The mission: Repair a box full of Famiclones

While I'm writing this I have the guts of a Megadrive in the table next to a mountain of screws in my left, a solder and about 10 screwdrivers in my right, and in my bed are more Famiclones that what I ever expected to have...

It all started some days ago, while I was checking some auctions in MercadoLibre (Ebay in Latin America), suddenly I found something that called my attention: 15 Famiclones to repair for about 5 dollars. I didn't care if there was no way to repair them, I wouldn't let an offer like that go off my hands for five bucks. Nobody else was going to offer so I just needed to wait until the aution ended.

Today I arrived from college, checked my mail and there it was, the message I expected all week: I was the owner of 20 pounds of plastic crap! Made a couple of calls and in 30 minutes I was there. There something even more incredible happened...
-Hey, are those Megadrives for sale?
-No, they need to be fixed, if you want I'll add them to the box for 3 more bucks.
-Cool, I'll take them too. But I'll need a controller if I can fix one of them, how much for one?
-6 dollars each, but do you think you'll can fix them?
-Sure (I'd like to believe I can... )
-Then here you have. Enjoy!

A couple of minutes later I was leaving the store with 15 Famiclones, 3 Megadrives and 2 free working gamepads (which worthed more that what I really bought h: )

When I arrived home I got prepared for what it would be a long afternoon, but I wasn't prepared for what I was going to see...

The first clone I took looked like an extremely small PC tower with a keyboard that you could plug in there. It was working perfectly but unluckily it didn't have on-board games. A shame, I'd really like to see how those "eduteinment" programes are...
Then I looked the back of the tower, there were some things I never saw in a clone before: a printer port and a lot for 3 AA batteries! I'll definitely buy some batteries tomorrow and see what do they do. Unfortunately I don't have any idea about what is that printer por for, maybe the cart could make use of a printer or something like that (which makes a bit of sense since I found in the package another keyboard with one of these).

The next clone I picked up was a Nintendo 64 shaped one, and with another thing I didn't see before on a clone: 4 controller ports. I opened the case without doubting, I really doubt I was prepared for what I saw inside: Almost the entire console was soldered by hand! (and it looks like it was made by a kindergarden boy after drinking a gallon of coffee).
And if it wasn't enough, the rest of the parts were ripped off from other clones (what I can see because the boards look like they're cut with scissors or a really sharpless and rusty war axe.

This is all for the moment (it's 2 o'clock in the morning right now, I gotta get some sleep), tomorrow I'll take some pics and continue trying to fix all this junk. Who knows what is hidden inside the rest of the clones...

 

Wow, what a nice find!! make sure to post some pictures !! I'd love to see the sloppy N64 looking clone's insides.

Yakumo

 

Awsome find, I agree, I would love to see the hand made internals of that one

 

I'll get a camera this afternoon so I'll take and upload lots of pics, I've tried to take some photos with my phone yesterday but they're way beyond horrible. The only pic I have for the moment is the auction pic showing all the famiclones:


By the way, found a Megadrive clone too (never saw one of those before here) which looks better in quality that the other couple of Megadrive 3's (the Brazilian model made by Tectoy).

I'll take lots of board scans too so be prepared

 

aw, my famiclone! i had an exact copy of the one that is located third after the N64, resembling the SNES. that piece of crap had shit built-in games

 

There're tons of clones that look exactly like that, and unluckily most of them have no built-in games . I'll give it a try later see what happens...

 

nice find would love to see some pictures and hopefully you can get most of them fixed

 

Well, those who has to use batteries, plus normal power. Can maybe have onboard games .

 

no mine had non-saving games. nothing decent however.

It had from what I recall the following amongst others:

Milk & Nuts

Poppey

"Small Mario" (something like a roullete, not mario related)

Kung Fu

Duckhunt

Hogan's Alley

Wild Gunman

Lode Runner (however it's spelled)

and some others. A poor list compared to my cousin's (looked like a Famicom, mine was a NES since it had a NES slot)

My cousin's had amongst others:

Captain Tsubasa 1

Ninja Turtles

Super Mario Bros

Wild Gunner

Duck Hunt

Hoggan's Alley

Wild Gunman

Galaxian

Milk & Nuts

Flappy (amazing music!hehe)

Lode Runner

an airplane WW2 game that wasnt overhead like 1942 etc

Donkey Kong 3

and many more!! I felt shafted

 

That tower clone looks cool. Precursor to the PC-FX? :lol:

Are all the keyboards for the famiclones, do any have basic built in? Or were basic carts fairly popular in South America?

