At 21:24 7/5/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Another idea would be the Nomad, but from the FAQ it appears as if the
> Power Base Converter won't work with it, and since the PBC operats similar
> to the old style 2600 adapters where A/V is routed through the cart port,
> then I think the Nomad excluded these lines.
<snip, watch attribution of above; I didn't get original post>
This is the farthest thing from the truth on how the PBC works. If you
open up a PBC you will see that it is nothing more than a pins-converter
with a small bankswitching chip on it. The Genny is actually reconfigured
to act as a SMS! The Z80 used for sound is pressed into service (along
with its 8K of RAM) to act as the "emulated" SMS' Z80 and RAM, and the
graphics chip is put into emulation mode. So the Genny is really 95%
backwards compatible with the SMS... the 5% remaining is the need for the
bankswitch chip (it is only 20 pins). In fact, some pirate Genny carts run
in SMS mode.
For what it's worth, I sawed the end off of a PBC trying to get it to work
with my Nomad (the two physically don't fit stock) and ended up with, yep, a
pile of stinky sawed plastic and a crummy looking PBC that later found the
trash. :^( So here's first hand experience that it didn't work in the
Nomad.
The PBC does not work in the Nomad since a couple of the lines from the
chips to the board edge are missing. (And you would've been better off
removing the PBC's guts from the plastic case then trying it :-)
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