Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console – BBG (BBK) – with Keyboard and Floppy Drive – USB Floppy Emulator – NES Game Console


Remember the other day I talk about the BBGDOS (BBG Famicom), which can be found in this post.

It is difficult to find such rare 8-bit famicom clone game console, and even with keyboard and floppy drive. However, one of my friend did help me find one. The BBG-1 is in my opinion one of the best 8-bit famicom clones with keyboard and floppy drive.

It takes about 7 days to ship from China to UK.

206ed69354ed90c45d8ff83f55d937b0.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System .

It was the first version with floppy disk by BBG (called BBG-1), followed by BBG-98 which is even better.

The original box reveals this beautiful famicom: BBG-1

8957db3b1ad4db3be3236406ef45e83c.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

Although it is second-handed, I was told that the original cables everything were present which are not. The AV cables, the manuals, the floppy disks are missing, but I have spare cables and floppy disks and I already have BBG-software images on my computer so it is not a big problem. One sad thing is the power adapter was not working but it is really heavy… I didn’t know that so I waste a lot of money shipping a useless rubbish from China to UK.

As told, the machine was well preserved and hardly used.

93723291b957186277855a9999a058c3.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

First attempt to start this machine, it works… However, i have not prepared bootable floppy disks, so it says “system boot fail from drive A”.

13eb4abc534529a480d7c14bbbc6ec38.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

After I use WinIMAGE to restore image to floppy disk, and boot again, this time, it loads up the BBG-WIN, a 8-bit windows-like operating system (a GUI).

a2beff9e3698b36c0d54647815a98882.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

Floppy disks are out-dated, and they are not good to preserve, small capacity (only 1.44MB high density, double sided), so we can replace it by USB-Floppy Emulator, which looks like this:

5bf8c28bab29a49367b5b0defad7bdbd.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

The USB Floppy Emulator is 34-pin, the same as floppy drives, so you’ll be able to use USB almost wherever a floppy drive is used. With USB emulator, you can hold up to 100 floppy disks in a usb drive, the rest of the space is wasted (so any usb drives bigger than 144MB should be enough).

Let’s open the BBG famicom, it has 27 screws… after a while,

1af67583b44cb204fa9ea1bc967b015b.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

Let’s replace the floppy with the emulator.

778db35e796e91e069cffa389772b043.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

The floppy drive data cable is too short for a USB floppy emulator! They must be cutting material cost when production back in 1990’s.

I had to take the floppy data cable from another famicom clone: SB2000 [here]. and It looks OK now.

caac226eded50e29d51f106d1e84b2e5.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

But, the one from BBG is still too short for SB2000.

8efea43d1f2b38327166196e6afc7ced.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

For BBG, it can use USB right away, the USB should be well formatted on PC and images are put by a floppy usb emulator software.

a876fa6facaaa2bb0d19e3b169f36f90.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

Well, I purchase a new one from Maplin.. and It can be used to connect a second floppy drive.

ba613037e71a4a7343f911c30745a0ce.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

There is no enough room so we have to extend the cable outside for a second floppy drive.

0aea3ce2be112c62e1ab7efb8a391617.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

BBG-1 is a famicom clone, so it supports most the 8-bit famicom game cartridges.

f049238ca05a10aa7dca33efb4dd937c.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

Or we can play *.gam files if a floppy drive bootable and has the following configured.

  • has file BBGDOS.SYS on sector 0 of floppy
  • has file config.sys which contains shell=gamshell.cmd that creates a menu and loads all *.gam files on current floppy.
  • has file gamshell.cmd which is a game menu loader.

Game Menu of BBG

47cf2f8496b0a24f76deb267469223b3.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

You could now use joystick to select the game and press start to launch the game. If several games are found, use joystick A and B to navigate the pages. Please note that if BBG-mouse is plugged in at this time, it will cause the menu jumping from one to another. The BBG-mouse is usually plugged into second joystick socket (15 pin) but should not be present when 8-bit nes games are loaded.

BBG-1 is a very good 8-bit NES famicom clone.

a51790c78d93c34352ce6fb52dcbed34.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

*.gam is one of the executables, so you can type in the file name directly under BBG-DOS prompt, however, some games are only for BBG-98 because of required bigger display RAM.

f3c780cbe0b2f830afa7952f8679e4bc.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

And a tool is available to convert the *.nes roms to *.gam files.

To me, the most powerful and amazing stuff on BBG-1 is the BBG-DOS, the latest version is BBG-DOS 3.0.

59a645dd96b5a23c17d061632e6be645.jpg Set Up 8-bit Ultimate Famicom Game Console - BBG (BBK) - with Keyboard and Floppy Drive - USB Floppy Emulator - NES Game Console 8 bit famicom games hardware Nintendo Entertainment System

Further Work

Although in theory , the second floppy drive is supported, no one has tried this before, because we need to add a power supply for second floppy drive, and we should correctly set the jumper for these two (one fitted and one connected outside the machine). There is no much room inside the BBG so we have to connect the second floppy drive outside, but a power cable may (or may not) be extended from the mainboard.

For a clear PCB of BBG, you can click here.

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —

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