Playchoice 10 Adapter and PowerPak issue

Konidias

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I bought a PC 10 adapter from PC-10.com and I also bought the PowerPak from retrousb.com

The plan was to just load a bunch of roms on there and I can play all the NES games on my Playchoice 10... as has been done before by many people.

I'm experiencing a weird issue, however... It seems like if I power on my Playchoice and select one of the existing original games in the machine, they play just fine...

But if I load up a game via the Powerpak... like... Super Mario 3, it looks all glitchy. Sounds and plays fine but the screen is glitchy and garbled. The problem is, it's like a "virus" that spreads to other games and makes them worse. I have Super Mario Bros on an original cart and if I power on the game and play that, it looks great. If I try to load a game from the PowerPak, that game is all glitchy, and if I reset and go back to the original Super Mario Bros, it's also glitchy.


What the heck could be causing the original games to glitch out like the powerpak ones? Is this some sort of memory issue? Is there a fix for it? Really frustrating dropping several hundred dollars on hardware just to get a glitchy mess. I have the latest adapter and latest powerpak as I just bought them from the official sites last week.
 
I wonder if it's like the multicarts for the Neo Geos where they just draw too much power or something. you just might be doing too much there dude lol

I took the one apart at work last night cause a couple games were glitched. cleaned the carts and slots with contact cleaner and gave the edges a cleaning as well.

your voltage might be too low getting to the main board or something.
 
I wonder if it's like the multicarts for the Neo Geos where they just draw too much power or something. you just might be doing too much there dude lol

I took the one apart at work last night cause a couple games were glitched. cleaned the carts and slots with contact cleaner and gave the edges a cleaning as well.

your voltage might be too low getting to the main board or something.

I've cleaned the slot and cart, still no change... Just checked the voltage... it's 5.2v with game on.

I've heard sometimes reseating chips helps? I don't know why that would make a difference in this case though, where the normal Playchoice games work flawlessly until I try to use the PowerPak.
 
oh yeah, when I pulled the carts I reseated the chips on each one too and most of them made a nice crunch sound. if running the PowerPak affects everything else though, I don't think that would be it. the slot you run it in might make a difference too, was there any instructions about that?

I'm happy with the 10 games I have in mine, though I'd kill to play Zelda on it one day.
 
Are you sure the romset you are using is a good set?
Have you tested the powerpak in a nes to make sure it's not a powerpak issue?
People have had the best luck with a romset called "No Intro Nintendo entertainment system" I can send you a link to it if you would like.
As far as it glitching out your other games, it is because a select few games on the powerpak hang onto an address line and it then effects other carts. Games like SMB2/3, megaman 3,4,5,6. Basically anything that is a MMC3 mapper. For that the only fix at this time is either powering the machine off or going back into the powerpak and selecting a different game, such as megaman 1, mario bros, super mario bros. then exit the powerpak and select one of your other carts and they should be just fine. Maybe RetroUsb will have an update in the future that will fix this.
If you continue to have graphics issues on the Game link and powerpak as far as the games not funtioning you are welcome to send them both to me to take a look at. I test every Game Link directly prior to shipping with the powerpak and an original nes cart.
1 last thing you could try is to install just the Game link and powerpak and see if it works fine. Then add 1 playchoice cart at a time and see if the powerpak is still functional.
I did have one customer that was having a slight issue similar to yours and it actually ended up being his Pro wrestling cart. It had a sram issue.
Playchoice carts are very intertwined with eachother.
 
I bought a PC 10 adapter from PC-10.com and I also bought the PowerPak from retrousb.com

The plan was to just load a bunch of roms on there and I can play all the NES games on my Playchoice 10... as has been done before by many people.

I'm experiencing a weird issue, however... It seems like if I power on my Playchoice and select one of the existing original games in the machine, they play just fine...

But if I load up a game via the Powerpak... like... Super Mario 3, it looks all glitchy. Sounds and plays fine but the screen is glitchy and garbled. The problem is, it's like a "virus" that spreads to other games and makes them worse. I have Super Mario Bros on an original cart and if I power on the game and play that, it looks great. If I try to load a game from the PowerPak, that game is all glitchy, and if I reset and go back to the original Super Mario Bros, it's also glitchy.


What the heck could be causing the original games to glitch out like the powerpak ones? Is this some sort of memory issue? Is there a fix for it? Really frustrating dropping several hundred dollars on hardware just to get a glitchy mess. I have the latest adapter and latest powerpak as I just bought them from the official sites last week.
I had the same issue. I knew my power pak and adapter worked, because I bought them and pc10 off a buddy. When I got it home, I had to reseat the adapter dozens of times the first day. It worked fine for months, did it again, I reset it again, and it's never happened since.
 
Thanks for all the info guys... I'll try pulling my other games out as I have 9 other games in place right now and have the adapter in the #1 slot. Didn't know the other games being in the board could affect a totally different game.

I've tried reseating the cartridge/adapter a bunch of times with no real change. The cartridge seems rather loose in the adapter though. Like it flops around a lot. I have it pressed all the way in, but it feels kind of loose. Dunno if that's normal. It's definitely not a snug fit...

I'll goof around with it a bit more.
 
I pulled out half of the games and the glitching reduced a lot. I pulled out all but the adapter and powerpak and it's working great!

I guess I don't really need the other games in there anyway when I can just play them through the powerpak.

Thanks for the help
 
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