NES and Famicom support for the One-Chip-MSX!

Is it possible to release convertors for the standard One-Chip-MSX cartridge slot? With these convertors, one could also insert other cartridges such as NESgames.....Very interesting, all this!!!!

Perhaps it's possible to make an USB NES GameReader for OneChipMSX...

BTW, I should point out that I am not affiliated with Kevin Horton or his FPGA NES in any way, except that I am a fan/follower of the project, eager to see it completed because I hate inaccurate software NES emulators. I think Kevin is on vacation for a few weeks, so I haven't gotten his take on the 1C-MSX and whether or not he thinks it would be easy to port his FGPA NES to the 1C-MSX. So, could anybody that is affiliated with the One-Chip-MSX or anybody that knows enough about the One-Chip-MSX tell me what they think about compatibility between the two FPGA platforms? Also, any details on developing new FPGA cores for the One-Chip-MSX would also be appreciated. I want to make sure that Kevin has all of the necessary info when he gets back from vacation.

For more info on the FPGA NES aka FPGA Console aka Kevtendo, check out these other forum threads (free registration required for the second link):
Thread at CherryROMs Forum
Thread at NESWorld (free registration required)

If you are really interested, you can poke around the files in Kevin's incoming directory on his web server:
Incoming Files
There are many screenshots of games running on the FPGA NES, reverse engineered circuits, and prototype hardware. You can't direct link to files in the incoming directory because the server prevents it, but you can indirectly see the files by browsing the incoming directory from the above link. Check out "mmc1a.png", "mmc1b.png", and "mmc1c.png" for screenshots of the circuit diagrams for just one type of game cart. That alone should give you an appreciation for the complexity and detail involved in a pixel-perfect recreation of the NES/Famicom.

The FPGA NES wasn't designed to have a cart port. However it was designed to support all other NES and Famicom peripherials that plug into the system's other ports. To compensate, it recreates the circuit of every cart, mapper, and coprocessor, so that game ROMs can be loaded from SD flash cards. Just check out the hardware page for the FPGA NES and see what it has... it should all look very similar to the 1C-MSX. A USB cart reader wouldn't be fast enough to actually directly interface with the game cart, but instead could be used for dumping the game's ROM into memory.

Now the 1C-MSX does have a bunch of pins that connect directly to the FPGA, so a daughterboard addon could be made that allows for a real NES/Famicom cart slot, but then again, how many pins are in an MSX cart slot? It might be possible to make an adapter that lets Famicom and NES carts plug into one of the MSX cart slots. In fact, if one MSX cart slot does not have enough pins, then an adapter could be made that simply uses two MSX cart slots at a time, i.e., it converts one Famicom slot into two MSX slots.

The important aspect of the FPGA NES is that Kevin has spent a year recreating not just the NES/Famicom's circuitry, but also the circuitry of every cart, mapper, and coprocessor. What allot of people don't realize is that the NES/Famicom is not like other consoles. There are hundreds of variations in cartridge circuit boards, with many different mappers and coprocessors used on these different circuit boards. So properly recreating a NES/Famicom that can play any game off of SD flash requires not just recreating the NES/Famicom circuit, but also recreating every cart circuit too. What is just as important is accurately recreating the circuits. The reason every software based NES emulator has inaccuracies or imcompatibilities with some games is because they are not properly emulating all of the NES cartridge circuits. Kevin has reverse engineered each cartridge type (see his table "MaprMatrix" of the 100+ cart types), and instead of recreating them all in VHDL, he has instead recreated them using the lower-level and more accurate circuit diagrams into which VHDL compiles.

So the FPGA NES will, without a doubt, be the ultimate rebirth of the NES. Hooking it up to a TV alongside a real NES and comparing the two, nobody will be able to tell the difference between the real thing and the FPGA recreation!

The FPGA NES is a very high-quality project and porting it to ASCII's 1C-MSX would help sell thousands of more 1C-MSX systems due to the popularity of the NES/Famicom. Hence it would be worthwhile for those affiliated with the 1C-MSX to help me convince Kevin to port the FPGA NES to the 1C-MSX. So much work has been completed on the FPGA NES that it supports more games than any software based NES emulator. Announcing that the 1C-MSX also supports the NES/Famicom could instantly add another couple thousand pre-orders :)

I completely agree, Jagasian. The OCM needs to sell 5000 within a month from now, sales aren't up there yet and exploiting the fact a NES can easily be emulated in the FPGA will without a doubt boost sales to the necessary level. It's upto ASCII and Bazix to realize this and use it in their marketing strategy.

Therefor the product itself perhaps shouldn't be referring to either NES or MSX, but just to something in general. Marketing wise. Ah well, whatever