Doctor V64
Encyclopedia
Game backup device
A game backup device, formerly usually called a copier and more recently a flash cartridge, is a device for backing up ROM information from a video game cartridge to a computer file called a ROM image and playing them back on the real hardware...
made by Bung Enterprises Ltd
Bung Enterprises Ltd
Bung Enterprises Ltd. was an electronics company based in Hong Kong. Its products were controversial backup and development units for videogame consoles, which could allow the user to play a game without owning the original cartridge...
that is used in conjunction with the Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
. The Doctor V64 also had the ability to play Video CD
Video CD
Before the advent of DVD and Blu-ray, the Video CD became the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm optical discs. The format is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc...
s, audio CDs and had an option for applying stereo 3D effects to the audio.
History
The Doctor V64 came out in 1996 and was priced around $450 USD. Many third party developers used the V64 in lieu of the PC64 Development Kit sold by NintendoNintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
; the V64 was considered an attractive, low cost alternative to the expensive N64 development machine, which was manufactured by Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
at the time. The CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
of the V64 is a 6502
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
chip (the CPU from the Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
); the operating system is stored in the BIOS
BIOS
In IBM PC compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS or ROM BIOS , is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface....
chip. It is likely that Bung reused most of the design of their earlier NES clones in the Doctor V64.
The Doctor V64 unit contains a CD-ROM drive which sits underneath the Nintendo 64 and plugs into the expansion slot on the underside of the Nintendo 64. The expansion slot is essentially a mirror image of the cartridge slot on the top of the unit, with the same electrical connections, thus the Nintendo 64 reads data from the Doctor V64 in the same manner as it would from a cartridge plugged into the normal slot.
Using the Doctor V64 involved the solution of two problems: how to boot a game and how to save. In order to get around Nintendo's lockout chip
10NES
The 10NES system is a lock-out system designed for the American version of the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. Various companies found ways to bypass the authorization chip.-Design:...
, when using the Doctor V64 a game cartridge is plugged into the Nintendo 64 through an adaptor which connects only the lockout chip. The game cart used for operation had to contain the same lockout chip used by the game backup. The second problem concerned saving progress. Most N64 games saved to the cart itself instead of external memory cards. If the user wanted to keep his progress then the cartridge used had to have the same type of non-volatile memory hardware.
Following the Doctor V64's success Bung releases the Doctor V64 Jr. in December 1998. This was a cost-efficient condensed version of the original V64. The V64jr had no CD drive and plugged into the normal cartridge slot on the top of the Nintendo 64. Data is loaded into the V64jr's battery-backed RAM from a PC via a parallel port
Parallel port
A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port...
connection. The V64Jr had up to 512 megabits (64 MB) of memory storage. At the time this was done to provide for future Nintendo 64 carts that employed larger memory storage. The prohibitive high costs associated with ordering large storage carts kept this occurrence at a minimum. Only a handful of 512 megabit games were released for the Nintendo 64 system.
During the N64's lifetime, Nintendo made one model revision which made the serial port area smaller. This slight change in the N64's plastic casing made the connection to the Doctor V64 difficult to achieve without user modification. This revision may have been a direct reaction of Nintendo to discourage the use of V64 devices. It also explains why Bung decided to drop the use of this port in the latter V64Jr models.
The Doctor V64 could be used to read the data from a game cartridge and transfer the data to a PC via the parallel port. This allowed developers and homebrew programmers to upload their game images to the Doctor V64 without having to create a CD backup each time. It also allowed users to upload game images taken from the Internet.
Promotions
In 1998 and 1999, there was a homebrew competition known as "Presence of Mind" (POM), an N64 demo competition led by dextrose.com. The contest consisted in submitting a user developed N64 program, game or utility. Bung Enterprises promoted the event and supplied prizes (usually Doctor V64 related accessories). Though a contest was planned for 2000 the interest in the N64 was already fading and so did the event. POM contest demo entries can still be found on the Internet.Legal issues
The Doctor V64 unit was the first commercially available backup device for the Nintendo 64 unit. Though the unit was sold as a development machine it could be modified to enable the creation and use of commercial game backups. Unlike official development units, the purchase of V64s was not restricted to software companies only. For this reason the unit became a popular choice among those looking to pirate games.Original Doctor V64 units sold by Bung did not allow the playing of backups. A person would have to modify the unit by themselves in order to make it backup friendly. This usually required a user to download and install a modified Doctor V64 BIOS. Additionally the cartridge adapter had to be opened and soldered in order to allow the operational procedure described early on this article. Though Bung never sold backup enabled V64s many re-sellers would modify the units themselves.
Nintendo made many legal efforts world wide in order to stop the sale of Doctor V64 units. They sued Bung directly as well as specific store retailers in Europe and North America for copyright infringement. Eventually Nintendo managed to have the courts prohibit the sale of Doctor V64 units in the United States.
