21
Famicom / Disk System / Re: New Family BASIC Disassemb...
Last post by UglyJoe - November 19, 2025, 05:49:09 pmSomeone pointed out to me on the Gaming Alexandria discord that the tape format is the same as the Sharp MZ (and probably some other Japanese microcomputers). Definitely seems to track, and backed up everything that I had started to work out empirically by going cross-eyed staring at waveforms in Audacity 
I found this to be a good reference (now on archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240606013759/https://original.sharpmz.org/mz-700/tapeproc.htm
I found this to be a good reference (now on archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240606013759/https://original.sharpmz.org/mz-700/tapeproc.htm
22
Famicom / Disk System / Re: New Family BASIC Disassemb...
Last post by P - November 19, 2025, 04:38:41 pmNice work indeed! It's fantastic to finally see the cassette tape format documented!
23
Famicom / Disk System / Re: New Family BASIC Disassemb...
Last post by UglyJoe - November 19, 2025, 04:23:54 pmNice work, best of luck to you!
What you are probably seeing with V3 tape dumps not working with V2 is that V3 introduced short-hand values for the numbers 0-9, so that they get tokenized as a single byte rather than three bytes. You'll see what I mean if you go looking
I've made some Family BASIC tools over the years (lexer/parser, tape reader / converter, etc.). Mostly I'm working on preserving old magazine type-ins now. Let me know if you want to talk Family BASIC sometime
What you are probably seeing with V3 tape dumps not working with V2 is that V3 introduced short-hand values for the numbers 0-9, so that they get tokenized as a single byte rather than three bytes. You'll see what I mean if you go looking
I've made some Family BASIC tools over the years (lexer/parser, tape reader / converter, etc.). Mostly I'm working on preserving old magazine type-ins now. Let me know if you want to talk Family BASIC sometime
24
Famicom / Disk System / New Family BASIC Disassembly A...
Last post by micahcowan - November 19, 2025, 03:56:57 pm(This announcement was also posted to nesdev.org; I also plan to announce on r/Famicom) (Feel free to add this to the Famibe mega-thread!)
Hello! I'm announcing today a new disassembly project for Family BASIC v3.0 (for now - disassembly work on v2 is planned to begin soon!).
Although it's still a WIP and quite far from complete, it is quite a bit further along than existing disassemblies I've been able to find, and I've decided to publicize it early because the project has already revealed important information that I have not found anywhere else, and that should be available to people immediately. This includes:
Numerous other things not particularly worth mentioning, as well; have a scroll through the disassembly as it currently exists, and feel free to stop anywhere you start seeing more comments, or locations labeled with English-looking names.
A lot has been done, much more remains to be done. But enough work is accomplished, that the remaining work will likely be significantly easier.
This project was begun with specific discovery goals in mind--particularly, program representation on cassette and in memory. (I've a project in mind that needs this information--I won't talk about it here, bc who knows if I'll even get around to starting it!) Although the annotations are far from complete, at this point I have learned the specific things I had set out to learn, for Family BASIC v3 (specifically, details of how a BASIC program or background screen is represented, both in memory and on cassette tape.)
Now that those tasks are accomplished, I'll likely shift efforts to reaching roughly the same stage in disassembling Family BASIC v2, because I want to know the same things for it. Family BASIC v2 saves are incompatible with v3 saves, even when restricting yourself to v2 keywords, so I need to discover how they differ. But work will most likely continue (albeit more slowly) on completing an annotated disassembly for both Family BASICs (possibly absent the silly "playbox" stuff at the start of v2; I really don't care if I never annotate that stuff).
Hello! I'm announcing today a new disassembly project for Family BASIC v3.0 (for now - disassembly work on v2 is planned to begin soon!).
Although it's still a WIP and quite far from complete, it is quite a bit further along than existing disassemblies I've been able to find, and I've decided to publicize it early because the project has already revealed important information that I have not found anywhere else, and that should be available to people immediately. This includes:
- Complete details on the representation of BASIC programs and bg screens on cassette saves (diagrams included!)
- Complete details on the representation of BASIC programs in cartridge RAM
- The locations in memory of all of the handler routines for each BASIC command (most of these routines have not been analyzed further).
- A few interesting Family BASIC bugs to be avoided: failure to catch overflow on some multiplications (4097 * 4097, for instance), inappropriate overflow errors for (-32768 - 0) (v3 only), and the REM keyword is fundamentally broken for many Japanese words (fortunately, apostrophe works in its place).
Numerous other things not particularly worth mentioning, as well; have a scroll through the disassembly as it currently exists, and feel free to stop anywhere you start seeing more comments, or locations labeled with English-looking names.
A lot has been done, much more remains to be done. But enough work is accomplished, that the remaining work will likely be significantly easier.
