Nintendo 64 and modifications

Started by gamer888, February 13, 2018, 12:19:28 am

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gamer888

Hi fellow gamers

I live in France and getting a US N64 can be hard (I want to enjoy some 60hz games). I am in love with the Fire N64 (orange looking). If I purchase a PAL fire-looking N64. Can I do the following:

-Playing with RGB quality
-Playing PAL games at 60hz
-Have it modified to play US games (without using a special cartridge or anything..I heard they can be troublesome)
-Play games at 60hz from an everdrive.

Thanks!

jpx72

I am not informed about N64 mods, but mmmonkey's website was always my first choice of search, so here's a link to RGB out mod:
http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/nintendo/ntsc_nintendo_64_rgb_new.htm

P

I think that's the old method though. Only early NTSC and certain French PAL Nintendo 64 consoles have RGB output which can be led to the multi-out port (an amplifier also needs to be built). Any non-black console is too new.

With the new method however, any 64 can be modded for RGB I heard, I don't know more than that though.

If you RGB-mod it you should be able to play NTSC games (not sure about framerate though), but you need to saw off plastic tabs inside the cartridge port for US cartridges to fit (Japanese cartridges already fit a PAL console).

gamer888

Thanks for the info!!

It seems the N64 is a "weird" console when it comes to playing foreign games or to have it modified. It is, after all, a cartridge base system..

P

I know very little about how the 64 works, but it's supposedly the first Nintendo console that works kind of like a modern PC with integrated graphics. It has to go via the "Reality Coprocessor" (what Nintendo named the GPU) to access any hardware. Also it doesn't use hardware sprites and "text mode" background characters (tiles) like classic consoles did but it's able to draw arbitrary triangles on the screen very fast (which is useful for 3D graphics and works with 2D too) like modern consoles and PCs.

The cartridges works more like a storage media than a traditional cartridge. On all earlier cartridge-based Nintendo systems (plus the GBA) the cartridge works like part of the hardware and the games' programs are executed from their place in the cartridge ROM chips. The 64, DS and any newer cartridge-based console however treats the cartridge ROM like an SD-card or CD and just copies its content into RAM (again which is done indirectly via the Reality Coprocessor) and then executes it from there. This sounds slower to me but I guess the advantage is that you can have bigger ROM chips without having to divide it into switchable banks.

Finally I believe the 64 internally works with the RGB colour space which is then converted via the Digital-to-Analogue-Converter (DAC) to either NTSC (or S-video if such a cable is used) or PAL depending on a setting. So that's why all 64's may be able to output either NTSC, PAL or even an RGB signal if you tweak the DAC.

jpx72

Quote from: gamer888 on February 15, 2018, 02:54:18 am
. It is, after all, a cartridge base system..


..you know what forum this is, right? ;)