Best "power pase converter"-like accessory?

[Mario Bros.]

This is just a dumb little poll I thought might create some interesting discussion. Come to think of it, I've never actually bought one of these but (I will soon and) I've wanted a Super 8 for a long time, and I noticed a flood of these along with the Tristar 64 being sold new in box on eBay all of a sudden (seller has 10+ available?!) But I don't have the cash right now and my SNES is dead. I remember reading about the Super 8 in like 2002 and it was burned into my brain as being less of a clone and more of an adapter (but it's still a NOAC from what I've read). I also may be picking up a Power Base Converter but I would like to hear what others think of these before buying any. What are your opinions? Are these all worthless clones or are some worth buying?

[The_Laird]

Easily the Master System on the Megadrive IMO

[Austin]

I still want to try a Super 8. I wonder how the NES compatibility is on it.. It would certainly be better using that than a NES/SNES clone combo--At least you know the SNES stuff will work fine, all the time, haha.

 

I also may be picking up a Power Base Converter but I would like to hear what others think of these before buying any. What are your opinions? Are these all worthless clones or are some worth buying?

 

The Power Base Converter is basically just a pass-through device. The tech required to run SMS games is already in the Genesis/Mega Drive. The quality of the games on a PBC is identical to playing them on a real SMS (Minus a game or two that doesn't work). I'm not sure about the FM capability through it though.

[jeremysart]

I still want to try a Super 8. I wonder how the NES compatibility is on it.. It would certainly be better using that than a NES/SNES clone combo--At least you know the SNES stuff will work fine, all the time, haha.

 

The NES games work pretty well on the Super 8.

 

The cool thing about it, is that you can play NES, Famicom, SNES, and Super Famicom games with it.

There are some Famicom games however that do not emulate perfectly on it, and sometimes suffers from lines scrolling down the screen or discoloration.

[Mario Bros.]

The Power Base Converter is basically just a pass-through device. The tech required to run SMS games is already in the Genesis/Mega Drive. The quality of the games on a PBC is identical to playing them on a real SMS (Minus a game or two that doesn't work). I'm not sure about the FM capability through it though.

 

When I said "worthless clones" I was more referring to the NOACS and SNOACs etc; I hear the SEGA PBC is very accurate.

 

Does anybody know, how does the Super 8 handle the FDS and Famicom audio? I hear it can run an FDS, but how well? Any known incompatibilities?

[Tr3vor]

I think that playing NES and SNES on the n64 sounds pretty cool

 

I don't know about the performance of any of those so I put they all suck

 

 

[Mario Bros.]

I don't know about the performance of any of those so I put they all suck

 

poll edited. I should have put that as an option to begin with

Edited October 1, 2010 by Mario Bros.

[BydoEmpire]

Playing 2600 games on the Inty was the coolest - it's the best of both worlds from two rivals. It'd be like an NES adapter for your Master System. The CV adapter certainly does that, too, although I always liked the Inty more than the CV so I had to vote for that. As for which is "most accurate" I have no idea.

[jeremysart]

The Power Base Converter is basically just a pass-through device. The tech required to run SMS games is already in the Genesis/Mega Drive. The quality of the games on a PBC is identical to playing them on a real SMS (Minus a game or two that doesn't work). I'm not sure about the FM capability through it though.

 

When I said "worthless clones" I was more referring to the NOACS and SNOACs etc; I hear the SEGA PBC is very accurate.

 

Does anybody know, how does the Super 8 handle the FDS and Famicom audio? I hear it can run an FDS, but how well? Any known incompatibilities?

 

You can indeed use the Famicom Disk System on the Super8, I have done it. Also, for FDS and regular FC games, the sounds is accurate. I played all the way through the Japanese SMB3 with no problems.. and if the sound was off in even the slightest I definitely would have noticed.

[Mario Bros.]

