Ultimate Fami/NES newbie Q's?

[topshelfgamer]

Hello, this is my first post, although i've been lurking for awhile.  But with dozens of pages of forum titles, and most conversations assuming knowledge i'm guessing others already have it's a bit confusing to figure out certain things, so I was hoping to introduce myself and ask some questions...

First off I was an NES gamer back in the day but I shifted more to 16bit era stuff finding those games more interesting at the time.  Yet learning about what americans DIDNT get (special sound chips and such the japanese systems had) has massively increased my interest in this period of gaming and wanting to seriously fill this out in the quality and quantity department...

So my first question is, what actually makes the ULTIMATE famicom/NES system in terms of visual quality so far?
1) The PlayChoice-10 PPU modification with RGB out
2) The "titler" famicom I saw with internally generated RGB that can more easily be modded to output RGB
3) An emulator outputting to DVI/HDMI?

I've seen the videos comparing a crappy RF NES to something like the PC10 PPU RGB mod, but I dont even know if they are really a fair comparison... all the PPU mods have deeper blacks, more intense color saturation, and of course sharper visuals.  But I can't help but wonder whether you could get everything except the sharpness simply by playing with the Brightness and Color controls. 

I mean a rightful A-B-X comparison would probably be between an Svideo-modded console (if I understand right this is far easier to do to the majority of NES/famicoms?), and the RGB options.  Can anyone who has had both systems comment on whether the difference is really all that noticeable, assuming proper adjustment of saturation/brightness on the TV itself?  Especially when the first two sounded very expensive.

The next question in this is about emulation - what games or MMU's are less than pixel perfect so far?  Is sound quality iffy vs real hardware of a VRC7 for instance, or are there still unemulateable games out there in any kind of list for what their problems are?  I like playing on real hardware at least as much as the next guy and though familiar with NES emulation i've no clue the status of famicom disk system emulation and whether it works as well, but i'd think that would be the easiest way to get RGB out, no noise digital video out, and similar.

My third main question is am I correct in understanding that you can run real famicom hardware, with the disk system ram unit loaded from a PC and not requiring even the disk drive let alone original disks?  I'm very interested in the disk system but all I read is about lose one sector and the game is toast, the drives wearing out every time you play, needing new belts you can't find anymore and a seeming nightmare of maintenance.  It wasn't clear to me whether a disk drive has to exist in the chain but can sit unused, or whether you just need the RAM unit that it normally loads into.  (and i've no clue if it normally loaded the whole game to RAM or if any games did multipart loading needing second accesses to disk and such)

My fourth question is i've seen those mods that supposedly add the disk system extra sound channel to an american NES for supported games, like using a 47k resistor and such... I don't see how this would be possible because I thought it didn't even physically have that channel in the console?  If it's in the console I don't see why it would have been disconnected from the factory.  I could understand japanese MMU sound channels being added with a japanese cart, but the disk system had it's own extra channel from what I understood and that wouldn't be in japanese cartridges, plus the vids I saw seemed to use american cartridges, so i'm confused...

My final question was has anyone worked out how to hook up the original controller #2 microphone from the original version famicom to any later version for those few games that support it?  (or for that matter is that emulated anywhere?)  I've seen a few other threads a year or two back asking about or talking about it, I cannot find any solid information whether they went any further in some other thread however of actually making it work.  By "ultimate fami" i'd want compatibility with everything insofar as possible.  Could the circuit be recreated or swapped over from a 1st fami to work for those games?

Sorry to ram them all into one thread but they're all kind of connected and I thought maybe other newbies would just find this topic and get their answers at once as well. 

[Lum]

It is impossible to get pixel perfect from standard NES systems. Their PPU introduces fuzziness in the process of drawing usable video. Geometric shapes and object edges in general will never look like an emulator or the RGB PPU makes them.

[topshelfgamer]

Wow quick responses.  o_o  Sorry for wall of text, thought all in one post be easier than reposting to same thread a dozen times.

Will respond concisely in kind.

Curious how much better the PC10 PPU Famicom looks vs an Svideo AV Famicom, the latter is more my budget for now
HDMI/I understand upscale, but it mostly about clean noisefree well saturated deep black digital signal in RGB at probably lower $
Nesdev - Is emulation talk not okay here? 
VRC7 sounds I know, but is emu of it sound as good as real cart? (unless emu talk not ok)
FDS - I remember the grind of Apple 2's and such, would add drive later, but just want to play the games on fami hardware for now, and not wear out disks from routine playing most of the time
FDS I know is only for fami not NES, was planning to get AV Famicom 2nd version and use NES->Fam adapters, then add disk for completeness
Mic - for games like Zelda disk version yelling at Pols Voice   Plus a few others... it was originally part of the interaction on some games, and i'm a nut about not losing any of the experience if possible.

