So awesome! Getting a Famicom console and the disk system add-on has been on my want list a very long time. Next time I'm in Japan I'll have to check into snagging one.
What an awesome little system you’ve put together! My first console (apart from dad’s 2600) was the Sega Saturn - I think a Japan-only Saturn BASIC came out for it.
@@SockyNoob ... yep! I managed to get an original copy, plus the Saturn floppy drive, from Japan (on their way to me in Australia). I've already got the Saturn mouse & keyboard so will give it a try when it all arrives! /Brett
It would be nice to know about the neat tricks they used to make the signals of a full blown keyboard matrix go through a port designed for a gamepad. Quite a lot of almost sorcery going on on that cartridge (as well as the keyboard itself maybe) going on. Or I might be wrong and this addon was planned and taken into account from the very beginning of the console's design?
I wonder if one of the talented retrocomputing hardware engineers out there could design an interposer Y-adapter cartridge that could be used to plug both Family BASIC and the Disk System into the Famicom and make it work. You'd probably have to intercept/patch the Family BASIC cassette loading routines to adapt them to floppies, and obtaining a supply of blank Famicom Disk System floppies might present its own challenges, but still.
Honestly, the 80-90's computers that came with a full binder of examples on how to programme the computer were the best. Also full manuals and maps for the games you could read in the backseat of the parents car while going home before playing the game. No PC comes with a programmers guide these days; barely a sheet on how to connect the power adaptor. Microsoft Windows have robbed many generations of future youth to get a curiosity of tech. Today's PC's are basically consoles and I blame IBM and Microsoft.
Considering how much better a disk drive would have been to load and save programs compared to tape, I bet they would've sold a bunch more drives (and disks) if it actually worked with BASIC. Relatively speaking, of course. The fact that floppy drives were so common with early 8-bit computers suggests it could've had a similar affect with the Famicom.
Floppy drives for eight bit computers usually weren't cheap, often costing as much as the computer itself, so they weren't as commonplace as tape drives. It wasn't until the mid '80s that they became more affordable.
@@another3997 Yep, the Famicom came out in the early 80s and reached peak popularity around the mid-80s, so that timeline would fit with the popularity of 8-bit computers.
