Rumblestation Mark 1

Rumblestation Front

Rumblestation Back

Back of PCB

Front of PCB

Rumblestation in Sorry Shape :-)

What Is It?

A legit (I think) "Pirate" unit that has 15 Colourdreams games built in along with an NES. I bought it from JC Penny's web site awhile back, brand new in the box. Came with an AC adaptor, A/V cables, and an RF cable.

The Games:

Baby Boomer
Captain Comic
Challenge of the Dragon
Crystal Mines
Galactic Crusader
King Neptune's Adventure
Master Chu (and the Drunkard Hu)
Menace Beach
Moon Ranger
Operation Secret Storm
Pester Minator (Pesterminator)
Raid 2020
Robodemons
Secret Scout
The Pradikus Conflict

The Tech:

Pretty Vanilla mapper, actually. It is made out of surface mount TTL chips :-). An LS377 is used as the banking register, along with two LS161's and a an LS20. The two ROMs are surface mounted gloptops, on little carrier boards. I carefully desoldered them, attached wires, and plugged the whole mess into a socketed NES cart which I then used CopyNES to read. My EPROM programmer was too fast, so I was losing data. Believe it or not, the "V" and "P" were written on the carrier boards before I opened it! I wrote "V" and "P" on the main board myself however so I knew which one to put where. Note too the modulator inside the battery compartment! This is why I noted above that it came with an AC adaptor.

I have assigned this mapper #46 (that's 46 decimal)


The games:

Baby Boomer
Captain Comic
Challenge of the Dragon
Crystal Mines
Galactic Crusader
King Neptune's Adventure
Master Chu (Note: renamed from "Master Chu and Drunkard Hu" due to name)
Menace Beach
Pester Mator (Note: renamed from "Pesterminator" due to licensing)
Raid 2020
Robodemons
Secret Scout
The Pradikus Conflict
Moon Ranger
Operation Secret Storm

The renaming of the two titles is interesting.  Of course, the actual games
are not hacked to change the names, and the names were changed on the box
so they wouldn't "draw suspicion"


What is it:

The Gamestation (or is that Rumblestation?) is a clear blue hand-held Thing
in the shape of a Dreamcast controller.  In fact, it appears they just used
the shell from a Dreamcast controller and plopped an NES on a Chip(tm) and
integral multicart into it.  The RF modulator is inside the battery
compartment!

Unlike most of the "NES in a controller" dealies, this one is actually legal
and is loaded with 15 of the hottest Colordreams games. :-)  Also, unlike
most of the others, it is cheap.  A mere $25 at your local JC Penny's store.

There seems to be some confusion as to what to call it- the box is marked
"Gamestation" while the unit and the menu are marked "Rumble Station".  The
unit is of course NTSC, and has handy A/V jacks out the back along with the
RF modulator situated in the battery compartment.  It also has a very odd
"feature" on it that I can't figure out.  Since it is the body of a Dreamcast
controller, it has a place for a "rumble motor" in it.  The motor is mounted,
and every time you hit the A or B button, the motor runs, causing the whole
works to vibrate!  Not soon after I took it out of the box, it came apart and
I cut the damn wire to the motor!!

--------------------------

The guts:

Internally, there are 2 circuit boards; one board has the pads for all the
buttons and the 7805 5V regulator; while the other board is the actual NES
gut.  On the NES gut, there is a glop-topped NES on a Chip(tm) mounted to
the board, 4 TTL chips (LS377, LS161*2, LS20), and 2 glop-topped ROMs on
little carrier boards which are surface-mounted.

I had *fun* reading those damn ROMs in there too.  Used a hot-air gun to
desolder them from the board; attached some split up ribbon cable to the
"pins" which was attached to a 32 pin DIP plug.  I tried reading them in
the EPROM programmer, but the ROMs were too slow, so I read them 256K at
a time through CopyNES, plugged into a socketed VRC6 board.


--------------------------

How to work it good:


Like the last couple mappers I have RE'd, this one is two cascaded mappers.
Since these are Colordreams games, it has the usual Colordreams mapper for
each game:


Writing anywhere to 08000h-0FFFFh sets the bankswitch register.


7  bit 0
--------
xCCCxxxP


The "C" bits select an 8K CHR ROM page, and the "P" bits select a 32K PRG ROM
page.  Each game has 64K of CHR ROM space and 64K of PRG ROM space. "x" bits
are not used and can be ignored.  The value of this register at powerup is
random.  Also, the ROM is not disabled during writes so there can be bus
conflicts.


---------

In conjunction with the above mapper, there is a "game select" register which
selects which 64K PRG / 64K CHR bank that the NES will "see".

You access this by writing to 06000h-07FFFh.  Since nothing is mapped here,
there are no bus conflicts.

7  bit 0
--------
AAAABBBB

The "A" bits control which 64K CHR ROM page is in use, and the "B" bits
control which 64K PRG ROM page is in use.  There are a total of 16 64K/64K
blocks for a total ROM size of 1Mbyte PRG and 1Mbyte CHR.  Upon powerup
or reset, this register is CLEARED, so the first 64K page of each PRG and
CHR is used (which holds the menu, of course).


---------


Mirroring is fixed and is set to vertical for all games.