Author Topic: NES as console? (Read 3716 times)

chuggy · « **on:** April 20, 2003, 04:57:05 pm »

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 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 20, 2003, 05:26:54 pm »

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 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 20, 2003, 05:40:36 pm »

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 · « **Reply #3 on:** April 20, 2003, 05:43:40 pm »

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 · « **Reply #4 on:** April 20, 2003, 05:52:01 pm »

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

JamesMolloy · « **Reply #5 on:** April 20, 2003, 05:55:54 pm »

You can get smooth NES emulation on a 300Mhz and 64mb RAM if you track down an old emulator. The new ones have all those natty filters that look crap anyway.

The real NES isn't a good 2nd hand option. The cartridge connectors are really cheap which results in all the puffing and resetting.

shmokes · « **Reply #6 on:** April 20, 2003, 06:19:24 pm »

What about Super Nintendo emulation? Anyone know offhand what minimum system specs are? I suppose I could look it up, but if SNES emulation would run well on that 500 Mhz via mini-itx board I might have to consider including that functionality (though I would obviously need to use different controllers).

chuggy · « **Reply #7 on:** April 20, 2003, 06:37:29 pm »

WOW,
First of all thanks a ton for quick response. secondly, is there any guides out there for wiring a NIntendo VS control panel to a PC? Remember im new! thanks again.

Snarbald · « **Reply #8 on:** April 20, 2003, 06:37:43 pm »

My friends and I used to run SNES emulators fine on anything as low as a p166 back in the day. Had N64 emulators running (crappily except for starfox) on a pII266.

Druin · « **Reply #9 on:** April 20, 2003, 09:41:12 pm »

I used to run Nesticle (NES) and Massage (Master System/Game Gear) with no problems on P100 64mb back in 97/98

SNES was rather unplayable though.

For help wiring the control panel over, depends what method you're going to go with, a real console or a PC with emulation.

If you're doing PC emulation then you may be getting into wiring up keyboard encoders, which is easy to do.

chuggy · « **Reply #10 on:** April 20, 2003, 11:49:26 pm »

Is wiring the monitor equally as easy?

Odonadon · « **Reply #11 on:** April 21, 2003, 12:30:11 am »

Quote from: shmokes on April 20, 2003, 05:43:40 pm

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.

WTF? Jeez you guys. Use DOS 6.2 and Nesticle - ran NES games PERFECT on a 75MHz Pentium with 32MB RAM. 500MHz should be fine... come on. I can run N64 games fine on my PII 400MHz

Odonadon

romid · « **Reply #12 on:** April 21, 2003, 03:00:16 pm »

Quote from: chuggy on April 20, 2003, 06:37:29 pm

WOW,
First of all thanks a ton for quick response. secondly, is there any guides out there for wiring a NIntendo VS control panel to a PC? Remember im new! thanks again.

try this URL for how to hook up NES controllers to a computer-- I plan on building something similar to this sometime this week (or coming weekend)

http://snespad.emulationworld.com/welcome.html

rampy · « **Reply #13 on:** April 21, 2003, 03:03:01 pm »

Quote from: romid on April 21, 2003, 03:00:16 pm

Quote from: chuggy on April 20, 2003, 06:37:29 pm
WOW,
First of all thanks a ton for quick response. secondly, is there any guides out there for wiring a NIntendo VS control panel to a PC? Remember im new! thanks again.

try this URL for how to hook up NES controllers to a computer-- I plan on building something similar to this sometime this week (or coming weekend)

http://snespad.emulationworld.com/welcome.html

I would think that would not be quite the same thing as his Nintendo VS control panel is more akin to an arcade controls, than to the nintendo gamepad.

(although hacking your nintendo control pads to a PC in general has a bit of a cool factor ... i just don[t think it applies if he decides to go with a PC in his VS cabinet)

*shrug* YMMV
rampy

chuggy · « **Reply #14 on:** April 21, 2003, 05:35:52 pm »

Well decisions have been made. I found a 350 MHZ cpu and will be ordering a KeyWiz for the interface. The only problem im having is the fact that the cabinet is a 1991 Dr. Mario. It was sold to me for 29.99, and i think the only thing wrong with it is the controls. Personally i think that a mame machine would be much better, but is it a crime to kill Dr. Mario? Let me know.

adam

JamesMolloy · « **Reply #15 on:** April 21, 2003, 06:04:42 pm »

I've ran Mario 64, Zelda OoT through UltraHLE on my 350Mhz with TNT2 graphics card. Don't know what the frame rate was like but it was deffo better than 30fps anyway.

shmokes · « **Reply #16 on:** April 21, 2003, 09:27:03 pm »

Quote from: romid on April 21, 2003, 03:00:16 pm

Quote from: I plan on building something similar to this sometime this week (or coming weekend)

[/quote

Romid, I hope you document. As I say I'm very interested, but interest only goes so far. Lets just say my engineering skills lag somewhat behind my enthusiasm.

paigeoliver · « **Reply #17 on:** April 22, 2003, 12:52:53 am »

Quote from: chuggy on April 21, 2003, 05:35:52 pm

Well decisions have been made. I found a 350 MHZ cpu and will be ordering a KeyWiz for the interface. The only problem im having is the fact that the cabinet is a 1991 Dr. Mario. It was sold to me for 29.99, and i think the only thing wrong with it is the controls. Personally i think that a mame machine would be much better, but is it a crime to kill Dr. Mario? Let me know.

adam

A "Doctor Mario" cabinet is most likely a converted Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Donkey Kong III, or Radar Scope cabinet, with their being a mild chance of it having been an actual dedicated Vs. Unisystem. Either way, Nintendo cabs are probably the second most common cabinet behind the Midway Pac style ones.

