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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio
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 Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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i just got the powerpak last week.
i can see 7/18/07 silk screened on the pcb.
i would think it is new enough to not need the fix you talked about.
every game and all menus of the powerpak have the same over all look. they all work perfect in my non modded ntsc nes.
kyuusaku if you have ideas i am willing to try them.
the creator of the powerpak wrote back so he may be looking in to it also.
i have a guess the powerpaks pal abilities may mess witht he rgb ppu.
the only other cart that seemed to act like this im my rgb nes was my pal action replay.
the replay does work in my unmodded ntsc nes but the top and bottom have a distorted look. i am not sure if this is because it a pal signal.
when i run pal games on the powerpak i do not display the same distortion in the image on my unmodded ntsc nes.
so does the powerpak do some kind of conversion? |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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I'm sure all of bunnyboy's recent Powerpaks already have the fix and I'm pretty sure if you only got it a week ago he'd send you a new revision.
| acem77 wrote: | i have a guess the powerpaks pal abilities may mess witht he rgb ppu.
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The PowerPak doesn't have any PAL abilities, it just innately works on PAL consoles because PAL Vblank time is less tight than NTSC. (And the PowerPak was written for NTSC)
| acem77 wrote: | | the only other cart that seemed to act like this im my rgb nes was my pal action replay. |
The reason why your Action Replay doesn't work is probably because it assumes PAL timing, but the console is NOT outputting PAL video.
The way Action Replays generally patch codes is by hijacking the game during Vblank and patching the RAM variables. On a slow system like NES timing is everything and PAL consoles have a lot more spare time during Vblank than NTSC consoles, so I would be surprised if RAM codes could even be used on NTSC consoles.
| acem77 wrote: | when i run pal games on the powerpak i do not display the same distortion in the image on my unmodded ntsc nes.
so does the powerpak do some kind of conversion? |
No, that's not even possible, cartridges have no control over the video.
Does it display distortion at all though when playing PAL games? It should since there's nothing physically different between NTSC and PAL games.
Try running Super Mario Bros, I don't think it'll even start if it can't get data out of the CHR ROM. This will indicate whether the PPU can read the PowerPak's CHR RAM or not. If the game plays fine, then the problem is with the your RGB PPU's timing, if not, the PPU and RAM can't even talk which means there's another analog problem like the last fix.
Maybe the RGB PPU needs pullups or doesn't like the series resistors on the data bus or something. |
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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:58 pm Post subject: |
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quote]Try running Super Mario Bros, I don't think it'll even start if it can't get data out of the CHR ROM. This will indicate whether the PPU can read the PowerPak's CHR RAM or not. If the game plays fine, then the problem is with the your RGB PPU's timing, if not, the PPU and RAM can't even talk which means there's another analog problem like the last fix.
Maybe the RGB PPU needs pullups or doesn't like the series resistors on the data bus or something.[/quote]
ok i tried super mario. it does not start. i have tried 2 ver of it.
the stand alone cart and the one with duck hunt.
i hope this a helpful hint.
i find is strange that super mario does not start but a lot of other games do. like batman return of joker. mario seems so simple when compared to the other game.
again all games that do work have the same barcode look.
its like the tiles do not get loaded right so all you get are 1 color blocks and lines. |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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The thing about NES is that tiles in most of the time are never loaded, they're usually in ROM. Your PPU's problem is that it can't read the PowerPak's PPU ROM (called CHR ROM for character data aka tiles) for whatever reason, so instead you're getting garbage.
Mario is a pretty simple game, but it happens to store title screen data inside the PPU's ROM which can't be read so the game crashes. If the game doesn't rely on tile data from the PPU's ROM, then the game will continue to play on oblivious to the fact that there's garbage on the screen, most games are like this.
The garbage would have been more apparent if it didn't happen to correspond to blank/striped tiles.
