Using Modern Nintendo Controllers On The C64

August 23, 2018 by Tom Nardi 12 Comments

There are plenty of people out there who still enjoy playing games on vintage computers like the Commodore 64. But while they likely return to these classic games themselves out of a sense of nostalgia, the feeling doesn’t always extend to the hardware itself. For example, one can enjoy playing Impossible Mission without having to use a contemporary C64 joystick.

Thanks to an open source project developed by [Robert Grasböck], C64 owners who want to take advantage of the improvements made to gaming controllers in the nearly 40 years since the system’s release now have another option. Called Nunchuk64, it allows you to use various Nintendo controllers which make use of the Wii “Nunchuk” interface on original C64 hardware. This includes the controllers from the recent “Classic Edition” NES and SNES systems, which offer a decidedly retro feel with all the benefits of modern technology and construction techniques.

Both the hardware and software for Nunchuck64 are open source, and everything you need to build your own version is in the project’s repository. [Robert] even has assembly instructions, complete with images, which walk you through building your own copy of the hardware and flashing the firmware onto it. This is a nice touch that we very rarely see even in open source projects. The board is populated with a ATmega328P microcontroller and a handful of passive components, making assembly fairly straightforward assuming you are comfortable with SMD work.

Bringing more modern controllers to classic systems seems to be gaining popularity recently, within the last few months we’ve seen Xbox 360 controllers on the Nintendo 64, and newly manufactured pads for the Atari 5200.

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How To Add More Games To The NES Classic

January 10, 2017 by Lewin Day 25 Comments

The hype around the NES Classic in 2016 was huge, and as expected, units are already selling for excessively high prices on eBay. The console shipped with 30 games pre-installed, primarily first-party releases from Nintendo. But worry not — there’s now a way to add more games to your NES Classic!

Like many a good hack, this one spawned from a forum community. [madmonkey] posted on GBX.ru about their attempts to load extra games into the console. The first step is using the FEL subroutine of the Allwinner SOC’s boot ROM to dump the unit’s flash memory. From there, it’s a matter of using custom tools to inject extra game ROMs before reburning the modified image to the console. The original tool used, named hakchi, requires a Super Mario savegame placed into a particular slot to work properly, though new versions have already surfaced eliminating this requirement.

While this is only a software modification, it does come with several risks. In addition to bricking your console, virus scanners are reporting the tools as potentially dangerous. There is confusion in the community as to whether these are false positives or not. As with anything you find lurking on a forum, your mileage may vary. But if you just have to beat Battletoads for the umpteenth time, load up a VM for the install process and have at it. This Reddit thread (an expansion from the original pastebin instructions) acts as a good starting point for the brave.

Only months after release, the NES Classic is already a fertile breeding ground for hacks — last year we reported on this controller mod and how to install Linux. Video of this ROM injection hack after the break.

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Hackaday Links: The 2017 One

January 1, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

You screwed everything up last night. The end of 2016 had a leap second, so instead of the seconds going up from 57, 58, 59… 00, there was a 61st second in the last minute of the year. Yeah, 2016 just wouldn’t quit. [Michel] built a device to keep track of 2016’s leap second using GPS, and everything worked beautifully.

Remember MechWarrior? There’s a reason those mid-90s games used mechs instead of more organic characters. Computers couldn’t draw that many polygons, making MechWarrior a stylistic choice driven by the limitations of technology. Here’s a real MechWarrior that could rip your head off without trying.

The Hackaday Retro Edition is a Web 1.0 version of our main blog, and a challenge to retrocomputing enthusiasts. [PK] recently got his Psion Series 3a surfing the interwebs with a little help from PPP and a Raspberry Pi. He also got a Psion Series 7 online using the same method, but that was a little more anti-climatic.

The NES Classic Edition costs too much, the cords are too short, and you can’t play anything but the pre-installed games. There’s a solution to this: [Andrew] has been working on the Beagle Entertainment System for a while now, and it’s ready for a proper release. The BES uses the SNES9X, VBA-M, and Nestopia emulators, with the original ROMs, and has a ‘shield’ for SNES gamepads. You can’t do better than this, and it’s cheaper than the NES Classic Edition.

