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NES as console?
chuggy:
HI,
First of all im very new to this. So i dont want to frustrate anyone with dumb questions so im gonna keep it short, and simple and if anyone wants to help they can get more technical later.
Hear goes, I just bought a Dr. Mario Machine that i would like to use the monitor and controls, but hook them up to an original Nintendo. Basically, is this possible, and if so will anyone help me? LOL! Its seems like it should be a lot lower tech than most of your projects. Thank you in advance
Adam
shmokes:
Well.....I personally think you'd be happier hooking the controls and monitor up to a PC and using an NES emulator. That way you could switch games with the joystick without having to actually open up the machine and manually switch cartridges. Plus you won't have to blow in each game and shuffle it around inside the nintendo repeatedly hitting the reset button for five minutes to get the games to work.
As far as how to interface the controls to a PC there is a wealth of information to be had from this board on that very subject (mostly from all those buttons on the left side of the screen, but also from all the fine people in the message board willing to lend their expertise and experience to your project).
chuggy:
OK,
How good of a computer would i need to accomplish this? Im a very poor college student looking to do this cheep!
I do have an old PC, and my parents have an old power mac. But im not sure how fast they are. Thanks again
shmokes:
I think 500 mhz would be fine for NES games. I hope so as I'm considering getting one of those 500 mhz via mini-itx boards and incorporating it into a gutted nintendo for a friend's birthday. If that board isn't powerful enough to run all the ROMS I'll have to scrap the idea as I don't have enough money to spend any more than that.
CthulhuLuke:
500mhz is fine, as long as you get the right emulator. Go find the VirtuaNES homepage, and download the english version, that one runs fullspeed on my 333mhz celery, just make sure to get 256mb of sdram at least! Ram is a pretty big deciding factor whether an emulator wants to run smooth on your computer or not. Although the faster your processor gets, the less ram you gotta worry about. Also, if you're gonna have an NES emulator in there, might as well put a sega master system emulator in there as well, since it has less buttons I think *2 per joystick, 2 on the console* and would be very fun for your old school needs. Get MEKA for that one, very good emulator, although you gotta register to get the newest versions *paying money for an emulator, eww*
You can get a 500mhz machine with 256mb of ram on Ebay easily for under 100 bucks, and if you got a computer laying around, you could probably add in a new motherboard with at least 256mb of ram with like a 1ghz processor for under a hundred.
-Remember to take pictures along the way, so us BYOAC guys can see
-Luke