So I think your PPU doesn't really have any timing issues, it must be an analog interfacing issue which can only be solved by modding the PowerPak. |
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Trenton_net
Joined: 29 Jun 2006
Posts: 233
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| Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| People say PowerPaks can't work on NOAC's, so is that a hard-fast rule, or does it work sometimes but somewhat glitchy? I'm guessing if its a hardened rule that something about the boot-loader menu doesn't work on NOAC's? |
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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
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Location: usa,ohio
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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| What needs to be modified are the PPU's address, data, and control lines coming into the PowerPak. It's probably that the data lines are failing and just need bigger series resistors or more pull ups to lower the FPGA's pull up resistance. I bet if you lent bunnyboy your RGB NES, he'd tell you what to do to the PowerPak to make it work. |
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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio
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| Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 4:22 am Post subject: |
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| kyuusaku wrote: | | What needs to be modified are the PPU's address, data, and control lines coming into the PowerPak. It's probably that the data lines are failing and just need bigger series resistors or more pull ups to lower the FPGA's pull up resistance. I bet if you lent bunnyboy your RGB NES, he'd tell you what to do to the PowerPak to make it work. |
i sent a the creator of the powerpak a few emails but have not head from him in a while.
i hope he is just busy right now and will reply and look into this in the future.
i offered to send him my nes and pay for the extra work.
Do you know him is he a friend of yours?
in the worse case i will have to figure it out my self if at all possible.
still trying to figure out how i can tell what each address does on the ppu.
from the ppu pinout pdf
d0-d7(data bus), ad0-ad7 ? ,a0-a7(Internal register)
and how this all ties to the ppu wiki.
and then try to see how the cart pinout works with all of this.
from the cart pinout pdf.
CHR D0-D7 and CHR A00-A13
i was going to take voltage readings from the cart CHR pins on the composite and rgb nes and compare the two. |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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I know bunnyboy from NESdev, that's it. As I understand it, he's not very active anywhere.
The voltage can't be measured with a meter, it runs at 5MHz which you'd need an oscilloscope to see and still wouldn't mean anything really.
The first thing I'd try is to cut PPU D0-7 (pins 30-33, 66-69), and solder ~100 ohm resistors in between.
Look at this guide: http://www.nespowerpak.com/powerpakmod.html
but change the pins to 30-33 & 66-69. |
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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio
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| Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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| kyuusaku wrote: | I know bunnyboy from NESdev, that's it. As I understand it, he's not very active anywhere.
The voltage can't be measured with a meter, it runs at 5MHz which you'd need an oscilloscope to see and still wouldn't mean anything really.
The first thing I'd try is to cut PPU D0-7 (pins 30-33, 66-69), and solder ~100 ohm resistors in between.
Look at this guide: http://www.nespowerpak.com/powerpakmod.html
but change the pins to 30-33 & 66-69. |
I figured it would be a long shot to get any real measurements from the multimeter. it was a small hope.
if i am lucky i may be able to get my hands on scope. but as you said it will not help much.
if i do add resistors i may put a socket in till i can get the values right for the resistors.
that could be a painful solder project on me and the powerpak if i have to resolder random values.
what was the mod for that you posted?
Thx for the feed back |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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Well, as I said, even with an oscilloscope, it doesn't mean anything, you'll see that the signals are fine.
The resistor value isn't critical, so you shouldn't really tinker with it too much. If it doesn't work, it's probably not ever going to. I'm just throwing stuff out there, you should really have bunnyboy play with it because he could get to the bottom of it.
The mod described in the page is the mod people had to do on their first generation PowerPak to get it working on many later NES models. The mod puts series resistors on the CPU data lines to fix the CPU interfacing problem, so I figure putting them on the PPU lines may help with similar PPU interfacing issues. If the problem doesn't go away with series or pull up resistors, I don't know what it could be. |
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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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do you think the cap on pin 24 can cause any problems with out the correct value?
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Yes! What do you have there? The capacitor is supplied by the console so the correct one shouldn't be hard to get a hold of. |
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acem77
Joined: 25 Jul 2003
Posts: 180
Location: usa,ohio
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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i do not have a cap there. i never had any glitches with retail nes carts so i never added it.
it is supplied by the system? do you mean is should be in the nes already. |
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kyuusaku
Joined: 26 Jul 2003
Posts: 941
Location: .ma.us
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| Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Yup the cap is in the console, it's a 68pF. It's there to slow the signal's transition. You should try adding it. |
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