Vacuum pens, or vacuum pickup tools, or whatever you want to call them, are really useful when working with SMD parts. You can build your own out of an aquarium pump, duct tape, a lighter, paperclip, and a mechanical pencil, but that lacks the elegance of a footswitch-operated, solenoid valve pickup tool. [Dave] built a great version of a vacuum pickup tool from scratch for less than $200. There’s NTP fittings on here, so you know it has to be great.

Terrible news! I’m in Vegas next week for CES. While I’ll be spending most of my time figuring out ‘which internet of things is best internet of things’, I might have some time for a Hackaday CES meetup.

The best idea I have for a Hackaday CES meetup is the Fun Dungeon in the Trashy Castle. It has Skee Ball and Crazy Taxi. If you have a better idea of where Hackaday fans and aficionados can meet up for an hour or two, leave a note in the comments below.

NES Classic Edition – Controller Mod

December 29, 2016 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

The Nintendo Classic Mini took the world by storm this year — finally, an NES in a cute, tiny package that isn’t 3D printed and running off a Raspberry Pi! It’s resoundingly popular and the nostalgic set are loving it. But what do you do when you’re two hours deep into a hardcore Metroid session and you realize you need to reboot and reload. Get off the couch? Never!

[gyromatical] had already bought an Emio Edge gamepad for his NES Mini. A little poking around inside revealed some unused pads on the PCB. Further investigation revealed that one pad can be used to wire up a reset button, and two others can be used to create a home switch. Combine this with the turbo features already present on the Emio Edge, and you’ve got a pretty solid upgrade over the stock NES Mini pad. Oftentimes, there’s extra functionality lurking inside products that manufacturers have left inactive for the sake of saving a few dollars on switches & connectors. It’s always worth taking a look inside.

Now, back in 2006, the coolest hack was running Linux on everything — and somebody’s already trying to get Linux on the NES Mini.

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Linux On Your NES Classic Edition

November 13, 2016 by Jenny List 53 Comments

Nintendo look as though they may have something of a hit on their hands with their latest console offering. It’s not the next in the line of high-end consoles with immersive VR or silicon that wouldn’t have looked out of place in last year’s supercomputer, instead it’s an homage to one of their past greats. The NES Classic Edition is a reboot of the 1980s console with the familiar styling albeit a bit smaller, and 30 of the best NES games included.

You do not, however, get an original NES with a 6502 derived processor, and a stack of game cartridges. In the Classic Edition is a modern emulator, running on very modern hardware. We’re told it contains an Allwinner R16 quad-core Cortex A7 SoC, 256Mb of RAM, and 512Mb of Flash. That’s a capable system, and unsurprisingly any hacking potential it may have has attracted some interest. Reddit user [freenesclassic] for example has been investigating its potential as a Linux machine, and has put up a post showing the progress so far. It is known that there is already some form of Linux underpinning the console because Nintendo have released a set of sources as part of their compliance with the terms of the relevant open-source licences. That and the availability of a serial port via pads on the PCB gives hope that a more open distro can be installed on it.

We’re taken through the process of starting the machine up with the serial port connected to a PC, and getting it into the Allwinner FEL mode for low-level flashing work. Then we’re shown the process of loading a custom U-Boot, from which in theory a kernel of your choice can be loaded.

Of course, it’s not quite that simple. There is still some way to go before the device’s Flash can be accessed so for now, all that is possible is to use the RAM, and the current state of play has a kernel panic as it is unable to mount a filesystem. However this is a new piece of hardware in its first few days after launch, so this is very much a work in progress. We are sure that this device will in time be opened up as a fully hackable piece of hardware, and we look forward to covering the interesting things people do with it when that has happened.

If you are interested in the NES Classic, take a look at it on Nintendo’s web site. Meanwhile, here at Hackaday as a quick look at our past stories tagged “nes” shows, we’ve covered a huge number of projects involving the platform in the past.

Thanks [Doc Oct] for the tip.

Original NES console header image: Evan-Amos [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.