Famicom World

Update on 2015-02-09: This is now the offical topic of our ebay shop: retrospectives2000  :pow:

Any questions regarding our products or such things you can write here if you want. Thanks!


Hello there. This is just an introduction of who I am and what I might do for you Famicom-fanatics out there.

I am Kaneko and i am a huge fan of the Famicom. I am married to a Chinese wife and right now we are living in Shenzen. I would like to check here if someone of you might be interested in some Famicom stuff to buy? We got everything from the original Krikkz Everdrive, to Jack-DIY carts for the Famicom, Game Boy, you name it.

I am not here only just to sell stuff, so I am sorry if I offended any rules regarding my first post. I am myself in love with the Famicom system as well as the earlier LCD handhelds that were popular in the 80s.

Anyway, we also got a bunch of Good hardware Famiclones, and occasionally we get in some second hand games from Taiwan and such. So if there is an interest, please send a PM with your request and yes, PayPal is of course a good option for us both.

Every shipment will be sent with a tracking number. Thanks! // Kaneko (going to the presentation thread now)  :crazy:

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Post Merge: January 30, 2015, 08:52:23 am

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Sorry, this should be in the Buy & Sell section. Could someone please move it over there? Also, the Jack DIY is of course cheaper than the Everdrive but basically uses the same hardware so the firmware of the Everdrive will work for the Jack DIY.  :-*

Update: Here is the name of ebay shop :retrospectives2000 Thanks everyone!:   

I got a jack-DIY and I can't upgrade my firmware. If I do it will crash and go to a grey screen when I load a rom. I don't know how much you are asking for them but price point will be what makes people decide to buy one or not. Would you mind listing all the products you have available and the price of them. I think that would make it easier so we don't all have to bombard you with individual pms.

Hello retrospectives and welcome to the forums! Show us some photos of your stuff and we'll be happy to do business with you!

hi, and welcome!
i am very interested in what you might have for sale,
especially the clones and unlicensed games!
looking forward to a list with pics and prices  ;D

Thanks. Sorry for not being available to answer for a while. I will get back to all of You who sent PM during the time I was away. At the time we have some issues with PayPal so no payments can be made through that service at this moment, which is why we consider to release some of our inventory on Aliexpress, which also gives the buyer a good money back guarantee similar to Ebay.

SO. What is new? Well, we have NEW hardware famiclones that we sell. They ALL uses brand new components including the UMC-branded CPU/PPU and comes equipped with NTSC or PAL (Your choice). Note that this is only the motherboard including the video compartment so no shell is provided.

But we will sell all the motherboards in different options (fully assembled, non assembled (bare PCB) and the rest will be heatsink, controller cables and such things.

I will write an update as soon as we are launched, and you will be able to see pictures then. So please be patient, and we will be up and running later today or at last tomorrow. Thanks all!!!


Edit: I got a LOAD of PM:s so first of all, thanks all who show a big interest, I have answered most of them and those that can be answered in general i will answer here. Second i just want to tell that we will proceed with the Aliexpress webshop so all of our products that we are keeping in stock will be uploaded by time. We will start with the new hardware famiclones and then we will upload more and more by time, so please have patience and i'm sure you will get pleased.

Regarding everdrives. We sell both genuine and "made in china" jack-diy famiclones, and the prices will also be listed on Aliexpress.

Other than that, we will only sell hardware famiclones on our webshop. No glob-tops except for multi-consoles, but when it comes to Famicom/Famiclones we find that the compatibility issues with different mappers are too high to sell glob-tops consoles to collectors.

Thank you everyone for showing an interest, I will get back soon with a link when the products has started to upload. Thanks all.

Hi,

Can you please post link from aliexpress?

- Rama

Of course!

We have started to upload some products now. More uploads are pending but due to Aliexpress is so slow when it comes to smaller sellers they do not prioritate to update things and we are not allowed to use certain words like "Famicom" or "FC" because of some odd reason they are referring to as a violation against the copyright (Don't ask me why, the big retailers on Aliexpress can use it). Anyway as long as we do not uses these words everything should be fine.

The products listed are of course NOT everything we got, but right now it is weekend so things are done even more sloly, but until Monday everything should be up and running with both new games and much more Famicom oriented.

Here is the URL:

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/138988

Thank you.  :)

Also, if you got any requests You can just ask. Right now we have a whole bunch of Micro Genius famiclones, and other brand name hardware Famiclones from the 90s. We will upload them by time, but if you got Any kind of requests please let us know and if we do not have it, we can of course source it for you since we have good contacts with both Taiwanese and Chinese sellers.  :-[

man, this looks really good...
the UMC chipset like the good old clones had,
AV out, and socketed chips.
best of both worlds imho.
i'm stuffing wads of cash in my disk drive right now but it doesn't seem to work.
do you accept paypal too?

Quote from: prince tomato on February 07, 2015, 02:16:05 pm
man, this looks really good...
the UMC chipset like the good old clones had,
AV out, and socketed chips.
best of both worlds imho.
i'm stuffing wads of cash in my disk drive right now but it doesn't seem to work.
do you accept paypal too?