Main menu
| Menu option | Effect |
|---|---|
| Alternate and BootCrack | This option would load a workaround for booting games. It only worked on certain types of game images. |
| Load Boot Crack Routine | An advanced option that allowed uploading of program code for the use of boot related problems. |
| Backup Card Auto → DRAM | This option would read a game cartridge and store it in the V64's RAM. |
| Backup Card Auto → PC | Same as the previous option, but would transfer the data to a PC through the V64's parallel port. |
| Manual Slide Show | |
| Auto Slide Show | |
| V64 Self Test | Diagnostics routine would check all of V64's subsystems. |
| Fully Test 128M DRAM | Diagnostics routine would check only the first 128Mb of memory. |
| Fully Test 256M DRAM | Same as above but for those units with 256Mb of memory. |
| Upload DRAM Data → PC | Used in conjunction with then option "Backup Cart Auto → DRAM" this option would transfer the contents of Doctor V64's RAM to a PC through the use of V64's parallel port. |
| Fix CRC Code → run game | Another boot related command to enable playing of game images. It would only work on certain types of backups. |
| Show Game Name in DRAM | An advanced option that would read the backup image and extract the game's name displaying it on the screen. |
| Upload V64 BIOS to PC | Another advanced option for DV64 developers. It would transfer Doctor V64's own program code to the PC through a parallel connection. |
| DX256 Upload to PC | This command allowed operation of specific features of the DX256 cartridge adapter (an alternate cartridge adapter sold by Bung). |
| PC Download to DX256 | |
| Swap Byte Order in DRAM | This command would convert the game image's endianness Endianness In computing, the term endian or endianness refers to the ordering of individually addressable sub-components within the representation of a larger data item as stored in external memory . Each sub-component in the representation has a unique degree of significance, like the place value of digits... of a game image already loaded in RAM. Later bios revisions would do this automatically, deprecating this option. |
Specifications
- CD-ROM access speed: Most early V64 models shipped with a standard IDE 8X CD-ROM . During the manufacturing lifetime of the device, latter V64 models shipped with 16X and eventually 20X drives. V64 units could be purchased without a CD-ROM drive. It is possible to replace the unit with a faster IDE CD-ROM unit.
- Many DrV64s shipped internationally were ordered without an installed CD-ROM drive, to save on shipping costs associated with weight, import duty on the drive and the ever increasing speeds of drives available. While theoretically a benefit in the user being able to use their own faster/cheaper drive, the variance in power draw of different manufacturers drives at different speeds caused issues with discs spin-ups up exceeding the wattage rating of the included Bung PSU. This led to users swapping out the Bung PSU for a more powerful model, or selecting low draw drives (mainly Panasonic drives sometimes badged as Creative).
- CD-Media: V64s can read CD-Rs and CD-RWs (provided the installed CD-ROM unit supports rewritable media). Supported media has to be recorded in Mode 1, ISO 9660ISO 9660ISO 9660, also referred to as CDFS by some hardware and software providers, is a file system standard published by the International Organization for Standardization for optical disc media....
format. Doctor V64s only supports the 8.3 DOS naming convention. JolietJoliet (file system)Joliet is the name of an extension to the ISO 9660 file system. It has been specified and endorsed by Microsoft and has been supported by all versions of its Windows OS since Windows 95 and Windows NT...
file system is not supported. - RAM: 128 megabits (16 MB) or 256 megabits (32 MB). Original V64 units shipped with 128 megabits of RAM. V64 units started shipping with 256 megabits when developers started using bigger sized memory carts for their games. Users of the time had the option of buying a memory upgrade from Bung and other re-sellers.
- Power supply: The Doctor V64 uses a 4 Pin MiniDIN jack (as used for S-VideoS-VideoSeparate Video, more commonly known as S-Video and Y/C, is often referred to by JVC as both an S-VHS connector and as Super Video. It is an analog video transmission scheme, in which video information is encoded on two channels: luma and chroma...
) for connecting the power supply cord. Power supplies included with Doctor V64s were very unreliable. Bung replaced the power supply with a sturdier version in later V64 units. Replacing broken power supplies became one of the most common maintenance problems with the V64. It is possible to modify an ATAT form factorIn the area of IBM compatible personal computers, the AT form factor referred to the dimensions and layout of the motherboard for the IBM AT. Like the IBM PC and IBM XT models before it, many third-party manufacturers produced motherboards compatible with the IBM AT form factor, allowing end users...
PC power supply for V64 use.
Additional information
- The ROM extensions ".v64" and ".z64" started out as the preferred naming conventions by Doctor V64 and Z64Z64The Mr. Backup Z64 is a game backup device designed by Harrison Electronics, Inc., able to store Nintendo 64 games as ROM images on Zip Diskettes.Units such as this can make copies of a game which can be played in a Nintendo 64 emulator.- Design :...
users respectively. It would also imply the file's 'endianness' as those units employed little endian (V64) and big endian (Z64) byte alignment. ".n64" was used as well but not as much (it became more popular as N64 emulators began to appear). The term ".v64" is still widely used today by the emulation community. - Acclaim EntertainmentAcclaim EntertainmentAcclaim Entertainment was an American video game developer and publisher. It developed, published, marketed and distributed interactive entertainment software for a variety of hardware platforms, including Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Gear, Nintendo's NES, SNES, Nintendo...
subsidiary Iguana EntertainmentIguana EntertainmentIguana Entertainment, renamed Acclaim Studios Austin after 1999, was a video game developer operating from 1991 to 2004 in Santa Clara, California, Sunnyvale, California, and Austin, Texas in the USA, and Teesside, England...
used Doctor V64 units as their development hardware of choice during the N64's days. They were best known for developing the TurokTurok: Dinosaur HunterTurok: Dinosaur Hunter is a first-person shooter video game developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Acclaim for the Nintendo 64 console and personal computer platforms. It was released in 1997 in North America and Europe. Turok is an adaptation of the Acclaim Comics comic book series of...
, NBA JamNBA JamNBA Jam is a basketball arcade game developed by Midway in 1993. It is the first entry in the NBA Jam series, and was written entirely in assembly language. The main designer and programmer for this game was Mark Turmell...
, NFL Quarterback ClubNFL Quarterback Club '98NFL Quarterback Club '98 is a football video game, released in November 1997. It was developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Acclaim for the Nintendo 64.- Features :NFL Quarterback Club '98 contained numerous features:...
, and South ParkSouth Park (video game)South Park is a first-person shooter video game based on the first few seasons of the popular TV series of the same name. The game is powered by the Turok 2 game engine and was released in 1998 by Acclaim for the PC, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. A Brazilian version was published by Gradiente for...
video games.