapter allows to play Japanese 60 pin Famicom cartridges on PAL/NTSC NES. For 10 or More $20.00 each. Getting a Famicom-to-NES adapter in 5 easy steps. Find a copy of Gyromite, Excitebike. Opened Gyromite cart, with Famicom board and Famicom-to-NES converter inside: 4. I finally got a pair of them! Check the video to see what they look like just in case you got a bunch of Gyromite carts to look through. Yes, it does work and it will convert 60 pin Famicom games to work on 72 pin.Castlevania III with full Famicom audio. You would also have to modify the Famicom->NES converter. Easiest solution for this is a Gyromite cartridge or other early NES game. One story, used in conjunction with gyromite, states that Nintendo couldn't meet the production demands one Christmas buying season, so they developed an official 60-to-72 pin converter and just used surplus Gyromite Famicom. Famicom boards and 6. NES game shells. And so, Nintendo saved Christmas for lots of eager NES children all across the land. And, little did Nintendo know, but those same boards continue to be a godsend for video gamers. Today, those same NES carts are searched out and raided of their converters, for with them they bring the glory of Famicom games to the NES. Sure, there are generic 6. NES games are those only ones Nintendo ever released. Not every early NES title has a converter inside. In fact, even the same title will not always come with a converter inside. Some have them; some don’t. There are some tricks to identifying which ones might. For starters, these are the games in which converters have been found: 1. Clu Clu Land. Donkey Kong Jr. Duck Hunt. Elevator Action. Excitebike. Golf. Gumshoe. Gyromite. Hogan’s Alley. Mike Tyson’s Punch- Out!! Pinball. Raid on Bungeling Bay. Rygar. Soccer. Stack Up. Tennis. Urban Champion. Wizards and Warriors. Wrecking Crew. Finding these titles is as good a starting place as any when looking for your very own NES 6. But, even if you find one of these games, it’s not guaranteed to have a converter. To help you further, consider this: NES games from the list above with converters inside are always five- screw, meaning that instead of three screws and two tabs holding the gray shell together, it’s five screws (and no tabs) holding the shell together. And instead being those darn star- head hex screws you need the special bit to open, games with converters can be opened with a tiny flathead screwdriver. Another way to ensure a cart from the list has a converter inside is to take a look at the pins. A NES board’s pins are different from a converters pins. If you’ve got a regular NES cart, each pin will be symmetrical, meaning if you drew a line down the center of the pin it is the same on both sides. XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXX X XIf you’ve got a cart with a converter, the pins will not be symmetrical. Instead, the pins will slight bit of gold pin on the bottom left of each pin, but not on the bottom right (hence, not symmetrical). XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXX X XAnother way to tell which games have converters inside is with by the weight of the game, though this is much more difficult. The weight of a game without a converter is much less than the weight of a game with a converter inside. Some people are able to feel the difference by placing a cart with a converter on the palm of their hand. Also, most of the weight of a cart with a converter is nearer the bottom of a cart, which means it will balance more toward the bottom of the cart than regular cart. This should start you on your way to finding some great converters, which, if found, can usually be sold for more than the game itself is worth. Castlevania III with full Famicom audio Dracula's Curse is already known for its kick- ass soundtrack, but what NES players didn't know was that the Famicom's version (Akumajou Densetsu) had a much better sound experience thanks to an on- board audio synthesizer. So why was the game modified for the NES, which uses a regular old MMC5 chip for memory management? The Famicom pipes the audio signal through the cartridge, giving it a chance to get mixed with another source. When Nintendo redesigned the Famicom as the NES, the opted to relocate the audio path through the expansion connector on the bottom of the system. Basically, there is no way to get an audio signal from the cartridge to the NES without some serious surgery, or a little bit of thinking outside the box (literally). My goal is to create a Castlevania III game in NES form with this extra audio stream intact. Akumajou Densetsu Famicom cartridge. Not necessarily cheap. Other VRC6 cartridges like Madara will work, but they have bigger PCBs and I'm not sure they'd fit into an NES cartridge along with the converter. A PCB- only Famicom- > NES adapter. Easiest solution for this is a Gyromite cartridge or other early NES game. I'll cover that below. A length of audio wire. A solder- type male phono plug, and a solder- type female phono jack. A 2. 7C0. 10 EPROM and a 2. C0. 20 EPROM if you want to replace the chips with the English translations. A cartridge label if you want it. How to spot a Famicom- > NES adapter. You've probably heard that some copies of Gyromite have a Famicom- > NES adapter inside them due to material shortages in the early life of the NES. In reality, a few other games have one too. A candidate cartridge that contains an adapter would have these properties: The cartridge is held together with 5 flathead screws. From the end label, the parts to the left and right of the label will be flat. The more common cartridges have 3 security screws and clips that are visible from looking at the end label. None of these 3- screw cartridges will have a converter. When looking at the individual pins, a cartridge containing a converter will have an offset nib. If the nibs on the pins in your cartridge are in the center of the pin, it will not contain a converter. The nibs will be offset in a cartridge likely to contain a converter. I'm not sure every cartridge with these properties contains a converter, but of the 1. I