Absolutely. This is top of the notch. There is not a single company that can even match the compability of this Famiclone and the best thing is that it is ALL NEW.

At the moment we do not accept PayPal, but it will be a future option.
Also, a small note. Every product in Aliexpress has to be "approved" by Aliexpress staff, so the reason why you could not use the checkout is simply because things are "pending" right now, and that is because it is Sunday (Work off). So tomorrow everything will be fine again and you should be able to use the Aliexpress Check Out.

So please just have some patience until tomorrow morning and then thing will absolutely be set up to work for anyone who wants to buy.

Hope that will help you. Sorry for the inconvinience   :-[

I don't think I can see the clones in the shop - did someone already buy one?  I saw a Retron 3 (I think), but no clone, am quite interested going from what is said so far.  Thanks!

Indeed we had one order of a hardware motherboard (Don't worry, we have more) but they are so SLOW to update our pending products that it's really annoying. But please check in asap and there will be a couple of more products added! Sorry for the inconvinience but Aliexpress staff is really slow  :'(

Do you plan to start selling UMC ppus and cpus also? I need to replace PPU in two clones that I own.

Hello. Funny that you mention it because I just started to upload more hardware kits and we will sell UMC-branded PPU and CPU including X-tal for those of you who have faulty Famiclones or if you just want to switch from PAL to NTSC.  :cherry:

But as always, the Aliexpress takes FOREVER to confirm our uploaded products :'( :'( :'(. My wife talked to them in the customer service and they say that normally it takes up to 72(!!!!!!) hours for them to confirm the "approval pending" products that are being uploaded. At least on Ebay you can simply upload things directly...But well, good things to come and yes, we will have what you need, don't worry  :)

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Post Merge: February 09, 2015, 01:59:44 am

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While we are waiting :bub: for the SLOW Aliexpress people to confirm our uploads, i will give you a little teaser of our new motherboard. As you can see it uses all the brand new parts, although some parts that were exclusive to this console like the expansion port we are looking into a good solution but this is how a brand new hardware famiclone might look like (from our perspective).  :)



And for those of you who are wondering about the AV module. YES, we will sell it separately including a bridge connector.



Finally we earlier had these in stock, but were all sold out to a Japanese company but we do consider to take them into sale again (although they will be more expensive than the first model. But it does removed the "cutting into plastic" issue since it can use the old RF-Hole... :cherry:

Looks good - how much are you retailing these for?  What does the outer housing / casing look like?

55 USD in our shop at Aliexpress and that's the only way we can sell right now because we are waiting for PayPal to verify our account there but yes, it would cost around the same with PayPal since they also take out commission. And this is ALL NEW. To my knowledge there haven't been produced a true hardware famiclone in more than 25 years at least (give or take a couple of years), so this is really something different from other knock-off clones and can by all means be compared to the old Micro Genius and those kind of Hardware clones from back in the days!

As far as housing goes, it will need to be provided by the buyer because at the moment we have not invested in molds and such things and since this is basically assembled by hand we do not want to order a big rack of cases because it would be a too big investment if they won't get sold.

So the best thing is to buy a cheap glob-top knockoff thing that looks like a real famicom and put it inside that, build your own, or do as the arcade guys do it (consider it as just another bare mobo) haha.  :)

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Post Merge: February 09, 2015, 03:40:06 am

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.................And we are up and running with a few new updated products like some Famiclones and the DIY-8-Bit motherboard. Please feel free to take a look. Will update more things that will probably come up tomorrow!!! :)

whats the deal with the crab do they come included?

i was kinda counting on the crab being part of the deal,
to defend my pirate carts from intruders and PayPal and stuff.

Quote from: XiTaU on February 09, 2015, 05:46:41 am
whats the deal with the crab do they come included?

It's the crab boss Clawgrip from Super Mario USA who popped out of the cart while we tested that particular board, and he simply refused to let go of the PCB (Luckily no scratched up lanes).  ;)

o.k, but will he deal with intruders and tax auditors and the like when they come after my  :coin: :coin: :coin: :coin:?

He told me that he used to work as a bouncer so i would suppose that there would be some "dynamite" in his claws, so to speak.  ;D

Yikes!  $45 for a loose Micro Genius 1000, not even controllers included?  Just...wow.   :upsetroll:   :o 

For those that don't know, the MG 1000 + MG 2000 models were quite popular (and common) in these parts, and are also fairly unreliable these days to boot.

i get your point Dave, but in all fairness,
most discrete clones, my Pegasus, Dendy, an Micro Genius are at an age now where the capacitors are starting to go bad,
resulting in jailbars and sound issues,
also, on some individual consoles i have, the shielding isn't great, which causes the same issues.
so i personally think it's great that these are available now,
new and not really at a bad price imho.
replace the guts of any old noac clone with this and you are good to go for another decade or two.
for people like me and others in Europe quality clones are hard to get locally, almost impossible,
and the real Dendy's an Pegasussessuss... Pegasi... whatever are highly collectable now and very expensive,
a lot more expensive than this.