That's cool, but it says on Wikipedia and youtube that battletoads doesn't work? So what about say,

 

Castlevania 3

 

Earthbound Zero Repro,

 

Somari Repro? (Does it show the ending with Robotnik juggling chaos emeralds? )

[CRTGAMER]

Voted the 5200 - 2600 adaptor. Maybe low vote due to rarity?

Very accurate considering its a 2600 powered thru the 5200 slot.

In all honesty the 7800 console a lot more convenient.

 

Now the very rare 7800 adaptor plugged into the 5200 with a 2600 adaptor on top.

[Austin]

That's cool, but it says on Wikipedia and youtube that battletoads doesn't work? So what about say,

 

Castlevania 3

 

Earthbound Zero Repro,

 

Somari Repro? (Does it show the ending with Robotnik juggling chaos emeralds? )

 

If it's using a NOAC then that would make sense (hence those same games don't work on the more modern clone systems).

[TheGameCollector]

Wow, not only are there more than 10 Super 8 converters on ebay, but there's more than 10 available by 2 different sellers. So that makes over 20. But all of them are quite expensive. It's a little bit cheaper just to buy a clone system. I wonder if it is a new discovery that someone found or if it just means that it could be back in production due to the rising amount clones purchased showing how popular NES and SNES still are. Generally stuff made by Innovation is really flimsy and doesn't work that well so I would be a bit iffy about paying $80 for one of these. Or the $135 that the only Tristar costs on ebay. The one thing I like about the FC Twin for playing NES is that the controllers it comes with's A and X buttons serve as rapid fire buttons.

[Mario Bros.]

Wow, not only are there more than 10 Super 8 converters on ebay, but there's more than 10 available by 2 different sellers. So that makes over 20. But all of them are quite expensive. It's a little bit cheaper just to buy a clone system. I wonder if it is a new discovery that someone found or if it just means that it could be back in production due to the rising amount clones purchased showing how popular NES and SNES still are. Generally stuff made by Innovation is really flimsy and doesn't work that well so I would be a bit iffy about paying $80 for one of these.

 

Are you including this one?

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 170445452881

 

It's $65 after shipping, $50 without. It doesn't show up on a search for "Super 8" or "Tri-Star", but if there's 10 available does that mean there are 30 on ebay at the moment?

 

Also, I found some faq's

 

http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/snes/peripherals/super8.html (click on the txt file)

 

http://home.freeuk.net/markk/Consoles/Tri-Star_FAQ.txt

 

There's an inconsistency between them, however, as to whether the SNES Game Genie works.

[Ace_1]

My favorite accessory of this sort is without a doubt Sega's Power Base Converter. Although I did run out of patience trying to find the real thing without any luck so I made my own Power Base Converter.

 

And a note on some of those other adapters like the Super 8: if I'm correct, the Super 8 marks the very first time an NOAC was used in an NES clone. I know NOAC technology appeared sometime in the '90s, but I'm not sure which NES clone first used an NOAC. I do believe it's the Super 8, though.

 

Also:

 

When I said "worthless clones" I was more referring to the NOACS and SNOACs etc; I hear the SEGA PBC is very accurate.

 

The Power Base Converter is nothing but a pass-through device to play Sega Master System games on the Genesis, as the Genesis contains all of the Sega Master System's hardware. The only thing preventing Master System games from working on a Genesis is the difference in cartridge shape and connection. And by the way, there exists no such thing as a Super-NES-on-a-Chip. There's only a Super NES 3-chip design, with one chip acting as the CPU, the second as the twin PPUs, and the third as the Sony SPC700 sound processor. That design then needs external SRAM and WRAM and a video encoder to encode the RGB to S-Video and Composite. The Super NES 3-chip design is much better than most NOACs, which completely defies logic as the NES, made with mostly off-the-shelf parts and older than the Super NES, is reproduced less faithfully in a different package than the Super NES, which is mostly made of custom hardware. Wow.

