It’s terrible though. You have to bypass the 3D Spatializer audio thing every time or else it would ruin the games and the video quality definitely suffers. Every user I knew back when the scene was active would bypass it with the console straight to the TV.
Bung is the company. Doctor V64 is the product. It’s just fun to say “Bung Doctor” but I don’t know why so many say “V Doctor,” “Doctor 64,” “Doctor V,” etc. ;)
There was an Austrian magazine called "101% Nintendo64" that only ever released one issue that had a double review of the Doctor V64 and the Mr.Backup Z64. Even as a kid I knew this shit was illegal and the magazine only released for spreading knowledge about these devices. Back then I reaaaally wanted one.
Actually "Paten" is the correct spelling. It originates from 1200's Normandy as the alternative to the Anglo-Saxony form of the word, which has entered the vocabulary now as many Anglo-Saxon words have as slurs. I think having a level head on this should make it easier in the future to avoid these mistakes. Nah, just kidding. It's spelled wrong.
I used to have one of these! Well, I still do, actually. Looks a little different. I think mine might be a slightly earlier or later model. Or maybe from a nearby parallel universe. Hard to say as I'm not sure which universe I live in. Not the good one, that's for sure. The reason I bought it was to download TEH GAMEZEZ, burn them on a CD-R and play them illegally like a criminal. Playing the Japanese version of Star Fox 64 was very exciting for me because my friends had to wait for the US release. Well actually they didn't because they came over and played it. The Doctor V64 is meant to be hooked up like a 32X, with the N64 composite video going into the Doctor and then spit out from there so you can get away with only one display. I used s-video at the time so I just had them on two different inputs on my AV selector. Not that S-video matters much with the N64. Christ. Oh and the game cart that you plug into the adapter? It's also used as backup RAM, so if a game you load from CD saves, it will save onto that cart. Bye bye Mario 64 save! Anyway I had no idea that these go for hundreds these days.
First off, the obligatory...Senpai...you noticed me! 😉 But yeah, I wish I knew this existed back in the day. When the N64 came out I was in late elementary school and really didn't have a source of income aside from birthday money and mowing the lawn - so new games were rare. However, my father did have a habit of obsessively buying bulk CDs whenever he could...so this device could have come in handy.
@@hard4games You have no idea how many lawns my friend and I mowed to get one in 1997. Collected wheelbarrows full of cans too. ;) I was 16 and he was 10 but I knew about it from the start. I became aware of Bung years earlier thanks to ads in the back of Popular Science for the Professor SF7/Game Doctor 7. I even mailed one of their US distributors for information since I had no idea what it was or what it did (they obviously couldn’t say in the ad). That turned me on to Bung hardware years earlier. I had home Internet by the time of the Doctor V64 and no longer had to mail off for info but I still had to stand there and drool over the Game Pro article at the grocery store magazine rack. I was a penniless welfare kid saving for something that cost more than the console that had just wiped out my savings months earlier. It took us months and my younger friend actually contributed a lot more of the money than I did. I recall that there were two US distributors and I think we ordered from Carl Industries or whichever one was in Florida (Game Doctor 7 ad was from the New York guys). I still have it today. I actually bought my own years later from Lik-Sang but my friend eventually gave me our original after breaking it (stepped on the drive tray). Now that’s the only one I can find but it’s got other problems even after replacing the broken drive. It still works fine as a 128mbit unit and it’s paired with my box, documentation, and accessories from Lik-Sang.
If your EEPROM save games were over-writing Super Mario 64 saves you needed a Bung DX256. It had 256 different selectable save banks and you could even use it with boot carts that had no EEPROM save. Both of my V64 units came bundled with it.
@@patrikbengtsson3883 Only stand-alone single-layer players for the absolute earliest adopters. It was almost non-existent in consumer PCs… and recordable DVDs were totally non existent in consumer PCs. Only the most hardcore had even heard of CD-R drives in 1996. Even if they did, CD-R discs were still $10 each back in 1997. I was an early adopter when I got my first CD burner in 1998. DVD burners took a few more years to become mainstream. Even then, the earliest consumer format for burning DVDs was DVD-RAM which required a caddy and was incompatible with standard DVD-ROM drives and players. There was no benefit to having that for N64 ROMs when even a single CD-R could hold nearly every game for the first couple years. Even when the library grew beyond what a single CD-R could hold, well, it could still hold every game worth playing and the cost was significantly less than $1 a disc while DVD-RAM was still $20 a disc. You could spend far less on a few CD-R discs and have enough for everything… or be a cheapskate like me and continue reusing the same CD-RW disc for two years (came with my drive). Then there is the file system. Even Windows couldn’t read DVD’s UDF file system without a proprietary driver back then so writing a UDF driver for the 6502 processor on the V64 would’ve been a tall order. The V64 doesn’t even support UDF on CD-R. Pretty sure it will only see the first session of a multi-session disc and you have to master it with the most simple disc label and file names as if you were detailing with DOS, 8.3 filenames, and no special characters. Believe it or not, being able to play VCDs on your N64 was more important in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc where the V64’s biggest consumer market existed.