Patrick,

The clones that I am looking at are clearly used, which can be seen from the scratches on them, etc.  Unless the guy is replacing all of the internals (I doubt it), I am just not sure where the value is here.  Case in point, I had a bunch of these I couldn't even give away here, at cost of shipping, and now someone is selling them for $45+ a piece.  To me it is just craziness, and the price does not seem fair at all, given the cost that these can be had for.

The real Dendy and Pegasus stuff are just mainly MG stuff that has been rebranded. 

People can pay what they want for items, and I don't wish the seller any bad intentions, but I hate to see it when people "get taken" for what amounts to as highway robbery, imo.

Quote from: prince tomato on February 09, 2015, 09:04:27 pm
i get your point Dave, but in all fairness,
most discrete clones, my Pegasus, Dendy, an Micro Genius are at an age now where the capacitors are starting to go bad,
resulting in jailbars and sound issues,
also, on some individual consoles i have, the shielding isn't great, which causes the same issues.
so i personally think it's great that these are available now,
new and not really at a bad price imho.
replace the guts of any old noac clone with this and you are good to go for another decade or two.
for people like me and others in Europe quality clones are hard to get locally, almost impossible,
and the real Dendy's an Pegasussessuss... Pegasi... whatever are highly collectable now and very expensive,
a lot more expensive than this.

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Post Merge: February 09, 2015, 10:03:59 pm

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Oh, and Patrick...I remember having seen some of these very same MG units new here, boxed.  I passed them up at one point due to funds, but I think I know where I can still get them.  If I ever do manage to grab the boxed ones, you can gladly have my loose ones for $10 - $15.

my bad, i just saw the used clones,
not too bad either.
but in my comment i was (mistakenly) referring to the DIY 8 bit boards,
i ordered one to see what it performs like compared to my older clones.
fingers crossed, i have high hopes for this one.
;D

Hi retrospective!

I wish you could add to your store stuff like clear cases/shells for NES cartridges and famicom cartridges... As you are based in china I guess you will have access to them.
-Rama

there is a seller on Aliexpress that selles FC cart shells,
very flimsy ones you find on cheap bootleg carts though...
a better quality version would be nice.

NES cartridge shells,
those would be very handy indeed.

Quote from: fcgamer on February 09, 2015, 06:10:48 pm
Yikes!  $45 for a loose Micro Genius 1000, not even controllers included?  Just...wow.   :upsetroll:   :o 

For those that don't know, the MG 1000 + MG 2000 models were quite popular (and common) in these parts, and are also fairly unreliable these days to boot.

Then i would suggest you to take a look at sold auctions on Ebay for glob-top famiclones which compability is a lot lower than for any real famiclone or original Famicom and tell me how much they were sold for.

Also, could you please give me a source where it clearly states that these hardware famiclones are unreliable? Rather if you Google it, you will come up that the fact that most of these clones are a very good complement to the original hardware and if you do want to get further into the discussion, what makes these famiclones worse to boot than the Famicom? The components are clearly not of particulary worse quality than the Famicom, the connectors are clearly not worse, the PPU...sure, in all honesty, one or another capacitor might have been of lower quality, but other than that, what makes it "fairly unrealiable" is totally out of my knowledge.

I agree in one part though, that these consoles are more common here in the region than in the west. Why? Why is the NES more common in the west and sold at approx five time the market value in general if you can find one from a seller around here? (I have sources). Why is the Famicom system priced at a much higher price Internationally than in Japan (I am Japanese so i know very well how much you have to pay up for a used Famicom at for example hard off and it aint a fraction of what people here are selling used Famicom systems for).

Micro Genius used their own branded main components which cannot be swapped with the UMC components which the majority of the hardware famiclones used.

So in all fairness, there are very many aspects to consider, so please try to kepp that in mind and thank you for the input.  :) Have a nice day and happy spring festival if you are staying in TW!  :D Edit: I apologize if i might have sound a bit harsh, i just think it is not fair to call it robbery since we are not forcing anyone to buy anything and that we strongly believe that if something is totally overpriced then we of course would consider to lower our prices but nothing indicates that we are taking out "robbery" prices for our products which is why we want to be as close to our customers as possible and therefore we are always willing to discuss things. Anyway, thanks for your understanding.  :)

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Post Merge: February 09, 2015, 10:42:10 pm

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Quote from: aarkay14 on February 09, 2015, 10:15:02 pm
Hi retrospective!

I wish you could add to your store stuff like clear cases/shells for NES cartridges and famicom cartridges... As you are based in china I guess you will have access to them.
-Rama

Hello Rama and thanks for the input. I will take a look into it, but now it is soon spring festival so most things here will shut down until the end of the month, but absolutely. I will check around with suppliers and see if they can come up with something interesting. Stay tuned!  :-[ Thanks.

