RockNES

v3.1.3 (June 20th, 2004)

http://www.bannister.org/software/

This document contains information specific to RockNES. For

general information about emulators and the program interface,
please see the "About the Shell" document.

What is it?

RockNES is a Nintendo NES emulator for Macintosh.

If you have an 800MHz G4 or faster, I strongly recommend using Nestopia as

a superior alternative to this emulator. It may be downloaded from
http://www.bannister.org/software/.

RockNES supports the following features:

- CPU 2A03 emulation (6502 variant);

- PPU 2C02 using a line-based render (~113.667 cycles/scanline);
- Full I/O, except the expansion port capabilities;
- Full sound (5 channels: 2 pulses, triangle, noise and DMC);
- Konami's VRCVI sound output;
- PPU color emphasis and monochrome mode ($2001 reg);
- Famicom DiskSystem and VS Unisystem devices (both partially); To
play games, you need the .FDS format and the BIOS (file 'disksys.rom'
in the same directory as RockNES). Find this by yourself (do not
request it).
- Backed battery save/load;
- Sprite #0 hits, supposely accurate;
- Supported mappers 0,1,2,3,4,5,7,9,10,11,13,15,16,18,19,20,21,22,23,

24,25,26,32,33,34,40,41,42,43,44,57,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,75,
76,78,79,83,85,88,90,91,92,94,97,99,100,101,110,113,117,118,119,151,

160,180,184,187,189,225,226,227,228,229,230,231,232,233,234,235,240
,
243,246 and 255, most of them are complete.
A note on Mappers

Quick Info

For optimum results with RockNES, it's a good idea to run your ROMs
through ROM Organizer, available from
http://www.bannister.org/software/.

More Detailed Explanation

(The following is taken from the PC documentation for RockNES).

A NES Mapper is a function that handles CPU reads/writes from/to a

specific memory region. In other words, the 'emulation' of a special
chip (as known as MMC = multi-memory-controller) and everything to
suit the internal cartridge/board architecture. It does extra functions
to suit the game, such as video ROM switching (the character data,
graphics), PRG pages (data which should be a game music, stage data
or own 6502 program), IRQs (mostly to display scores, like Super Mario
Bros. 3 score, or some cool raster effects, such as Rockman 6 title
screen), extra sound channels (such as Akumajou Densetsu, the
japanese CastleVania 3) and more. When a game uses a mapper
(notice that Super Mario Bros. or any other single game DOES NOT
USE), the CPU writes to some memory areas, mostly to $8000-$FFFF.
Each address does something, or a range by itself. You *must* to
emulate these chips to get these games working. There are not much
docs avaliable, and with no information, no way to do your pretty game
get working in an emulator. We write functions to emulate a mapper,
which has an identification, such as a number, chip ID, board etc. when
some info comes up floating.

(The following has been added by Blackjax).

The mappers used for this emulator and the mappers used for iNES
and Graybox for Macintosh are different in many cases. While these
mapper systems have been worked around for certain games in the
past, RockNES supports a wider range of mappers (some 80 of them at
present), and thus this is no longer necessary. If you are having
problems with mappers, you should refer to a detailed guide on the
subject, for example the one written by LogicBox. Bear in mind that
when mapper settings are corrected however, the games may not work
correctly any more on other emulators.

Known Bugs

There is an issue with the current version of RockNES that causes

occasional difficulties with saved states. Things are far better now
than they were with the last Mac release, however there are still
occasional cases where saved states will not work reliably. Do not
mail me about this problem; I am aware of it.

In addition, Game Genie support is currently non-functional. This is a

bug in the RockNES core which should be fixed in a future release.

Version History

v3.1.3 - June 20th, 2004

- v3.1.2 inadvertently broke FDS support entirely. Fixed.

v3.1.2 - June 19th, 2004

- Ported to Mach-O environment.

- Updated to shell version 1.5. See "About the Shell" for changes.

v3.1.1 - February 2nd, 2004

- Now in sync (finally) with the latest version for DOS.

v2.5.1 - December 25th, 2003

- Updated to shell version 1.4.1. See "About the shell" document for
changes.

v2.5.0 - October 12th, 2003

- Ported to new emulator shell. Too many changes to list.

(previous version history snipped)