Also, I guess most of you kids haven't been around emulation that long. Nesticle runs full speed on a 486 processor. While a Pentium 233 can do SNES, Genesis and most of Mame perfectly. My first Mame setup had a K6-2 500 in it, and I really couldn't remember anything it couldn't run.

paigeoliver · « **Reply #18 on:** April 22, 2003, 12:58:39 am »

Also, what is wrong with the controls? Those Vs. Cabs just have normal (slightly undersized compared to Happs and Wico) joysticks with clicky microswitches.

A few bad switches would be easy to replace.

chuggy · « **Reply #19 on:** April 22, 2003, 01:52:00 am »

All i know of the controls is that the game itself powers to the start up screen, and everything is moving and music plays but he cant get the game going. This is why it was sold for 30 bucks. I'm assuming that it's just a control problem considering there is also one button completely missing. In any event i bid on a complete control panel on ebay, and if i dont win that i'll just replace the buttons, and go from there.

p.s. you seem to know a lot about this particular system, it monitor and interface going to be pretty strait forward? thank you in advance

paigeoliver · « **Reply #20 on:** April 22, 2003, 02:36:28 am »

I used to own one (Mine had Golf and Super Mario boards, but all those Nintendo Vs. machines are the same).

The monitor may or may not be straightforward. It depends on if it is only a Nintendo type monitor, or if it is a switchable one. Look on the monitor boards for a switch that will make everything go all photo negative looking. If you have that switch then you are in business. Otherwise I would be selling that monitor as a "Nintendo Type" monitor, and using the proceeds to get a 19" PC monitor instead. (Nintendo type monitor can be modified to accept a normal signal, but by the time you are doing all that you might as well just get the right one to begin with).

If you are just making a Mame, then your Nintendo type monitor, Vs. Dr. Mario boards, Nintendo power supply, and Vs. wiring harness will probably ebay for enough to cover a large percentage of the costs of the conversion.

Hoe · « **Reply #21 on:** April 22, 2003, 12:25:40 pm »

zsnes runs flawlessly on my p2 233 with 192mb of ram, ran fine when it was just 96mb of ram, and when it was 32mb.
You guys are over killers. 500MHz for NES? Geeezzzz. I've got an old Diamond Stealth 4mb on my p2 233MHz, and I can run pj64 at half speed, and epsxe at full speed- systems a tad more advanced then a NES

You could use a real old machine that you could pick up for around 20$ at a yard sale to run a NES emulator, just as long as you don't run a new one. Nesticle (dos) is your best bet.

chuggy · « **Reply #22 on:** April 22, 2003, 06:42:45 pm »

OK, Now you got me worried. Exactly how hard would it be to convert nintendo type monitor? I'd rather do it that way if at all possible. Save some $ on shipping and what not.

medley · « **Reply #23 on:** April 22, 2003, 08:52:37 pm »

Yea, I used to have a P166mhz with 64mb ram dedicated just to home console emulation.
I ran many different NES, Snes and Genesis emulators with no problems.

romid · « **Reply #24 on:** April 23, 2003, 06:54:28 pm »

Quote from: shmokes on April 21, 2003, 09:27:03 pm

Quote from: romid on April 21, 2003, 03:00:16 pm
Quote from: I plan on building something similar to this sometime this week (or coming weekend)

[/quote

Romid, I hope you document. As I say I'm very interested, but interest only goes so far. Lets just say my engineering skills lag somewhat behind my enthusiasm.

I'll be sure to take some pictures as well as document some of the problems I run across and their solutions (considering I do find a solution for them...)

chuggy · « **Reply #25 on:** April 28, 2003, 07:23:13 pm »

what type of frontend software would you suggest using. Im trying to make a cab with all Nes games. thanks in advance for your help.

adam

IceCold · « **Reply #26 on:** April 28, 2003, 07:31:13 pm »

Umm... you guys, even 100mhz is more than you need! I can run nesticle full speed on my 486 laptop that has either 8 or 12 mb of ram, and a 40 or 50 mhz processor! I can even get it to run nearly full speed on a 386 25mhz with 8 MB of ram...

Anything 50mhz or higher should be MORE than good enough

BTW - SNES9x ran full speed in win98se on a Pentium Pro 166mhz with 32 mb of ram, so anything around that speed should be fine too

chuggy · « **Reply #27 on:** April 29, 2003, 02:12:58 pm »

OK, Paigoliver you seem to know a lot about whats going on with the nes system. I just got my cab, and actually fixed all the controls, and have my computer configured to go in. All thats left i buying a keywiz, and hooking up the monitor. WHich brings me to my question. Where do i look to see if im good or not good. also is there ways to deal with either of the two? thanks a lot.

JesterDEV · « **Reply #28 on:** April 29, 2003, 02:50:56 pm »

I have a 486 with 2 megs of ram and nesticle runs at a decent speed on that. Not full speed but a playable speed.


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