Hah ok, you found it. I checked a few and found epoxy chips only. I guess that settles it then. =)
The chips works because the famicom has audio signals routed to the cart port; these are missing on the NES so it is not possible to design PCBs with extra sound. The PowerPak can do it only because of the extra resistor that must be installed.
If you're writing an emulator, you often don't have to care which mapper is which if they're compatible. If you implement all the 163 features, it will probably run any 106 ROM just fine. I would presume this is the original cause of confusion here.
If you're writing an NSF player, you don't care about anything but the sound hardware; because NSF is a custom mapper of its own.
I looked it up. The pin PowerPak outputs audio on is missing on a top-loader, but you can reroute it through another pin. Here's an nesdev post about it:
Would it be possible to make some kind of PCB designed for the NES that actually worked on a NES with extra sound? If it's possible would it be different compared to using the PowerPak (I don't know if N163 is supported on the PowerPak)?
IIRC, the pins that handled the extra audio chips on the famicom were moved from the cart slot to the ext port on the bottom of the NES. I saw a video somewhere of someone successfully hacking in VRC6 or something into a frontloader.
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If anything, moving the VRC6 bus lines to the expansion port makes life much easier for hardware hackers. I mean; the toaster NES has most of its critical components localized into specific areas of the main board that are easy to trace, plus the main board's components aren't as compacted & condensed as in a top-loader or a Famicom.
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Just out of curiosity, for those of us who don't have the beta and don't know mml, has anyone tried using chip32 vst as a way to make songs using the n163? I found this to be pretty accurate. The only down side to using this is that you don't have authentic NES limitations like volume, vibrato.
Honestly, I'm usually pretty patient, but I'm too excited for the release and I was wondering if there was any news on what's happening?
I had been told multiple times that it was being released "today or tomorow" over the past couple months, but I still haven't seen any sign of it, so I was wondering if some major problem came up or something?
Sorry to be impatient but the silence is killing me xD.
EDIT: Oh wow... so I've been looking in the wrong forum this whole time and it's already been released... Hahah... woops... That explains the silence I guess, lol.
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