The enormous, daunting original NWC 1990 PCB
Continued from the front page...
What is Brian Parker's motivation for his constant innovation, up to and including the impending release of the Nintendo World Championship 1990 repro cartridge? "Because I can
I love doing hardware projects and the NES is perfect because I can understand all levels of it. For this project my gold cart was very popular with my friends so they also wanted their own without paying thousands. Instead of just a repro I like making complete games so it had to have real plastics, original label, and manual."
The development time for this cartridge was remarkably brief, "Development of the standalone board started mid March...A lot of hardware development time is just waiting to get PCBs." Brian's initial development time for the NWC repro cartridge was a brief two days before he had finalized and ordered the prototype PCB (Printed Circuit Board). Only a few weeks later, he was able put his order in for the finalized 'guts' of the cartridge, which arrived April 20th. In the meantime, he's been busy soldering chips, printing labels and manuals, and molding cases for the games.
A picture of the earlier prototype NWC repro board
"None of my products will ever use donor carts or boards," reflects Brian. "People seem to be content with just rewiring old boards for repros and homebrews. That obviously will not work with the added chips the NWC needs. All my ideas are based on making completely new hardware so no old games are destroyed. With the Ciclones and new cart plastics available the only reason to use old games is lower price at the expensive of lots more labor."
The Ciclone is a chip available at Brian's own "RetroZone:"
http://www.retrousb.com - It was designed by Kevtris, and is named after and emulates the small CIC chip found in every licensed NES game. This is the infamous "lockout" chip, which has recently been reverse engineered from a Tengen CIC chip by the gurus at nesdev.parodius.com, and is used in the upcoming NWC repro so that it operates on your own NES toaster. The simulation of this chip was the object of much controversy in the 80's and 90's as unlicensed game companies tried to bypass Nintendo's proprietary lock on its console, both legally and technologically. Solving this problem was a large step towards the production of this and other NES cartridges, yet other problems stood in the way.
One of the largest obstacles to this project was the unique way in which the original NWC cartridge kept track of memory, specifically the competition time countdown. "There is no modification to the NWC program," says Brian, "The square center [chip] is the reprogrammable CPLD that holds the mapper logic which is mostly the timer." In short, he's condensed the logic of the massive original board down to this new, cost- and size-efficient design.
The final board as it will be released
There are a few noteworthy differences between Brian's repro NWC and the original. "The cart will work on top loader systems where the original might not. It will also work on PAL systems." Because of the lack of the characteristic inset dip-switches, he notes "the time is permanently set to the ~6:21 contest time (longer on PAL systems)." Another important difference is the inclusion of a color game manual, designed by Rob Budrick, which will include exclusive contributions from former World Champion Thor Ackerlund and runner-up Rich Ambler.
For all potential customers, Brian plans to unveil his creation some time this evening (Wesnesday, May 30th 2007) at his website
http://www.RetroUSB.com for immediate sale. "...There is no waiting list, no reservations," he promises. "There will be about 20 available on the first day, then about 25 more when I get more Ciclones. After that I will have to see about getting more boards produced. Each cart is being hand numbered on the label and board." Although no price was available at time of publishing, assuredly that information will be widely known in just a few short hours.
Thanks to Brian Parker for his generous and detailed information about the NWC repro project. This article may not, in portion or in its entirety, be copied, rehosted or quoted without the consent of the author, Dan Langevin (Dangevin@[NOSPAMREMOVE]verizon.net). Information in this article is correct to the knowledge of the author as of 5/30/07.
NintendoAGE users please feel free to discuss this article in this thread!
Proud replier of post #1000 in the infamous Joel thread 
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