NES on the PC

Discuss hardware-related topics, such as development cartridges, CopyNES, PowerPak, EPROMs, or whatever.

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Great Hierophant
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NES on the PC

Post by Great Hierophant »

I know this is nothing new, but I have two ideas. First, is it possible to put a NES onto a PCI card and interface it with a modern PC? I believe they did something like it for the Genesis and for development systems during the time. But that was on ISA cards, far closer to NES hardware than today's 32-bit, 132MHz bus. (They did it for Hard SID though.) Notwithstanding the sheer physical room it would entail, cards too large for ATX cases with all the logic chips required, it would be a complicated beast to design. But if it could be done it could vastly simplify future NES development. Much less burning EPROMs, less reliance on imperfect emulators. Hell, it could even have a ribbon cable connecting to a proper pin connector for cartridges. (Where to put this connector is another question.)

Supposing this is too difficult. Perhaps just a cartridge interface would be sufficient. This would not have the NES on the card, merely hardware designed to read from ROM and write to bankswitch circuits and RAM. I suppose the crucial issue here would be speed and latency. However it would allow people to concentrate on perfecting NES emulation rather than deal with innumerable mappers. It could also function as a backup device like CopyNES without all the soldering.
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

I imagine it'd be possible, but what good would it do? You'd either need nearly infinite chip support for all the mappers, or a cart slot. And if someone already has the cart, I couldn't see much advantage of a $150 PCI card over a $15 NES. If it's for development, one might as well spend as much on some of the already available general-purpose tools (like an EPROM emulator).

A long time ago I remember seeing 3DO console-on-an-addon-card (dunno if it was ISA or PCI), that system was pretty much dead though.
tepples
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Post by tepples »

I think the second half of Great Hierophant's post described an EPROM emulator exactly.
krazynesphreak

Post by krazynesphreak »

i`ve done that, all u have to do is get a tv tuner and plug in ur nes and ur nes is on ur computer.
LOL
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