Well, I'm asking this because I'm starting to get interested in buying a Famicom (Or it's hundreds of counterfeits) and an Everdrive...... I'm seeing this guy selling his china/counterfeit Famicom for less than $20...... http://www.olx.ph/index.php/view+cl...omputer&event=Search+Ranking,Position,1-15,15 If I remember correctly current famiclones have some compability issues and seeing these counterfeit Famicoms do have better compability/less issues than the NES in the Chip variants isn't it?
Clones aren't always compatible with the Everdrive. Mine is not. Check the everdrive forums or the archives here to see if there is a compatibility list... My clone has weird sound issues even with legit carts. I would buy original.
I think someone (MottZilla?) pointed out that two of the sound channels on the NOAC are swapped, causing odd audio effects. Apparently it can be fixed.
Famicom Clones are a crapshoot. There are two main issues with compatibility. #1 is that the cartridge port is sometimes wired incorrectly. This will prevent many carts from working. It may even prevent the Everdrive from working. Issue #2 is that somehow the square wave channel duty cycles got swapped with a couple of bits causing wrong sounds to be produced when these settings are used. This affects alot of games. In some it's extremely noticeable. Now, older clones that might actually have multiple chips and even older NOACs might have a better chance of not having these issues. But there is no way to tell unless someone has the exact clone you are looking at getting and can tell you if it has problems or not. It really would be better to spend the money upfront on a legitimate system versus getting a slightly cheaper clone that turns out to be crappy and then have to buy another clone or at that point go to a legit console. To be specific about the duty cycle problem, the square waves can have a waveform cycle of 12.5%, 25%, 50%, and negated 25%. Many clones somehow screwed this up and 25% and 50% got swapped around. If you are using a flash cart I suppose you could hack every game to adjust how the sound engine writes the registers to correct this problem.
Well the only reason I was leaning on that famiclone is that it's the cheapest of the bunch. But I remember these clones/bootlegs as early as 1985 so I'm thinking maybe it doesn't use the NES on the Chip and thus better compability? There are other offers but I think they are horrible value wise : Like this one for $80, an original Famicom includes 6 original Famicom games and 2 bootlegs. http://www.olx.ph/index.php/view+cl...+Computer&event=Search+Ranking,Position,1-1,1 Or this for selling for $90, seems to be an original Famicom with 14 games, but it seems every game seems to be bootleg. http://www.olx.ph/index.php/view+cl...+Computer&event=Search+Ranking,Position,1-3,3 They all sound like bad deals to me.......
NoAC based machines are still in production, but the ones I've seen have the same problems. I assume that at this point nobody considers it worth the time and effort to respin the chip to fix them. For reference, the China price of a Sobor / XiaoBaWang D30 famiclone is about 20-25RMB (3-4 USD), so there isn't a lot a margin to fix things. Some of the earlier clones - notably the ones that used a separate PPU and CPU like the UMC chipset - were much more accurate copies, but it's very difficult to identify what's inside a given machine without taking it apart.
Well, so I guess I should wrap this thread then, so last question.... If you see a Famicom at those prices (The ones I posted above) ...... Would you buy them? Or would you consider it a ripoff?
They seem expensive to me, but I don't know what the local market is like. The clone machine certainly seems way overpriced, since you can get new ones with multiple games for less than that in the local market. I'm not sure about the original famicoms - I got mine back when you pick them up in japan for a few hundred yen each, so they never seemed even slightly valuable to me, but I guess it's possible the prices have gone up.
It's just locally available ones here in the Philippines (Where there's no more market for them, I don't see any famiclones anymore here either) so I just think just price gouging because no one wants them, and people who will want them may have the money even if it's that overpriced. While importing them from Japan is much cheaper, let's just say customs here are umm. corrupt and will probably charge $45 for import tax or similar crap. Anyway, I just decided to go back to my mother's house and search for stuff in it's darkest nook and cranny.... And I found my old (counterfeit) famicom! Yey! I guess I'll just try to see if this still works.... It's in three pieces..... I'm sure this isn't a NOAC because I am playing this Famicom as early as I can remember (Probably 1987).... http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e95/stridervm/IMG_20140518_210209_zps839c3315.jpg http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e95/stridervm/IMG_20140518_213411_zps0ffdb9c8.jpg
It's not - it's using the 2-Chip UMC chip set, which generally has pretty good compatibility, although I seem to remember it still has some sound issues.