*Facepalm* The video looks like it can’t sync well because it hasn’t been given one. It gets its sync from the composite output of the N64. You don’t need two displays to use this, that’s what the composite and stereo input are for. That’s where you hook up the N64 video output and you ended up with one screen with the VDR’s OSD superimposed over the game.
Wow! This takes me back! I remember there was a video game rental shop near my grandma’s house that had this thing hooked up to a N64. The owner used it solely to run games without needing to own or buy the cartridges. I spent hours there with my brother playing GoldenEye and Mario 64.
That cease and desist joke (which I assume was partly about the emulator websites takedowns) made me think maybe Nintendo is trying to cut down on all the emulation distribution right before their N64 mini console comes out. Chasing down piracy might be easier in Nintendo’s view then negotiating with Rare/third parties. They really want us to only play their games on a N64 classic if/when it comes out (and after you jail break it). Also realizing that .v64 and .z64 come from those types of development hardware is so cool to me for some reason. Awesome video guys!
They will play self burned VCDs I used to use the VCD profile on Nero back in the day. You don't "need" two screens: the idea is that you connect the N64 into the input on the V64 and the V64 switches over for you. The main reason to use a separate cable is for scart/svideo. It's not as nice as something like an everdrive these days, as a lot of games need patches to work around the copy protection. These aren't as easy to find as they were back in the day. Also Bung sold two save cartridges - one for SRAM and one for flash. These were necessary if you wanted to play many games otherwise you borrowed the retail cart in the top to save. You could also dump/load roms and saves via the parallel port. Lastly the PSUs were notoriously unreliable I went through 2 official ones before repurposing a spare Amiga A500 PSU and sticking the weird Svideo connector on it.
Kevin Winfield-Pantoja The DS1 was for SRAM and the DX256 was for EEPROM. They never made one for FlashRAM or dual EEPROM games, but you could save dual EEPROM games to the inserted original cartridge. Also, the main reason I bypassed the video pass-thru was because it degraded the video and SEVERELY distorted the audio. In order to act like it had some legitimate N64 function for end users they added some DSP effect that supposedly added “3D Surround Sound” to your N64 games. ;) I don’t recall it being optional, hence, the bypass. Yeah, they couldn’t just use VCD playback to claim it had a legitimate consumer reason to interface with an N64, since it did that with or without an N64 attached. ;)
@@emmettturner9452 Thanks for the corrections about the save carts I got it a bit wrong. You could toggle the spatial effect but it may have been a firmware update. The signal degradation is absolutely a valid point but even so you don't need two screens just flip inputs on the TV. :)
oldgraphics I had two different units purchased years apart, one from Carl Industries (Bung’s USA distributor) and the other from Lik-Sang after the import ban. The 3D audio effect was definitely not desirable on either of them, nor was the notable decrease in video quality. Granted, I was more picky about that than most kids and usually didn’t like the results through a simple composite switch or extension. I don’t recall there being a way to turn it off but there may have been a way. My earlier unit’s manual was written for a completely different (pre-release?) BIOS where you had to hold different combinations of keys to perform different functions even though the shipping FW only responded to menu selections. It even had instructions for dumping a game using certain key combos though it did not ship with a backup-enabled BIOS! Instructions didn’t work though, not even with a backup-enabled BIOS. That was very confusing for me as a teenager but my friend and I eventually got it updated to a backup-enabled BIOS and we proceeded to borrow/rent everything we could get our hands on. ;) The friend and I had pooled our money to buy the first one and I eventually paid him back his half to own it out-right but he had thrown away the box and manuals. The second one I purchased when I was old enough to work and I still have it boxed with the original manuals and CD (full of Bung promo videos). I’ll pull it down from the shelf tomorrow to see if there was a way to disable it that I just missed all those years ago.