 

I don't remember seeing any basic carts, most of these keyboards have crappy educational apps like math, typing, questions and answers, basic english lessons and other junk like that.

What I really want to find out is what are those printer ports for, but I can't find any info anywhere...

 

http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1867#1867

the printer is used in word , and can be used to print out the basic code. and etc.

 

Those edutainment machines look like the ones I see in China all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if they were manufactured from the same company (At least the one I am thinking of) since I'm sure they get rebranded all over the place. I have a strange suspicion if you had the software for it, they would be all in Chinese (Like the word processor, etc) since they rarely translate those.

Edit: Here is a crummy cell phone photo of your run of the mill edutainment computer in China. The software that came with it is on par with the regular crap you get, but it had more apps than usual. - http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?0ebbc11891.jpg

 

Actually, the onboard programs I have on my PC KID 3 are translated to English, and I also have one of the best English manuals to it.

 

Ladies and gentleman, it's time for some pics! (sorry for the blurriness but the camera didn't help at all)

Starting with the PC KID 3, here it's sold with the "Nikita" brand.


It came with the Nikita keyboard and a second one of a different brand.


The keyboards have the Spanish key distribution and as far as I know, the apps in the cartridge are translated to Spanish. Unfortunately the cart is not working well for the moment.
As you can see in the following pic, the apps cart is not totally built-in, it's connected to an internal cartridge slot. I'm pretty sure it can work on the external slot but the cart is wired to the batteries slot and the main board, and the wires are damn short. To make it worse, I ran out of tin, so I'll have to wait until next monday to get some and change the wires for longer ones.

Here is the batteries slot and the printer port:


Let's advance to the next Famiclone. This one works with both NES and Famicom carts and uses NES joypads. The AV output needs to be fixed but the RF works fine.


This one is shaped like a SNES. Barcode, I'm sorry but I can't answer your question yet since it's not working at all. I'll check what's the trouble as soon as I have some free time.


Looking further inside the box, found the N64 shaped clone I told you before, here it is:

The 4 gamepad slots look awkward enough, but take a look to the guts of this thing:

I'ts not clear enough in the pic, but the bottom and middle boards are full of hand made solderings and the board on the top looks like it was from another clone (or anywhere else).


Another keyboard, this one looks terrible. Don't know if it is because of the colors or all the broken keys...

A closer look to the printer port:


Another one. Same style, but looks way better.


To finish with the Famiclones (I got some more units but I still have to take pics of them), I can't believe this was considered by the seller as a full console:

Yes, it's the bottom part of a generic looking clone joined to its board by a rubber band. Here's a closer look:


Switching to the Megadrives section, Here are the 2 Brazilian Megadrive III's:



Both units look similar in the outside, but the motherboards are totally different. Even one had a built-in AC adaptor, but I removed it since it was dead.




And here's the Megadrive clone and its board scan. I have to say that the quality doesn't look bad at all.




I'll post some more pics soon, I have the pics in 1600x1200 if anyone of you want them.

Hope you guys enjoyed the pics :thumbsup:

 

Very intresting indeed. I'm suprised they included the extension part of the board on the megadrive clones.

 

One would assume that the printer port on the Famicom clones are standard 25pin D type printer connectors.

To check, use a multimeter on pins 18 to 25 as these should all be ground.

 

i love that the last megadrive clone sais "AITO" with the TAiTO logo lol

 

Hi, I'm new to the boards. I'm a Brazilian and here there's a company called Dynacom.

I'm sure you all now that it is an infamous famiclone producer/importer. Recently it began to sell a PC Game, a variation of this PC Kid/Nikita/whatever. Casing and software are identical, but there is no mention of a printer port (it seems to has a lid covering the space). There is no lightgun or dancing mat included. Fortunately, Dynacom was kind enough to provid us a promotional 12 min. video of its "wonderful" product:

http://www3.dynacom.com.br/upload/pcgame1.wmv

The video shows procedures for installation and utilization. Some educational softwares and pirated games are also demonstrated. There is also one famiclone similiar to the Wii, with a black case and IR pads, named Wi Vision (fusion of Wii + Dynavision). More bizarre famiclones to UCD's list. :katamari:

 

Nice find! Hopefully they aren't too far gone to repair, although you never can tell with these things... custom chips and all.

Haha, look at the crappy build quality of some of them! It isn't a surprise that they don't work!

I'm sure there are several people among us who would be glad to offer advice if you get stuck. Feel free to shout! ;-)