In Hardware

When I was cleaning out my NES, I noticed this insertion hole, like you could plug somthing under it, what was it for, I think the SNES and N64 had it too.

That was meant for hardware extensions like Modems, Disk Drives etc...
Those came out in Japan.

oh ok thanx, I thought it involved an accesseries controller

As far as I know, these are not for controllers.

in usual North American/European console style, the connector serves no purpose. there are expansion/extension connectors on so many consoles that never see use that it just makes you wonder why they bother. Knowing that the extra connector and hardware associated with it just drive the costs up.

consoles that I know of that used an expansion port that has seen little/no use off the top of my head:

NES
SNES
N64
Model 2 Revision 1 Genesis/MegaDrive
Model 1 Playstation
GameCube

The funny thing is they always think they might really use the connectors.
But in most cases it just makes the console more expensive.

It's a case of covering all their options. If they put in a connector and never use it that's no problem (apart from a small increase in cost). If they don't have a connector and then decide they want to add an extension they have a big problem. It seems with Nintendo they usually had plans to use it (the SNES CD-ROM or 64DD) but decided to scrap the idea, in the west at least.

yeah, I suppose it's always better to have the options open in the event that you do actually make good with the release of something.

Indeed it was used for modems and other stuff that didn't make it to the market,in the US you could check the lotery on it if i remeber correctly.

Ah yes I'd forgotten about the Minnesota State Lottery. They made a modem but it never made it to the market. You can read about here but unfornunately the pictures are dead:


I thought I'd heard about the lottery at NES World so was searching there for the article and came across this instead:


So a modem was released for the NES, I didn't know that! I wonder how many were made. It must be an expensive collectors item.

Yeah, we had a short lived discussion about the Teleplay on another thread, but no one really knew much about it. Manuel had some good input...



I'm wondering what kind of plans they had for it in the long run. Perhaps they didn't see much of of a future in it at the time. I believe that kind of technology was still young...

I've never seen a photo of that planned modem.
That's cool.
But somehow it looks weird. When something goes under a console it should be of the same size... if not it just looks weird... yet interesting.

That's really something for collectors.

The Japanese version:



Sorry, couldn't find a bigger one at the moment.


Another version of the modem.

And the data card for it. Why the hell is Popeye on it?

Sorry if I read that other thread I must have forgotten about it!


But somehow it looks weird. When something goes under a console it should be of the same size... if not it just looks weird... yet interesting.


Yeah you wouldn't have thought it would be too hard to make the modem as wide as the NES. They were probably trying to make it as cheap as possible.

Wow, i want one of those,hotdamn it looks cool.

Ha! That's no problem, this topic is panning out better than the other!

I didn't realize there were so many different versions of this modem attachment.... Man, if they would've put more effort into it....

That doesn't have to do anything with Japan.

Nintendo of America and Europe decide for themselves what hardware they release.
Nintendo of Japan wasn't bad.

Hi all,

I've just been reading this thread and some ideas have been running around in my head.

We now know some of the stuff that was made or was planned to be made for the NES expansion port. But what I was thinking......What could we make for the expansion port?

There are bound to be enough people that surf these forums that have different (useful) skills. There should be enough hardware info on the NES out there for us to build a really cool deVice?

I would be into putting a bit of my spare time into a bit of NES development.

But what to make? Any ideas people? Would anyone else be into starting a project?

Let me know what you all think

Sorry, I suck at game making or anything like that involving HTML or any comp language

But I bet there are somprjects out there making som illegal stuff to place under the NES anyway.

I refer you to here...



I was kind of wondering if there was a way to make a deVice to maybe design hacks for those games with middle pins. I think that'd be cool...

I'm no technical guru by any means, though. I'm not even sure it's possible.

Hmmm I cant say I find the middle pin ideas very interesting.

I'll need to check the pinouts of the NES and see exactly what connections are available. If the external port has the right connections, we could always make an IDE hard drive addon. Damn my ZX Spectrum has a 4GB hard drive in it lol. Why not have a NES with a truck load of space for NES ROMs