The mission: Repair a box full of Famiclones

That is awesome, i love the way some of the edutainments come up using fake windows haha. Also, if you have a device capable of viewing their online video, then why would you buy their pretend pc, so funny.

 

Hah, that english learning app looks exactly like the one provided with the lot of Chinese edutainment machines i've seen. The one thing I don't like about that unit is the fact that the controlers are PSX style. I like the ones that use regular famicom style pads. Though I have a strange feeling you can swap pads with famiclones and they work just fine.

 

By the way, why the heck do you need batteries when the console uses a power supply? Oh perhaps for the SRAM, since those educational apps like excel, word, phonebook require some method of saving data?

 

if the joystick port is the "amiga style" port (damn can somebody give me the real name of that port ?). And the gamepads are the same, then you can swap without trouble between them.

z_killemall: LMK = Let Me Know, I sorta owe ASSEMbler-sama a PCKID3/Nikita/etc famiclone. Since I tried to make a deal with a middle man I trust long ago. But it fell through because the price became too high.

z_killemall: if you figure out, how to use the "os" in the pckid with the normal power, then explain to us, or just wait with that. And make a picture to picture guide and so forth.

 

Yes, batteries are for that purpose. In the video there is an advice to you do not remove the batteries or your saved work will be lost (you know, all those very important text documents and spreadsheets... :crying. Btw, there is no mention about batteries being strictly required for operation. I imagine that two SRAM chips are used, since 6V are supplied by the batteries.

It's a DB-9 female connector.

 

I PMed ASSEMbler yesterday, the big deal about sending it are the shipping costs (my local post service sucks). AFAIK they're charging about 40-50 dollars to send any package under 0.5 Kg to USA. In my opinion that's just too much for a famiclone...

Well, the internal cartridge didn't start working until I put the batteries, and then it looked like the cart was dirty (random stuff all over the screen). Anyway, no matter how much I cleaned it I couldn't put it to work, maybe the trouble is the internal cart slot. I'll try to put it in the external port and see what happens...

The answer to the power supply is quite simple, like the SRAM needs 4.5V to work it couldn't be feeded by the built-in 9V adaptor, so they added that battery slots, which can be replaced by any 4.5 or 3.6 V adaptor (it must work with any of both because it worked with 1.2V rechargeable batteries). The only trouble is that as soon as you unplug the supply the SRAM will be totally deleted, which is another good reason that the manufacturer could have to choose for batteries.

I was thinking about adding a 3.6V cellphone battery, which would be charged by the phone charger without cutting the power supply to the SRAM. It should work, but let's see what happens when I do it :110:

 

I don't know if anyone has told you but that Mega Drive is a clone of a copy. The original one is called a Scorpion and was built from scratch to be an unofficial Mega Drive. It featured region switches as well for region free play. In fact it was in everyway as good as the original Mega Drive plus the bonus of region free. THey were meant to be released in the UK but I only ever saw one in an import shop. I've always wanted one of these Mega Drive copies.

Does this AITO clone come with the region free switches? It really is funny seeing a clone of a copy.

Yakumo

 

I don't have it here right now, but I'm pretty sure it's region free (like almost everything sold here), I remember seeing those switches in the bottom part of the console. The ones I'm almost sure they have it are the Megadrive III's, what I don't know is if they were sold region free or if they were modded, anyone knows anything about it?

 

taken from the PC KID 3 manual:

Your PC KID 3 is compatible with most popular brands of black injet and dot matrix printers. If you want a longer explanation, then it is about that the manufacturers of the printers are not at fault, if anything bad happens and etc. And if you want an even longer version, then I will try to explain it in some other time.

From the manual again.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR MACHINE IS OFF ; WHEN YOU CONNECT THE PRINTER. AND ON THE PRINTER.

Oh and by the way, the English PC KID 3 manual is a lovely English written manual which has 104 pages. And some Dr. Sylvia Law has written the forword, and she is in the Design Committee.

So here is a hint for you all, I am not going to scan 104 pages, without a pretty damn good reason. And second of all, I have given the scanner back to my father. Who uses it as a copy machine.

here are two links in my collection, I believe you would like.

http://famiclone.emucamp.com/clonelist.htm

http://famiclone.emucamp.com/indexxx.html

My goodness grace, what is that ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System_hardware_clone

a site in Portuguese

http://www2.dynacom.com.br/2006/mod2a.asp?sv=Entretenimento

 

What else would those switches accessible via expansion port be for besides J/E and "50/60hz"?

Also I doubt the Scorpion could be 100% digitally perfect in every way to an authentic MD considering most clones don't even get the most trivial things correct like the cart connector, that could be nostalgia kicking in.

 

Yakumo, I saw a Scorpion at a boot fair, so I'd guess it was sold, albeit in tiny quantities. I went back to pick it up, and it had gone

 

that's bad news mate. I'd love to have one. It looks like a deformed bastard child of a Mega Drive and a set of digital scales.

Yakumo

 

Checked the Scorpion clone, it has a label that reads "Universal Cartridge System". Next to it you can find 2 switches: the first one is to choose the cart region (Europe or America), and the other one switches between NTSC and PAL (which it's a bit useless here like all TVs work both systems).

I definitely have to get it working, but I had no time to start messing around with it (and I won't have it for the next couple of weeks )