Disclaimer: Please remember that It is the end user's responsibility to see to and to carry out proper implementation their own repairs and modifications. Ultimately the end users hold responsibility for how they implement their own repairs.
Welcome to the Nintendo NES and Famicom Guide as we try to sort out the mystery of the Family Computer A.K.A. the Famicom and the Nintendo Entertainment System (for now on being refereed to as the NES).
There also many variations and versions made of this console and we are going to try to explore all the differences between each version.
The Famicom console first launched in 1983 in Japan, the Famicom was slow to generate sales and a bad patch of chips caused the original version of the hardware to crash causing Nintendo to do a product recall and replace non-working systems with those with a redesigned mother board. At the same time Nintendo changed the design of the game pad as square buttons often get jammed the buttons where changed to the circle design we are all familiar now.
In the US, the NES revived the video game industry in the United States after The video game crash of 1983. The NES was soft launched in 1985 in New York with little fan fare and by 1987 was extremely popular.
The main hardware of any NES is its CPU a custom Ricoh made MOS 6502 (licensed from Motorola) the Nintendo version of the processor different from the typical 6502 as it has expanded memory I/O mapper and custom audio hardware on the die. It drops the 6502 binary-coded decimal mode. the exact chips are the Ricoh 2A03 1.79 MHz for NTSC regions or the Ricoh 2A07 1.66 MHz for PAL regions (with sound hardware adjusted accordingly). Other notable systems that used 6502 family processors includes Apple II, Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600. The PPU or Picture Processing Unit is a co processor also made by Ricoh, the RP2C02 (NTSC version), RP2C07 (PAL version), RP2C03 (RGB, used in Vs system and PlayChoice 10) and the RC2C05-99 (used only in the Famicom Titler) which expands on the RP2CO2 with RGB capabilities. The NES runs on 2kb RAM and used mappers and mirroring tricks to expand its memory. The NES and Famicom is the successor to the Color TV Game series (with the inspiration for the game pads coming from the Game & Watch series) and the predecessor to Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
Jump Ahead List:
NES/Famicom Models
Mods:
-Video Mods
-Audio Mods
-Other
Repair
Welcome to the Nintendo NES and Famicom Guide as we try to sort out the mystery of the Family Computer A.K.A. the Famicom and the Nintendo Entertainment System (for now on being refereed to as the NES).
There also many variations and versions made of this console and we are going to try to explore all the differences between each version.
The Famicom console first launched in 1983 in Japan, the Famicom was slow to generate sales and a bad patch of chips caused the original version of the hardware to crash causing Nintendo to do a product recall and replace non-working systems with those with a redesigned mother board. At the same time Nintendo changed the design of the game pad as square buttons often get jammed the buttons where changed to the circle design we are all familiar now.
In the US, the NES revived the video game industry in the United States after The video game crash of 1983. The NES was soft launched in 1985 in New York with little fan fare and by 1987 was extremely popular.
The main hardware of any NES is its CPU a custom Ricoh made MOS 6502 (licensed from Motorola) the Nintendo version of the processor different from the typical 6502 as it has expanded memory I/O mapper and custom audio hardware on the die. It drops the 6502 binary-coded decimal mode. the exact chips are the Ricoh 2A03 1.79 MHz for NTSC regions or the Ricoh 2A07 1.66 MHz for PAL regions (with sound hardware adjusted accordingly). Other notable systems that used 6502 family processors includes Apple II, Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600. The PPU or Picture Processing Unit is a co processor also made by Ricoh, the RP2C02 (NTSC version), RP2C07 (PAL version), RP2C03 (RGB, used in Vs system and PlayChoice 10) and the RC2C05-99 (used only in the Famicom Titler) which expands on the RP2CO2 with RGB capabilities. The NES runs on 2kb RAM and used mappers and mirroring tricks to expand its memory. The NES and Famicom is the successor to the Color TV Game series (with the inspiration for the game pads coming from the Game & Watch series) and the predecessor to Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
Jump Ahead List:
NES/Famicom Models
Mods:
-Video Mods
-Audio Mods
-Other
Repair