....Which reminds me that i want to notify everyone that the POST will also shut down, so any orders placed After tomorrow will be put on hold because of the Chinese new year. I am not sure how long this is going to be but i think until 25-26, which is unfortunate but nothing we really can help.  :'( Until then we will continue to upload products.  :)

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Post Merge: February 11, 2015, 12:31:00 am

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Some of the orders has been sent out! And we have updated with some new AV-mod kits, and some Keyboard famiclones which are indeed VERY heavy (the cost of shipping will exceed the price of the unit by far), so please kepp that in mind. Also we have updated with some DIY upgrade kits and a bunch of normal old school famiclones at a lower price. Welcome to check it out!  :)

To be fair, I should mention to anyone interested in the UMC chips that from what I recall, two of the duty cycle registers are swapped inside the audio generator unit producing different sounds and music. It was one of the reasons I actually swap out real famicom CPU+PPU chips back in the day for these as a replacement. However, still awesome to see discrete chips lying around.

You are totally right, Trenton_net, and it is worth pointing out for anyone who is a purist. For most people it should not make a big difference and for those who are used to glob-top Famiclones they wouldn't even notice, but the information you are providing is totally correct.  :) Quite funny actually since UMC were the real pioneers back in the days (even more than Micro Genius i would say). I remember they released a SMD-NOAC which was not glob-top somewhere around 94-95? These were not common at all in the west i believe but i have sources that points out that it at least served as a mobo for the Dendy Jr and the portable Game Axe. If i recall it correctly even Micro Genius 1000 used that chip in their later clones (or possibly a retailer who gained rights to their old supply) (I forgot the name but i have plenty of NTSC clones of these ones somewhere around here)....

i think i have one of those later Dendy versions with the SMD chip, i remember looking at it an wondering where the NOAC or the rest of the chipset was at the time  ;D
never knew there was anything between globtop and discrete chipset, let alone surface mount chips.
now i know.
you sure know your clones and hardware sir.

You have PPU and CPU as a bundle in your store, but will there be just PPU also?

Thanks for the input mate.  :) It surely is "somewhere in between" in all senses since the compability is slightly better than a glob-top, yet not as good as the discrete chips hehe.

Regarding selling the PPU alone, yes we could arrange that. We try to be flexible so send a PM here or at our shop and I am sure that we could work something out.  :)

Ok, PM sent to your AliExpress account.

Thanks, PM answered  ;)

Hello my friends!  :)

Spring festival is finally over and we are back to work!
All of your parcels will be sent during next week and for those of you who are waiting, we apologize for this but now everything should be up and running like it normally should. :-[

....Or is it? We have aquired a VERY VERY interesting Famiclone board that we are going to upload on our webshop as soon as possible (the upcoming couple of days).  :D

Let met introduce it here:

What we basically have is  something that we really think that we are really proud to be available to provide you. And that is a Famiclone that has a custom built PPU which is a reversed engineered SMD chip which allows a LOT of different things. The CPU is the normal UMC-FC CPU, but the PPU is really something out of this universe.

For example, it outputs AV, S-VIDEO, VGA, AND RGB. It will be possible to upgrade this into HDMI, but not for the moment. It has 7(!) controller options. 4-flat 9-pin for your Famiclone controllers. 2 inputs in the front for the sub-9 controller so that you can use external controllers. 1 option for accessing your Famicom expansion port module.

And it DO utilizes the use of scanlines with a simple jumper switch as you can see on the pictures.

We expect these to be kind of high in demand and they will be assembled by hand just like the DIY-8-BIT. So if you place an order, it might take a while before we can ship it out due to high demand.

Finally, as you can understand this is really for the true enthusiasts. The hardcore gamers, and the price will probably knock some people off the chair, but please understand that we are a very small company and for me personally i can just say that a famiclone like this, is ten times worth the money that of a PS4 or something like that (Not that we are looking into those kind of prices, please don't worry hehe). This is a MODERN machine made for MODERN televisions.

Thank you. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  :)
PCB itself

Board

Jumpers

Normal mode

zoom in on scanlines

Scanlines

That looks incredible! So if using composite,s-video, or RGB is it regular 240p or is it now interlaced 480i?

received my AV famicom clone board yesterday,
very pleased with the compatibility.
i put it in an old blown original FC i had lying around,
and replaced the UMC ppu and cpu with some old original ones,
as well as the reset switch.
you can extend the power switch wires to the powerboard, solder points are marked on the board.
i connected two DB9 controllerports and two NES ports to the expansion port and it all seems to work a treat.

cartridge slot is very good, no deathgrip,
picture and sound with both UMC and original chipset is great,
really good.
better than my NES, AV Famicom, or any clone i have.
slightly better than my Pegasus and Dendy discrete clones,
but those have caps in them that are over 20 years old.
the board layout of this thing is really transparent and logical,
and as a basis for a diy 8-bit console i think this is the best thing you can get, in many respects better than the real thing imho.
overall, a superior bit of kit,
highly recommended for any 8-bit project.

one suggestion for the seller maybe:
for many people it might be handy to have some additional documentation on the pinouts of the various connectors.
the expansion port is well documented,
and the propriatary controller-connectors are easy enough to figure out,
but to get all of that tech info on one simple page might be the support some people need in order to get started with this kit.
also, some people might want to connect other kinds of controllers to this, so a couple of different mod sheets would be a great thing to include.


(note: if you want to put this into a real Famicom or a clone with eject-slide you might have to shave the slide down a bit for clearance over the socketed chips, òr solder the chips right onto the board and leave the sockets out.
also, glue a support of ca.5mm under the cartridge slot because not all mounting points for screws you find on the original motherboard are present.)