 

As for Master System FM Synthesis on the Genesis, it ain't happening unless you have a Yamaha YM2413 in your Power Base Converter. The YM2612 in the Genesis is a completely different type of FM Synthesis chip than the YM2413. The YM2612 is an OPN chip while the YM2413 is an OPLL chip, and both types are COMPLETELY unrelated. The closest matches to the YM2413 I can think of are its more advanced brothers: the YM3812(OPL2 - I believe the YM2413 was derived from this chip) and the YMF262(OPL3, fully backwards-compatible with OPL2). You can easily find those sound chips on old ISA sound cards. Finding a YM2413 is harder.

 

One last thing:

There are some Famicom games however that do not emulate perfectly on it, and sometimes suffers from lines scrolling down the screen or discoloration.

 

Yet again, I have to get this message through: NOACs ARE NOT EMULATORS!!! Jeez, this is getting annoying; why does everyone think clones are emulators? They're not emulators! If these clones were emulators, they'd use a piece of software running on hardware that's more powerful to simulate an NES, but the NOAC is exactly what it is: an entire NES on a single chip, NOT AN EMULATOR. In that one chip is all the hardware found in the NES. Any sound and video flaws can be blamed on poor reverse-engineering(even full-motherboard NES clones have the same sound inaccuracies as NOACs) and broken compatibility with games like Castlevania III can be blamed on the cloners being too cheap to hook up certain signals to the NES cartridge slot.

[Video]

I'd say the Power base converter wins, as it has absolutely no hardware inside it, just an ic to controll the pause button (if your version even has a pause button) and a retracing of the contacts from the in plug to the out plug. You can't get better than that.

 

Followed very closely to the Gamebboy Player for Gamecube, and the Super Gameboy for SNES. And of course, the various Atari "converters" As they were all systems internally that just used the system they attached to as a leach for power, video passthrough, and maybe controllers.

 

Tristar 64 was definitely cool, but a bit buggy, but then, so were all the various "NOAC" devices. I didn't hear about the super 8 until a long time later.

[kool kitty89]

The Power Base Converter is basically just a pass-through device. The tech required to run SMS games is already in the Genesis/Mega Drive. The quality of the games on a PBC is identical to playing them on a real SMS (Minus a game or two that doesn't work). I'm not sure about the FM capability through it though.

No FM compatibility, though it should be technically possible to modify a PBC to add it... they added a YM2413 to one of the Genesis flash carts. (I forget which one(s) though)

 

And really, most/all of those cloned hardware options are just as good as the official hardware just as the Genesis's cloned SMS components.

They're all real hardware just like nearly ever aftermarket clone/pirate system ever made until very recently. (a few emulation based Genesis clones on the market)

 

The issue in a few cases is imperfect cloning with some compatibility issue or the pulse duty cycle issue with some NOACs having off sound. The rest is due to bad external components (audio amps, video encoders, etc) screwing stuff up. The modern Genesis clones with crap sound are only like that due to poor amps, not flawed chipsets (aside from the emulated Atgames stuff), and that's the exact same thing that happened to many real Genesis models back in the day save for the fact that it wasn't THAT bad, though TECTOY's MDs tend to be pretty bad if not identical to the Radica/GenX/GNTwin/etc sound. (many early 90s genesis clones are great though, some actually better than Sega systems in some respects -particularly in overclocking tolerance- and Yobo got the sound and video and general software compatibility pretty much right with the FC3... now we just need a more Sega specific clone, especially a counterpart to the FC16GO)

 

Voted the 5200 - 2600 adaptor. Maybe low vote due to rarity?

Very accurate considering its a 2600 powered thru the 5200 slot.

In all honesty the 7800 console a lot more convenient.

 

Now the very rare 7800 adaptor plugged into the 5200 with a 2600 adaptor on top.

No need, the 7800 is natively backwards compatible, so the 7800 adapter would serve both purposes. (save the lack of difficulty switches)

Edited October 2, 2010 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

When I said "worthless clones" I was more referring to the NOACS and SNOACs etc; I hear the SEGA PBC is very accurate.

