Family BASIC

[UglyJoe]

That doesn't sound right.  What happens when you turn it on?  Do you get some weird looking computer thing, something that resembles a command prompt, or a screen displaying a message (white text on black)?

Depending on what screen you're at, the F1 key will do different things.

[133MHz]

Is it possible that one of the modifier keys could be stuck?

[timu-san]

I get the startup screen I see in pics, but when it comes time to enter anything, none of the keys appear to do anything except when I hold down "shift", which then F1 gives an underscore, and some of the basic keys give symbols.

[UglyJoe]

Hmm...it sounds like 133mhz was right. 

The GRPH key (to the left of the space bar) is used to enter marked characters (ta -> da, ka -> ga, etc).  That would explain why only some of the keys are working (since not all characters can be marked). 

Shift also (I believe) is used to insert characters with handakuten marks (ha -> pa, he -> pe, etc), which would limit you to even fewer keys (just five).

[timu-san]

I can't seem to get it to anything else. The GRPH key doesn't seem to respond, and the only thing that seems to work is Shift, which I only get the symbols to work. Did anyone ever have a problem like this before?

[UglyJoe]

My keyboard has never had that problem, no.  If I were in your situation, I would mash on the GRPH and Shift keys a bunch of times (in an attempt to knock them loose, assuming they're stuck) and see if that helps.  If not, I would open it up and see if any buttons appear to be stuck.

[timu-san]

Dang. I've got an original Famicom and an AV. I've tried it on both, so I know it isn't the system, or the port. After mashing the GRPH and Shift buttons, only things I seem to get are that F1 now gives a ?. I feel ripped off.

[timu-san]

So if I were to take this thing apart, what would I need to look out for?

[ericj]

Have you checked the connector, both on the keyboard and on the Famicom? The connector on my famiclone had cold solder joints on the board, so any controller plugged into it wouldn't work correctly. After re-flowing the solder, it now works perfectly.

[UglyJoe]

So if I were to take this thing apart, what would I need to look out for?

Take a look at the workings of the regular keys versus the GRPH, Shift, and Kana keys.  See if anything seems different about them (whether they're stuck down or are exceedingly dirty, etc).

[timu-san]

Have you checked the connector, both on the keyboard and on the Famicom? The connector on my famiclone had cold solder joints on the board, so any controller plugged into it wouldn't work correctly. After re-flowing the solder, it now works perfectly.

How do you mean? I'm a little confused of the terminology, but could you throw it to me in layman's terms?

[timu-san]

If anyone could please point me in the right direction, as far as taking the thing apart. I don't want to potentinally screw it up. Anyone have any pics of what I should be doing?

[Hamburglar]

Any links to sites that discuss Basic programming specifically on the Famicom?
Specifically  interested in the Play command.
And if anyone has a good link to a scan of the first Family Basic manual that would be greatly appreciated. Found a couple dead links on the forums.

[UglyJoe]

Any links to sites that discuss Basic programming specifically on the Famicom?

No, there really aren't.  There's this Japanese page: http://page.freett.com/familybasic/index.html, but that's really the best I've found.

Specifically  interested in the Play command.

I can scan and upload the reference page for the PLAY command.  It's in Japanese, natch, but it'll still give you a pretty good idea of how to use it.

And if anyone has a good link to a scan of the first Family Basic manual that would be greatly appreciated. Found a couple dead links on the forums.

We've never had a link to the full first manual here (the second manual, yes, but that one is only supplemental to the first one).  The scans would look really bad unless you pulled all of the pages from the spine.  I might do it if I ever come across a cheap second copy of the manual, but I've never found the manual apart from the cart and keyboard.

[Hamburglar]

Thanks UglyJoe, I would greatly appreciate if you could scan that page, currently looking for a real physical manual.

If anyone is interested, there are some sections of the manual that someone translated available here;

http://taylor.veltrop.com/software.php#familybasic

I found that site through Google, haven't seen it posted on the boards in the various Family Basic threads I found.