---
I know standard NES sucks for quality, plan is "at least" an AV Famicom (the one with NES controller ports) running Svideo.  But is the PC10-PPU substantially better than an Svid AV Famicom?  Or better than an emulator because of emulation flaws?

[topshelfgamer]

I'm not trying to be totally lazy, just pick the brains of what is commoner knowledge for those already here.  I've scanned through the threads I can find on the PC10-PPU hack and yes, it looks amazing and everyone loves it, that's clear.  I'm just wondering if anyone has done the more robust comparisons yet vs just AV modded Svid.  (my assumption is not!  But maybe I didnt dig deep enough.)

Real hardware is what i'm most interested in actually, i'm just obsessive about whether i'm giving up quality not going all the way to RGB, and if there's a quality drop going from emulation to an AV Famicom it makes me wonder what i'm doing.  Hence my curiosity for rigorous comparisons.  I also view things as progressive, maybe I can't run an ideal system yet, but I can plan for it in the future to add as I go.


If anyone cares to add to my original questions yet unanswered please do, otherwise i'll seek out more specific threads for some of the questions instead of monolithic textwall posts.    I just thought it'd be convenient for others who likely have similar questions.

[Duke.Togo]

My fourth question is i've seen those mods that supposedly add the disk system extra sound channel to an american NES for supported games, like using a 47k resistor and such... I don't see how this would be possible because I thought it didn't even physically have that channel in the console?  If it's in the console I don't see why it would have been disconnected from the factory.  I could understand japanese MMU sound channels being added with a japanese cart, but the disk system had it's own extra channel from what I understood and that wouldn't be in japanese cartridges, plus the vids I saw seemed to use american cartridges, so i'm confused...

My final question was has anyone worked out how to hook up the original controller #2 microphone from the original version famicom to any later version for those few games that support it?  (or for that matter is that emulated anywhere?)  I've seen a few other threads a year or two back asking about or talking about it, I cannot find any solid information whether they went any further in some other thread however of actually making it work.  By "ultimate fami" i'd want compatibility with everything insofar as possible.  Could the circuit be recreated or swapped over from a 1st fami to work for those games?

#4: The extra sound channel connector is on the expansion port of the NES, which is why with some modding you can connect it to the standard cart connector.

#5: You would have to mod an AV Famicom to get the microphone input into it.

My suggestion? Don't worry about ultimate video, it wasn't designed that way. If you want perfect pixel fidelity, go the emulation route, but there isn't much emu talk here. Buy a regular Famicom that is AV modded (80's FREAK sells them for instance) and wire up a extension port to NES adapter to use standard NES controllers when you don't want to use the built in microphone. If you're more interested in an authentic experience, the AV Famicom is really a wonderful machine. It has the best video quality for what it is out of the systems I have.

[GohanX]

1: I agree, as much as I love perfect RGB quality in my other systems, the NES just can't have it. You can use a Playchoice PPU for RGB, but you've killed a very rare arcade board, and it screws up the color palettes as well. If you are running an SDTV, composite is fine. The AV quality of the NES toaster and AV Famicom are very good, and the RF only Famicom and NES2 can be modded to be just as good. If you are gaming on a HDTV, don't.

2: I have no idea, I don't like emulation. As good as NES emulation is, it still doesn't quite feel right.

3: You can load a FDS disk image through the ram adapter and play it on real hardware, but you need a custom built cable (can be bought from Tototek) and an ancient computer. I use a old Pentium 2 computer with MS DOS boot disks for this. The better option is to get a serviced good FDS unit from a known good seller on here, and use the computer rig to allow you to write your own disks. The FDS disks are pretty stout, and although I've had a couple of disks that wouldn't read, I was able to rewrite them and they are fine.

4: Anything is possible with mods! But I got a Famicom specifically so I wouldn't have to deal with that crap. Besides, a gamers condition Famicom is dirt cheap, and a good condition one isn't exactly expensive either. Famicom to NES converters ARE expensive these days.

5: Nothing important used the mic, so I wouldn't worry about it. Zelda and Kid Icarus FDS both use it, but it's not required to complete the game. I played through Zelda recently and I couldn't even get the game to recognize my yells anyway.

[michaelthegreat]

You know, I think rgb is cool and all, but if I want super blocky, I'll just play in an emulator. I believe that most nes/famicom game designers assumed the games would be played on a tube tv with blurriness and blending and made it so the graphics looked best with those "flaws".