Click on any picture for a larger view.
HardNES. The first (and only?) Nintendo .NSF player. .NSF files are captured code/data found in Nintendo NES
games which contain the sound and music code, as well as the actual music data. When an .NSF is played back
on an NSF player (be it on your PC or HardNES) the original music from your favourite game can be reproduced.
Since it is the actual code and data from the game, it will sound identical provided the emulation (on your PC) or
the hardware on your player is correct.
Guts
The board in the middle is the actual HardNES board, with the display attached at the top which provides user feedback-
which song is playing (in this case it's Disney's Duck Tales :-), a cool graphic equalizer thingy, and other stuff.
To the right are the two alligator clips supplying 5V DC to run the thing from my power supply (not in view).
On the bottom left is the headphone jack with some headphones plugged in, and above that is the connector leading to the PC
FPGA programming dongle that allows testing of your designs.
On the Board proper we have:
At the top, to the left of the display connector is the FPGA which contains most of the glue logic,
I/O, a 16 bit programmable timer, address decoding, bankswitching, and most other logical goodies.
The chip to the right of that is the 4K EPROM which contains the control code to run the player.
Below the FPGA is the CPU which is a regular old NES CPU chip, removed from an NES.
Next to the CPU is the 128K RAM chip which contains all the RAM used by the control system, and the
emulated ROM space (bankswitched). Other RAM areas such as 0000-1FFF and 6000-7FFF are emulated buy this RAM as well.
In the lower-right corner is the Playstation memory card ("Ice Blue"tm model) in socket next to the 3.3V
regulator made out of an LM317, with a LM393 and 7405 being pressed into service as logic level translators for it.
And finally, in the lower left corner is the audio amplifier and the volume control. Yes, it's in stereo. The button
in the middle below the processor is the reset button.
Well, not much more to say. It plays good and sounds good.
Movies!
Hope you're on a fast connection bub, or willing to wait. Here are two movies of it in operation so you can see how it works. The top two lines
are of the spectrum analyzer thingy, while the 3rd line is the "information" line, and the bottom line shows PCM hits (between the two dots).
Movie #1 Is from Castlevania 2.
Movie #2 Is from Ductales.
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