It looked hopeless... No matter what I tried, I could not get the stupid pirate Famicom to work with a NES joypad. I wondered if it could be the fakey Famicom itself... It did have all these resistors going to the pins for the joypad. What is that all about? It seemed odd, especially since the resistors looked like they had been soldered on by an anemic dyslexic diaherra-stricken color-blind monkey... 

  As the pile of smashed useless destroyed-by-me Atari 2600 Juniors would attest, I am not one to worry about ruining game systems in the name of progress! My new plan was to attain yet another Super Joy Fun Stick Player Mech Game Player Game and try to figure out what I did wrong...

  Dateline: August 9th - Las Vegas. I was at the 2003 Classic Gaming Expo, wandering around looking at stuff. Then, at a table, I saw it! A Super Joy Fun Stick Player Mech Game Player Game! I rushed over and bought it. Since I had a screwdriver with me I didn't even wait to get back to the hotel. I plopped down on the couch where they were playing Warlords and ripped the thing open! Again, I found a "NES on a Chip" inside and it was pretty much the same as my other pirate Famicom, with one exception. There were 2 extra glop-tops on the board. This thing must have BUILT-IN crappy games! Wow!

  Once back in Wisconsin I proceeded to connect my 72 pin adapater thing to this new pirate Famicom board. However, it did not work right away with regular NES cartridges. I then discovered that if you connected +5 volts to pin 31 on the Famicom side it would disable the crappy built-in games (darn) and allow a catridge to run.

Kill crappy built-in games - just add this wire!

  I also hooked up a NES joypad and lo and behold, on the first try, it worked. The first Super Joy Fun Stick Player Mech Game Player Game was a casualty of progress, but it did not die in vain. It perished so that I might learn how to connect this unit properly. And for that it will be remembered...

The completed "Super Joy Fun Stick Player Mech Game Player Game", adapted to play American NES carts.

What you see above is a completely working NES clone. All it requires is +5 volts power, a screen and a controller.

  The Casio EV-560 screen (adapted with white LED's and with the TV tuner part removed) the NESp guts, speaker and the controller shown all running off 4 AA batteries at a 280 mA draw. The TV normally takes 4 AA batteries and runs at a 500 mA draw. Using 2 white LED's instead of the cathode tube saves a few hundred milliamps. I then ran the NESp guts right off the TV's regulator giving a +5 volt current. Seeing as how the TV was originally supposed to run for about 3 hours off 4 AA's at 500 mA, I estimate the NESp will run for at least that long, hopefully a little longer, with 4 AA's. That to me, is pretty awesome.

  Well now! The guts are all working, so you know what's next? That's right - the CASE!

    Surely my quest to build the NESp's case won't be as difficult as when I endeavored to build the SNESp... or will it...