had, only one had the offset nibs, and it was indeed a Gyromite containing the adapter. How to open up a Famicom cartridge. There are plenty of Youtube videos out there that can explain how to open up a Famicom cartridge without breaking it. I used a C- clamp and applied pressure to the sides of the case where the clips are and pried it open. This cartridge has a bit more hassle with the top label but I got the job done. First things first, remove the Gyromite PCB and the nub that receives the center screw on the front part of your NES cartridge case. The full size Famicom cartridge won't fit in with this nub in place. Plug your Akumajo Densetsu PCB in to the converter (chips face down on both the converter and game), and put it all back together. Pop it in your NES and make sure you get video and partial audio. The audio you can hear right now is the regular old NES- generated audio, which won't contain the actual melodies that the VRC6 produces. Optional: Replace the original ROMs with a translation. This part is optional. There is an English translation on www. Vice Translations if you want to see the text and logo in English. Akumajou Densetsu isn't a terribly rare game but it's up to you to decide whether you want to modify the original boards. Here's the process if you do: Remove the original ROMs. The bigger, 3. 2- pin ROM is the PRG ROM (2. Mb, or 2. 56. KB) and the smaller 2. ROM is the CHR ROM (1. Mb, or 1. 28. KB). You can do this by cutting off the ROMs with a Dremel or you can desolder them if you have a lot of patience. Refer to my other tutorials for more info on this step. Patch the Japanese Akumajou Densetsu ROM with the translation from the link above. Use Lunar IPS to apply the test and retest with an emulator to make sure it worked. Don't use a Castlevania III ROM, it won't work. Split the ROM using a NES ROM utility like tnines with the command (assuming your rom was called akumajo. The PRG ROM is a drop- in replacement. Just pop it in and resolder, no rewiring necessary. The CHR ROM is a little more complicated. Here's what you have to do. Bend up pins 1, 2, 2. Solder a wire into hold on the board where the EPROM's pin 2. Now insert the EPROM and solder down all the pins that you didn't bend up. Solder your wire from hole 2. EPROMNow solder a wire from the bent- up pin 2. The spot I normally use is pin 1. EPROM which would be the last pin on the left side of the chip. Finally, strip a length of wire about 1cm long and solder a wire that bridges the between pins 3. This basically gets power to pin 3. Pin 3. 1 is not connected to anything so you can solder across it just fine. Test and make sure it works! English Title Screen Create the audio interconnect cable. Take a look at the schematic below. As you can see, it's pretty simple, just a basic audio mixer. We're going to create the stackable interconnect cable now. Stackable RCA connectors exist already, but you need to wire a resistor in the middle of it so I found that modifying an existing one was just messy and really didn't work overall. We're going to solder a 4. Items needed for the audio interconnect (plus cable, glue, perseverance) Start by taking the jackets off both the male and female connectors. Here you want to trim them such that the size of the adapter will be reasonable, but also such that you can solder together the grounds to create a structural bond. Solder together the grounds, trying to make some sort of structural strength so the adapter won't just snap apart. Take one of the 4. Now take about a foot of audio cable (which has one insulated wire and one bare wire for ground). Solder the ground to your ground lug on the adapter, and solder the insulated wire to the side of the resistor connected to the female RCA plug. It would certainly help to create some sort of strain relief inside but it's a tight fit already. Take the heatshrink and cut it to the length of the adapter. Look at some commercial plugs to see how much room you need to leave on each side to ensure a connection. Cut a small hole in the heat shrink and fish the other end of your audio wire through it. Don't actually put the heatshrink over the adapter yet. Here's where you should be at this point. If you take a look at the parts side of the Famicom- > NES adapter, you'll see two pins in the middle that aren't connected to anything. These are the Audio In and Audio Out ports. We're actually just going to use the Audio Out port which is pin 4. Of the two unconnected pins, it'll be the right- side one. Drill a hole in the top right corner of the NES cartridge you intend to use. Make sure you do it towards the top, because the mechanics of the NES might prevent you from clicking the cartridge into place if you put the hole too low. Fish your wire through the hole you drilled on the NES cartridge and route it down to the Famicom- > NES adapter area. Locate pin 4. 5 on the parts side of the Famicom- > NES adapter. Use some sandpaper to remove the green masking on this pin below where the black adapter extends to. Shorten up your remaining 4. Check my picture below for the location I used. Gently test your interconnect to see if you have full sound. If not: If you have no sound at all, the problem must be with your adapter. Make sure you soldered to the right side of the resistor. Try plugging your TV/stereo/whatever back into the NES alone and make sure the NES is working properly. If you only get partial sound, try to identify whether it is from the NES or the cartridge. If it's from the NES, your connections to the Famicom- > NES adapter or wire is faulty. If it's from the cartridge, your adapter is faulty. Using a hot glue gun, fill up the adapter gap so it's nice and sturdy. Be sure everything is the way you like it before you do this obviously. Slide (or pull, more likely) the heatshrink into place and shrink it with a hair dryer (on a high setting) or heat gun. Careful not to melt the glue again. Trim your heatshrink if you can't insert the plugs all the way. Do this using a box cutter (ie X- Acto Knife). Glued up and protected.
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