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Post Merge: February 28, 2015, 10:55:22 am

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that thing looks very nice!
i wish i waited a bit before buying the cheaper board i worked on today ;)
it seems you are picking up the slack where Hyperkin messed up, and finally some dependable consoles are being made to propel 8-bit gaming into the 21st century.
about time too.
keep it up!

Quote from: Retrospectives on February 28, 2015, 06:34:04 am
Hello my friends!  :)

Spring festival is finally over and we are back to work!
All of your parcels will be sent during next week and for those of you who are waiting, we apologize for this but now everything should be up and running like it normally should. :-[

....Or is it? We have aquired a VERY VERY interesting Famiclone board that we are going to upload on our webshop as soon as possible (the upcoming couple of days).  :D

Let met introduce it here:

What we basically have is  something that we really think that we are really proud to be available to provide you. And that is a Famiclone that has a custom built PPU which is a reversed engineered SMD chip which allows a LOT of different things. The CPU is the normal UMC-FC CPU, but the PPU is really something out of this universe.

For example, it outputs AV, S-VIDEO, VGA, AND RGB. It will be possible to upgrade this into HDMI, but not for the moment. It has 7(!) controller options. 4-flat 9-pin for your Famiclone controllers. 2 inputs in the front for the sub-9 controller so that you can use external controllers. 1 option for accessing your Famicom expansion port module.

And it DO utilizes the use of scanlines with a simple jumper switch as you can see on the pictures.

We expect these to be kind of high in demand and they will be assembled by hand just like the DIY-8-BIT. So if you place an order, it might take a while before we can ship it out due to high demand.

Finally, as you can understand this is really for the true enthusiasts. The hardcore gamers, and the price will probably knock some people off the chair, but please understand that we are a very small company and for me personally i can just say that a famiclone like this, is ten times worth the money that of a PS4 or something like that (Not that we are looking into those kind of prices, please don't worry hehe). This is a MODERN machine made for MODERN televisions.

Thank you. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  :)
PCB itself

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/537/GxVddv.jpg)

[close]

Board

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/661/PEYRCs.jpg)

[close]

Jumpers

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/540/hGDaDG.jpg)

[close]

Normal mode

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/633/8qXxkk.jpg)

[close]

zoom in on scanlines

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/540/87oOzk.jpg)

[close]

Scanlines

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/673/U87xK0.jpg)

[close]

Are your famiclones compatible with cartridges that don't work on a real famicom, like some multicarts?

All of You who has been waiting, the products will be shipped out TOMORROW and the tracking number will be provided by our webshop. Thanks for your patience.  :)

muckyfingers: Regular 240p as standard (at this moment). Fully powered VGA with scanlines in action shows no slowdowns.  :)

prince tomato: WOW, thank you so much for that in dept litle "review". In fact, the DIY-8-Bit is indeed a very solid product which we tried to come as close as possible to the original hardware without fiddling around that much except providing AV out, and still keep the costs down, so i believe that both boards will complement each others very well depending on what you are looking for as a customer.  :) Also, thank you so much for the suggestions, we will be sure to implement pinouts and small documentation for the ease of installing for the customer. Thanks  :D

maxellnormalbias: In general terms the UMC-chips runs what the Ricoh does (more or less), so could you please be a bit more specific?

Stuff like the 150-in-1 real game from Coolboy; very recent bootleg stuff.

Considering it runs like a Ricoh, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work.

I am afraid that it won't work, but I cannot tell for sure. But if it's really recent stuff that won't work on a regular Famicom then like you say it probably won't work on our systems.  :'(

Worth 10 times the price of a ps4? It's a nice looking board and definitely higher quality than the glob top NOAC systems you find lately, but don't you think that statement is a bit ambitious?

That's just my subjective opinion since i've never been much of a PS fanboy myself. So for me, Famicom has always been number one and the fact that we are a 2 people company compared to Sony just makes me more proud of our products that we can offer to the community.  :D Sorry if i made anyone uncomfortable.  :'(

No, it's fine. Those boards look very nice and I actually have a dead famicom I could use as a donor case.

That would be a great revival for sure. Basically then you are all ready and set to go since you can take spares from the dead board using with our one since everything is compatible. The only thing we have to look more into is the connector. Not saying that there is anything wrong with the one provided now, but for greater compability with the original Famicom housing/case we will try to find connectors that uses screwholes for easier installation. It's not a big deal really, but there is always room for optimizations.  :D

Hi, I'm about to pick up my first ever NES, however I'm in PAL territory and so it'll be 50Hz. I like to mod all my systems, and ideally I'd prefer this to output NTSC60.

As I understand it, replacing the CPU+PPU+Crystal is (roughly) sufficient to convert a PAL NES into an NTSC one.

Because I'm new to NESland, I'm not sure how mix&match the clone parts are - would the 'DIY-8-Bit NTSC Upgrade kit' available in this store be drop in replacements for the official PAL chips? Or are they sufficiently different to the official parts that this is nonsensical?

Thanks!

