Finds (Famicom/FDS)

[L___E___T]

...thanks guys, jus regular ole ebay for this one.  They pop up every now and then!

[ericj]

About 100 or so pirate FDS disks just arrived in the mail today. 

[L___E___T]

cool!  it will be fun to go through them all!

[lobdale]

I also received a nice helping of random FDS games in the mail today, 20 disks for 100 yen a piece, free shipping.  A lot of crap but for a hundred yen a piece come on.

[senseiman]

Nice one, lobdale!  100 yen each shipped is an amazing price, have you tested them yet?

[lobdale]

Yep they're all working just fine.  Couple of them have some writing on them and of course disk and sleeve only with maybe 5 of them having cases,  but was definitely a great deal. 

[senseiman]

I finally broke down and bought myself the Power Glove.

I've been tempted for years to get one, but always resisted.  40% off sale today though:  it was now or never.

Still can't figure out how it works.  My dog thinks it is a chew toy so that is complicating things a lot.  I put some pics up:

http://famicomblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/layman-and-6-month-old-puppy-try-to.html

[manuel]

Still can't figure out how it works.

It doesn't. You can stop figuring. 

[lobdale]

Ah the Power Glove.  It's interesting to see that it has that enormous 3-cube dongle thing... I wondered why the box was so damned huge.

I got a few goodies of my own this weekend over in Osaka:



The AV Fami they've had for a little while now, maybe about 4000 yen in box with both controllers and a free AV cable/power adapter.  It's more than I generally love to pay for stuff, but the image quality is so nice and jailbar free that it was totally worth it.



Also still working on my collection of every Nintendo-published Famicom/FDS game with box/manual, so I filled in a few parts of that.  Everything but Zelda/Mother was around the 600 yen mark, with Mother at a painful 2000, still the cheapest I've seen it in shape this good.  Even has all the inserts!

[senseiman]

LOL, yeah I guess I can give up on the figuring and just accept that the Power Glove does nothing:)

Awesome finds there, lobdale.  I love the boxed cart collection, Zelda and Mother are hard to find complete here in Fukuoka.  600 yen is a really good deal for Kirby and Joy Mech Fight too.

[manuel]

Well, the Power Glove does something (sometimes), but most of the time not that what you want it to do. 
It looks nice to have in the collection, though.

[133MHz]

My September Famicom finds. Clones, clones and more clones! Have I mentioned I'm obsessed with clones?

Yet another "Creation" mini NES clone, this time in its original box (though in poor condition) with two controllers and AC adapter. Dual slot (60/72) with built in games. I'm still working on it so I'll just show you some funny Engrish proudly displayed on the side of the box for now:



Two Power Joy consoles. The left one was $2 and barebones while the right one was $6 and complete (2nd controller, light gun, AC adapter). Seems that the light gray one is a VT02 based system! It comes with a ton of built-in games in just one ROM chip, that smells like OneBus mode to me. The darker one seems to be a regular NoAC and its built-in game board comes with the PAL version of Super Mario Bros, even though it outputs NTSC and the rest of the games are NTSC-JU!



And here's the sweetest find of all, which I consider as my Happy Birthday present, from myself to myself.

Last Thursday I won this lot of old consoles and accessories on MercadoLibre (Latin American eBay subsidiary). Paid about 30 bucks for everything pictured. I just couldn't resist, for my weird clone hardware obsessed self this is a goldmine. I'll be entertained for days just by cleaning and testing these. It all arrived just one day before my birthday which makes me super happy!

Some pictures from the auction:

Old school Famicom clones! *drools*



A pair of Acclaim Wireless Infrared NES controllers, not bad!



Coleco Telstar Colortron Pong console. All of my current Pong systems are monochrome so this is a nice addition. Haven't tested it out yet, I don't have two 9V batteries handy.



Newten Boy II "Portable" Famicom clone. 60 pin cartridge slot, second controller port, headphone jack, optional battery pack(?) and wireless TV transmission. Nice turbo controller in the shape of the original Famicom ones.



Micro Genius IQ201 clone with a bunch of extra stuff. That light gun looks awfully similar to the original Famicom revolver (more on this later) and that orange infrared controller surely has caught my attention.



Cosmo Tech Game Engine clone from Korea. Nice Super Famicom styling.




I surely feel like a kid in a candy shop with that much stuff to play with!
All of the clone systems are working, they mostly had simple problems like cold solder joints, dirty contacts and worn out controllers. The Game Engine and the Newten Boy II have been completely restored, the Micro Genius is next.

That orange wireless Famicom controller is just what I needed! Finally I can play my Famicom comfortably without being limited by its really short controller cords! The contact strip on one of the switches came loose so I glued it back in place, and one of the battery covers is missing the metal tab which connects the batteries electrically. For the time a piece of tinfoil will do, while I figure out a more permanent solution. 

The Acclaim controllers are also pending, seems they've got battery acid inside which will need to be cleaned up.

Now if you excuse me, I'll go tinker around some more with my new toys

[Cheetahmen]

Lucky you, the only Famiclones I have are the standard NOAC stuff. (Well, one has perfect sound emulation but the colour palette is a bit buggered and it freezes a lot) I wonder if those old school ones can run pirate carts that don't work on a real Famicom. (I have two, namely a Korean 8-in-1 cart and a 150-in-1)

[133MHz]

I've got so many different clones it's borderline obsessive. In the land of pirates anything is possible: Perfect discretes, faulty discretes, perfect NoACs, faulty NoACs, all kinds of NoACs ranging from big ones with external RAM to tiny all-in-ones and now those enhanced VT0x ones, all kinds of bankswitching hardware for the built-in games, etc. That's why I never cease to be amazed.

As for these particular ones, all three output incorrect audio. The Game Engine boasts a discrete UMC chipset and the Newten Boy II a NoAC in a QFP package with external RAM circa 1992. They all run Castlevania III which means their cartridge slots have been correctly wired. I'll probably be running more tests on them in the next couple of days.

[UglyJoe]

Oh man, I had those Acclaim controllers as a kid.  They are so awful.  You must maintain an direct IR connection at all times or they'll stop working.