This project was begun with specific discovery goals in mind--particularly, program representation on cassette and in memory. (I've a project in mind that needs this information--I won't talk about it here, bc who knows if I'll even get around to starting it!) Although the annotations are far from complete, at this point I have learned the specific things I had set out to learn, for Family BASIC v3 (specifically, details of how a BASIC program or background screen is represented, both in memory and on cassette tape.)
Now that those tasks are accomplished, I'll likely shift efforts to reaching roughly the same stage in disassembling Family BASIC v2, because I want to know the same things for it. Family BASIC v2 saves are incompatible with v3 saves, even when restricting yourself to v2 keywords, so I need to discover how they differ. But work will most likely continue (albeit more slowly) on completing an annotated disassembly for both Family BASICs (possibly absent the silly "playbox" stuff at the start of v2; I really don't care if I never annotate that stuff).
25
Other Gaming / Re: GBA (Not SP) Aftermarket B...
Last post by P - November 18, 2025, 02:06:02 pmYeah original GBA has noticably more throw than SP. More similar to Famicom and Super Famicom.
26
Famicom / Disk System / Re: This is Family Computer Ma...
Last post by P - November 18, 2025, 02:00:46 pmThanks! Good stuff as usual, I'm going to read it!
27
Famicom / Disk System / This is Family Computer Manga ...
Last post by ozidual - November 16, 2025, 07:26:01 pmThis Is Family Computer Volume 3 has been scanned and uploaded to archive.org by Gaming Alexandria scanner Detchibe. It's available here: https://archive.org/details/Famicom-GOLF_Manga-600DPI
28
Famicom / Disk System / Re: Last Famicom game you play...
Last post by Jedi Master Baiter - November 15, 2025, 01:43:50 pmAfter watching some of this guy's videos, I started getting interested in Baseball Stars again.
While messing around with the MAKE TEAM option, I've always wondered why the last two logo spaces were blank. There's 7 slots for custom teams but 13 available logos to use. I guess the programmers just decided to reuse the SELECT TEAM menu for the SELECT YOUR TEAM LOGO menu so they wouldn't have to design a new one?
Anyway, I used FCEUXD's cheat search to find what happens when I select a value beyond what's available. There's nothing too notable: mismatched logo tiles for new logos, some nonexistent team colors, but the further you go, the more messed up the colors get (ie. pure black noobsaibot players, the other team's colors even getting messed up). One option even showed female portraits but had male player sprites.
But what I want to focus on is value 12: You cannot see attachments on this board. You cannot see attachments on this board.
While on outfield view, the players look like they're in tighty whities.
While messing around with the MAKE TEAM option, I've always wondered why the last two logo spaces were blank. There's 7 slots for custom teams but 13 available logos to use. I guess the programmers just decided to reuse the SELECT TEAM menu for the SELECT YOUR TEAM LOGO menu so they wouldn't have to design a new one?
Anyway, I used FCEUXD's cheat search to find what happens when I select a value beyond what's available. There's nothing too notable: mismatched logo tiles for new logos, some nonexistent team colors, but the further you go, the more messed up the colors get (ie. pure black noobsaibot players, the other team's colors even getting messed up). One option even showed female portraits but had male player sprites.
But what I want to focus on is value 12: You cannot see attachments on this board. You cannot see attachments on this board.
While on outfield view, the players look like they're in tighty whities.
29
Famicom / Disk System / Re: Do newer revision CPU/PPU ...
Last post by hippy dave - November 05, 2025, 10:33:30 amGuess we'll find out...
You cannot see attachments on this board.
(When I have a chance to do the work)
Chat, is this a terrible idea?
You cannot see attachments on this board.
(When I have a chance to do the work)
Chat, is this a terrible idea?
30
Other Gaming / Re: GBA (Not SP) Aftermarket B...
Last post by Jedi Master Baiter - November 04, 2025, 11:48:17 pmYes, the buttons and membrane are aftermarket. Here's the eBay link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/316157323797?nordt=true
I'm going to go to my local retro game shop and see if they have OEM GBAs I can try out.
Edit: Someone rear-ended my truck.
Now I can't go anywhere unless I fix that taillight. 
Edit: Okay, that trip was practically for nothing. They had a GBA, but with no batteries and I couldn't test it out.
I was able to feel the buttons and notice they weren't very clicky. I also noticed there was much distance for pressing them.
I'm going to go to my local retro game shop and see if they have OEM GBAs I can try out.
Edit: Someone rear-ended my truck.
Now I can't go anywhere unless I fix that taillight. Edit: Okay, that trip was practically for nothing. They had a GBA, but with no batteries and I couldn't test it out.
I was able to feel the buttons and notice they weren't very clicky. I also noticed there was much distance for pressing them.