I am by no means any expert on the NES ( I actually never owned one). But Yes, that should theoretically be possible if you also disable to lockout chip of the NES.

Here is a thread that jpx72 wrote about his success of doing basically the same thing as you are about to do. He seemed to have used the original chips from the Famicom but they are interchangeable with the UMC chips so in that sense it wouldn't be any problems. Thanks.

http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=6211.0

You have to disable region lockout chip to play NTSC games.

Hello and sorry for the slow updates. The new DIY-Product has been uploaded for a while, but i forgot to put it into a category which made it invisible for people to see. Anyway, now it is uploaded but we will be a bit busy this month, but if you want to get sure to get one of these boards, please order but be aware that the time frame will be a bit uncertain. Thanks for your understanding all.  :D

just placed an order for this behemoth (among other things)
can't wait to see what it can do!
i really like how you can personalize and mod this to suit your needs and taste.
it would be great if it fits in an original Famicom or close clone when all the ports are cut out.
otherwise i might cram it into an Atari 5200 or something  ;D
no more drooling over the Analogue NT or other new consoles with original or cloned hardware that cost an arm and a leg.
as soon as it arrives i will post my findings in the techie part of FW  for those who are curious to see how this thing holds up compared to the original and subsequent clones.

Quote from: Retrospectives on February 28, 2015, 06:34:04 am
Hello my friends!  :)

Spring festival is finally over and we are back to work!
All of your parcels will be sent during next week and for those of you who are waiting, we apologize for this but now everything should be up and running like it normally should. :-[

....Or is it? We have aquired a VERY VERY interesting Famiclone board that we are going to upload on our webshop as soon as possible (the upcoming couple of days).  :D

Let met introduce it here:

What we basically have is  something that we really think that we are really proud to be available to provide you. And that is a Famiclone that has a custom built PPU which is a reversed engineered SMD chip which allows a LOT of different things. The CPU is the normal UMC-FC CPU, but the PPU is really something out of this universe.

For example, it outputs AV, S-VIDEO, VGA, AND RGB. It will be possible to upgrade this into HDMI, but not for the moment. It has 7(!) controller options. 4-flat 9-pin for your Famiclone controllers. 2 inputs in the front for the sub-9 controller so that you can use external controllers. 1 option for accessing your Famicom expansion port module.

And it DO utilizes the use of scanlines with a simple jumper switch as you can see on the pictures.

We expect these to be kind of high in demand and they will be assembled by hand just like the DIY-8-BIT. So if you place an order, it might take a while before we can ship it out due to high demand.

Finally, as you can understand this is really for the true enthusiasts. The hardcore gamers, and the price will probably knock some people off the chair, but please understand that we are a very small company and for me personally i can just say that a famiclone like this, is ten times worth the money that of a PS4 or something like that (Not that we are looking into those kind of prices, please don't worry hehe). This is a MODERN machine made for MODERN televisions.

Thank you. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  :)
PCB itself

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/537/GxVddv.jpg)

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Board

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(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/661/PEYRCs.jpg)

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Jumpers

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(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/540/hGDaDG.jpg)

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Normal mode

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/633/8qXxkk.jpg)

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zoom in on scanlines

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/540/87oOzk.jpg)

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Scanlines

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/673/U87xK0.jpg)

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Can you please post pics and/or video of the AV Board replacement inside an original Famicom, preferably with extra hole cut in the case? Screenshots of a game or two would be great as well. If they look good, I'm sure people here including myself would be happy to upgrade our systems.

i will do that.
i already got a video capture thingie to display what it puts out in the video departement.
i will dedicate a post to what i did with this board and the other DIY 8-bit board with the AV output,
(which came out really well)
that is an awesome device already,
but i am really curious about this thing.
if it does away with (most) jailbars,
crunchy audio, and reversed duty cycles (and the sound and pitch issues they cause),
this is the thing i should have saved my cash for instead of buying the  Retron 5.
if only i knew then what i know now...
shortly before i heard of this board i was considering buying the NES rgb kit, which would cost about $90 plus $36 for the board needed to work with the Famicom or AV Famicom.
and then i would have to find an evil wizard to cram all of that into my Famicom, (i can do a lot of mods myself, but this is pretty tricky)
sell my soul to pay the man,
and live without the eject-slide.
so yeah, i think this board is well worth the money,
and a lot less hassle to work with.

stay tuned for more.
to be continued.