 

The Power Base Converter is nothing but a pass-through device to play Sega Master System games on the Genesis, as the Genesis contains all of the Sega Master System's hardware. The only thing preventing Master System games from working on a Genesis is the difference in cartridge shape and connection. And by the way, there exists no such thing as a Super-NES-on-a-Chip. There's only a Super NES 3-chip design, with one chip acting as the CPU, the second as the twin PPUs, and the third as the Sony SPC700 sound processor. That design then needs external SRAM and WRAM and a video encoder to encode the RGB to S-Video and Composite. The Super NES 3-chip design is much better than most NOACs, which completely defies logic as the NES, made with mostly off-the-shelf parts and older than the Super NES, is reproduced less faithfully in a different package than the Super NES, which is mostly made of custom hardware. Wow.

Yeah, I do wonder why Sega didn't use the SMS cart connector and allow native support: I initially thought it was to save cost on the cart connectors as Genesis carts would have to have outboard pins standard like the 7800 or enhanced SNES carts: but then I realized that all the necessary pins for normal games would fit within the SMS's 50 pins and the outboard connections could be purely for expansion and thus possibly even SAVE money on genesis carts due to the smaller connector. (albeit I'm not sure they could have done that for the JP MD as 44 pins would cut ir really close... maybe just make a passthrough adapter for JP only, the SMS was pretty weak there anyway so the 50 pin version in the west would be more significant)

 

As for the NES: it was not off the shelf at all: the entire chipset was custom: custom 6502 derivative from Ricoh integrating sound, I/O, DMA, and some other hardware (so about as custom as the SNES's CPU ASIC), then the custom Nintendo PPU, and that's the main chipset. So saying the NES is off the shelf is like saying the Atari 400/800/5200 or 7800 is off the shelf.

 

However, given the amount of historical hardware clones of the SNES vs SNES, that's a good point about odd quality of modern clones: though the same is true for the MD/Genesis compared to clones in the early/mid 90s. (both in compatibility and features -some having built-in region switches)

 

As for Master System FM Synthesis on the Genesis, it ain't happening unless you have a Yamaha YM2413 in your Power Base Converter. The YM2612 in the Genesis is a completely different type of FM Synthesis chip than the YM2413. The YM2612 is an OPN chip while the YM2413 is an OPLL chip, and both types are COMPLETELY unrelated. The closest matches to the YM2413 I can think of are its more advanced brothers: the YM3812(OPL2 - I believe the YM2413 was derived from this chip) and the YMF262(OPL3, fully backwards-compatible with OPL2). You can easily find those sound chips on old ISA sound cards. Finding a YM2413 is harder.

Yes, no compatibility without an added YM2413. The OPLL is indeed a direct derivative of the OPL2 (not OPL), being a cut-down version with only 1 user programmable sound at a time along with 15 presets, so an OPL2 should be able to be configured for OPLL compatibility. Of course, the OPL2 isn't nearly as good as the YM2612 (2-op FM vs 4-op), so it's a good thing Sega went with that. (OPL3 is more arguably better, but that wasn't even available until later iirc)

 

One last thing:

There are some Famicom games however that do not emulate perfectly on it, and sometimes suffers from lines scrolling down the screen or discoloration.

 

Yet again, I have to get this message through: NOACs ARE NOT EMULATORS!!! Jeez, this is getting annoying; why does everyone think clones are emulators? They're not emulators! If these clones were emulators, they'd use a piece of software running on hardware that's more powerful to simulate an NES, but the NOAC is exactly what it is: an entire NES on a single chip, NOT AN EMULATOR. In that one chip is all the hardware found in the NES. Any sound and video flaws can be blamed on poor reverse-engineering(even full-motherboard NES clones have the same sound inaccuracies as NOACs) and broken compatibility with games like Castlevania III can be blamed on the cloners being too cheap to hook up certain signals to the NES cartridge slot.

Yes, and many of the artifacts seen in the NOAC are actually due to cleaner video signals: namely the vertical lines.

The artifacts are pretty nasty on a real NES unless you have a blurry TV: lots of dot crawl making diagonal scrolling/flickering patterns as well as faint vertical lines.