I was actually asking the Retrospects guy, but if you're gonna buy one, feel free to post a review. Note that I'm referring to this one:

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/AV-Module-for-your-8-Bit-system/138988_32287368288.html

Quote from: prince tomato on March 24, 2015, 12:33:03 pm
i will do that.
i already got a video capture thingie to display what it puts out in the video departement.
i will dedicate a post to what i did with this board and the other DIY 8-bit board with the AV output,
(which came out really well)
that is an awesome device already,
but i am really curious about this thing.
if it does away with (most) jailbars,
crunchy audio, and reversed duty cycles (and the sound and pitch issues they cause),
this is the thing i should have saved my cash for instead of buying the  Retron 5.
if only i knew then what i know now...
shortly before i heard of this board i was considering buying the NES rgb kit, which would cost about $90 plus $36 for the board needed to work with the Famicom or AV Famicom.
and then i would have to find an evil wizard to cram all of that into my Famicom, (i can do a lot of mods myself, but this is pretty tricky)
sell my soul to pay the man,
and live without the eject-slide.
so yeah, i think this board is well worth the money,
and a lot less hassle to work with.

stay tuned for more.
to be continued.

ah, sorry.
i was too eager to realize.
i just happens that i bought thatAV board too and installed it in a Famicom.
the DC in plug is in the exact same place as the old one,
the rca socket for video comes out exactly where the rf used to be,
audio comes out of the hole where the channel switch was, you will need to cut this hole a little bit bigger, any hobby knife will do,
and there is a nifty recessed power led where the TV< >GAME switch was.
so you only need to cut one hole.
the board itself screws down exactly where the RF board sat,
using the same mounts and holes.
depending on which revision of Famicom board you have,
wiring it up is either straight wire-by-wire replacement,
or if you have the 4 wire revivision,
you may need to figure out where to find your Vcc, ground, audio and sound.
you can find all kinds of useful schematics and pin-outs for this on the infraweb, and the multimeter is your friend.
i would say the whole operation takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

prince_tomato: If you already installed it into a Famicom with your AV-Board I sent to you, could you please take some photos of the setup? I am not home at this moment but i still wanted to reply and yes, everything prince_tomato is saying is absolutely correct. Although i never did this installation personally, i do own clone systems that are basically identical to the original Famicom in terms on physical plastic and screwholes etc. But yeah, a hobby knife / dremel or something like that would do, to cut out that little extra hole. That's pretty much all you need to do.

This boards are made of high quality components and will be an easy quick-fix for anyone who want's to have an AV Famicom. Picture quality is also great, but well, i hope prince_tomato could assist us on that one. Hehe  :)

Does the AV kit fix the Jail Bar issue on the original Famicom?

muckyfingers: It does not per se fix the jail bar issue since it is generally a question of bad capacitors on the motherboard itself. The picture quality is awesome though.

daskrab: I got some really really nice pictures from prince_tomato (big thanks!) who has installed this AV kit into a normal Famicom board and housing so please look at the pictures and see for yourself. Thanks

Thanks for the pics. Looks nice.

Quote from: Retrospectives on March 27, 2015, 09:22:45 am
muckyfingers: It does not per se fix the jail bar issue since it is generally a question of bad capacitors on the motherboard itself. The picture quality is awesome though.

daskrab: I got some really really nice pictures from prince_tomato (big thanks!) who has installed this AV kit into a normal Famicom board and housing so please look at the pictures and see for yourself. Thanks

Spoiler

(http://i61.tinypic.com/r8z24h.jpg)
(http://i61.tinypic.com/sobe4n.jpg)
(http://i60.tinypic.com/4sbmds.jpg)

[close]

Quote from: Retrospectives on February 28, 2015, 06:34:04 am
Hello my friends!  :)

Spring festival is finally over and we are back to work!
All of your parcels will be sent during next week and for those of you who are waiting, we apologize for this but now everything should be up and running like it normally should. :-[

....Or is it? We have aquired a VERY VERY interesting Famiclone board that we are going to upload on our webshop as soon as possible (the upcoming couple of days).  :D

Let met introduce it here:

What we basically have is  something that we really think that we are really proud to be available to provide you. And that is a Famiclone that has a custom built PPU which is a reversed engineered SMD chip which allows a LOT of different things. The CPU is the normal UMC-FC CPU, but the PPU is really something out of this universe.

For example, it outputs AV, S-VIDEO, VGA, AND RGB. It will be possible to upgrade this into HDMI, but not for the moment. It has 7(!) controller options. 4-flat 9-pin for your Famiclone controllers. 2 inputs in the front for the sub-9 controller so that you can use external controllers. 1 option for accessing your Famicom expansion port module.

And it DO utilizes the use of scanlines with a simple jumper switch as you can see on the pictures.

We expect these to be kind of high in demand and they will be assembled by hand just like the DIY-8-BIT. So if you place an order, it might take a while before we can ship it out due to high demand.

Finally, as you can understand this is really for the true enthusiasts. The hardcore gamers, and the price will probably knock some people off the chair, but please understand that we are a very small company and for me personally i can just say that a famiclone like this, is ten times worth the money that of a PS4 or something like that (Not that we are looking into those kind of prices, please don't worry hehe). This is a MODERN machine made for MODERN televisions.

Thank you. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.  :)
PCB itself

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/537/GxVddv.jpg)

[close]

Board

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/661/PEYRCs.jpg)

[close]

Jumpers

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/540/hGDaDG.jpg)

[close]

Normal mode

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/633/8qXxkk.jpg)

[close]

zoom in on scanlines

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/540/87oOzk.jpg)

[close]

Scanlines

Spoiler

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/673/U87xK0.jpg)

[close]

i finally had a chance to try the RGB mode from this thing,
(it does require a special cable going from the vga out socket to the scart plug that goes into your tv, if you are using scart like me, and involves reintegrating the sync into the signal i believe, i didn't make the cable myself)
and the picture quality is simply stunning.
i have really tried to find jailbars or even the faintest distortion,
but it is flawless in my opinion.
at the moment i have no way of capturing images in a way that is worth displaying here,
but i will as soon as i can.
so for now you'll have to take my word for it.
;D

Hi Retrospectives,

Is there a way to include a 72 pin connector or maybe a dual 72 and 60 pins? that would be good for people that have NES games in their personal collection, I've already have an American NES Top Loader (besides my AV Famicom) but I can grab another NES Top Loader shell from a non working console for housing your board.

Quote from: Lord-Raziel on October 08, 2015, 07:31:52 am
Hi Retrospectives,

Is there a way to include a 72 pin connector or maybe a dual 72 and 60 pins? that would be good for people that have NES games in their personal collection, I've already have an American NES Top Loader (besides my AV Famicom) but I can grab another NES Top Loader shell from a non working console for housing your board.

i don't mean to but in or anwer your question Lord Raziel,
but one possibility why the 72-pin connector is not already present could be the price.
including that carts slot would be very handy,
i agree, but it might make the board more expensive than the price of a cartridge converter for instance.
this is ofcourse just speculation by me,
and nobody was asking me anything,
so i'll just shut up now  ;D

Yes Yes!! .. a 72 PIN slot and <somehow> a floppy drive in place of FDS would make this complete and people will buy this in a heartbeat!

- Rama

Floppy drive FDS...I like that. I am one of those guys that prefers disks even though FDS is emulated on Power Pak and N8.

i've played these newer noac-only carts that do not work on original hardware and discrete clones on the DIY VGA/RGB board, and all of them work perfectly,
even the NOAC-only Waixing carts work perfectly on it.

Hello all and sorry for the late replies lately. It has been a very busy time for me personally but I will try to answer as good as I can:

Is it possible to add a 72-Pin cartridge slot for the NES games? Well, since the FC and NES (NTSC versions) are more or less identical when it comes to the CPU it would in theory not be a big issue to do that. The issue is rather that it would take some time to re-draw the hardware itself to fit two slots and right now I personally do not have that time. But indeed, it is a great idea and do not get turned off by my reply because I will make my best to realize this concept since it is clearly a matter of time (and a bit of an investment but it is doable).

When it comes to using normal standard 2DD or HDD floppies running FDS games or even ROM files, then it would require to build an FPGA core that not only replicates the PPU but also the CPU and what we would end up with is a FC simulator which then would write the ROM or DSK files into RAM or even a Flash ROM which we already have with the Everdrive or similar flash devices, so personally I might think that this is a little bit too far off from the original idea to just create a simple FPGA core for the video signals and still maintaining the cartridge slot so that people can play their games as they were "intended to play".

But never say never. It is doable. Heck. If we reversed engineered the CPU totally we could even build a FPGA core that could remove the need of any external hardware like cartridges or floppies, but that kind of defeats the point of collecting the hardware (or software).

So to answer your questions about floppies in a simple way: Yes, it is fully possible in theory but as for this moment it is for me personally it does not really have that high priority.  ;)

Will you be putting your items back on Aliexpress?
Aliexpress has a much more advantageous exchange for me than paypal or my credit card.

Hello all people.

First of all. I want to tell you that I have been abundant for a longer while and therefore I haven't been in charge of anything regarding this business (my wife has been in charge). That means that some mistakes might have been made and although our Ebay shop is totally working fine I wanted to say that now I am back and everything should be up and running more smoothly.

We are constantly looking for new things that might be attractive for FC users and we are glad to announce that now we are selling a FC to USB dumping board that makes it available to dump FC cartridges directly from a cartridge slot which means that no more desoldering of ROM-files are required.

Please check our Ebay shop for more information:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272240751917?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Regarding all other things like PM and information about what has been going on, I have replied to all now. I am terribly sorry about this delay. Anyway, manufacturers and other players in the game of business is another part why we have been a little bit delayed of things but that's totally no excuse. I will shape up in the future. I am sorry that some of you had to wait particulary long for your parcels to arrive.

Thanks.

Wow how does your dumping device handle different mappers? Can you please show us the software?

Quote from: jpx72 on May 15, 2016, 12:40:31 pm
Wow how does your dumping device handle different mappers? Can you please show us the software?

perhaps, it's just kazzo https://osdn.jp/projects/unagi/wiki/kazzo_intro_en

Hi Leo,

I got the first edition v2 of your VGA board.
A great machine but.. as of today it starts glitching the backgrounds and texts.
The characters are all fine.
We already tried switching the cpu but it did not help, the pin connector is completely clean.
Can you help me solve my problem.

Thank you

Ric :bub:

Quote from: retroric on July 15, 2017, 12:29:05 pm
Hi Leo,

I got the first edition v2 of your VGA board.
A great machine but.. as of today it starts glitching the backgrounds and texts.
The characters are all fine.
We already tried switching the cpu but it did not help, the pin connector is completely clean.
Can you help me solve my problem.

Thank you

Ric :bub:

similar problem here,
sent pm,
awaiting reply.