oldgraphics Excuse me? You implied that it was just mine to say that I was “generalizing” based on one. I was relaying my first hand experience and added the context of having seen it across multiple units manufactured years apart. Of course it would, since it’s an advertised “feature.” Unlike my original, my later one had a laptop-style CD-ROM that happened to be DOA but Bung had closed up shop. There were several other minor differences. They were very clearly made years apart at an ISO9000-certified factory that would not be selling them with the same audio defect years apart. Of course, that’s because it’s not a defect. I never said that it was. It’s an undesirable feature that was put there purely to give a piracy device a seemingly legitimate use. They did this for deniability about its primary intended purpose (piracy). Seriously, dude, you just need to calm down. You got defensive and completely missed the point of me describing multiple units from multiple sources. “I bought one” ... “I bought three!” I mean... *woosh* The facts are that Bung promoted this 3D audio “enhancement” as a feature... a feature where the PURPOSE is to manipulate the audio. Is it really so hard to believe that this unneeded manipulation is not desirable and is, therefore, a “severe distortion?” If it never bothered you or you found a way to turn it off, great, but don’t pretend that it didn’t exist when it’s absolute fact that it did. Any change from the original audio output is a “distortion.” This isn’t “opinion.”
Kevin Winfield-Pantoja Yeah. Wish mine had more than one. :) This was 1997, the era when front-mounted composite jacks were a new idea that was starting to appear mostly in hotels (for vacation camcorder convenience without risking the hotel TV). If you had an older TV you were lucky to have a single composite input at all! Heck, I remember having to use a VCR as an RF modulator almost everywhere I went before getting a Multi-out RF modulator years later just for the freedom to take it more places. Of course, that didn’t help if I needed to connect the V64 too, but I learned to operate it blindly for most of those situations.
I still have mine, it was a day 1 purchase and it was friggen expensive in AUD, cant remember exactly but it was around $600 AUD. I justified the price with being able to play backups, prices of N64 games was expensive so just having 10 backup games paid itself off. I had the parallel cable connected from my PC to this back in the day to transfer roms, it took ages to transfer but it worked, this was the time when I didn't have access to a CD Burner and was the only way to transfer roms. Out of the box it came with Bung's official bios which was limited as to what it could do but a specific site had modified versions of Bung's bios. I still have the original box and its advertised as a VCD player.
@@mauriinx6514 yep, I bet you and I were the coolest kid around, I knew I was. The only mod I done was swap put the CD driver to something faster, those old IDE cd drives getting pricey.
This was legit the first video I've ever watched on this channel. Probably the most calming video I've ever watched about technology ever. Definitely subscribing!
Why can’t someone make a V64 V2 with modern USB connectivity, a super fast CD drive, a Micro SD card slot, HDMI (out and in), Ultra CIC 3 chip, Real Time Clock, and all of the other N64 development kit features? (expect for being rare, bulky, and fragile) It would be a 64drive, or Everdrive 64 on steroids.
Ah finally the v64. I had this thing back in the days, but it was faulty as F. Errors all the time. A lot of people including myself changed the CD drive for a faster version (IDE connection only), because the original one was as slow as a snail. The 2 separate 128mb memory banks weren't very reliable either. And try to buy 1 nowadays... Same for that weird brick of a power adapter.. U can't buy them anywhere, but i know 1 company in the UK who made a replacement version (also smaller) and its cheap. I sold the whole thing last year for about 150dollar. I regret it now.. I want it back for display-use only in my game room. Stupid me... (hitting my head against the wall now).... Thanks 4 the great review guys 👍
I still have mine with the upgraded memory banks and the original PSU that amazingly still works. But yeah, errors everywhere. I haven't been able to even write my own discs as there is surprisingly very little info on how to do it. Converted roms to .V64, changed the names of the roms so the system recognizes it, used different methods of burning the CD, but still it won't launch any games. Got a disc with the console, and that works just fine, so obviously I'm doing something wrong. It's a cool system, but I don't really use it anymore, it's more of a showpiece. I wouldn't wanna fry the PSU when I know it's working, since they indeed seem to go bad very easily.
@@CIubDuck Can’t use UDF like Windows’ built-in CD burning (which didn’t exist at the time) and Adaptex EZ CD Creator. You had to burn it as a standard ISO9660 data CD. I just name all my files with 8.3 file names then drop them into the list on IMGBurn. I then use a short CD label like “N64” with no special characters since you can see that getting long and fancy with spaces and characters causes many of the formats to get grayed out or get converted to underscores in the IMGBurn dialog (meaning they aren’t compatible). Just make the most basic single-session burn you can and it will work.
Video CD's are picky, I use to record TV on them in 2008-09 while I was at work and the CD's would only play back on the same device I recorded them on.
@Frizzurd Video CD is the White book standard of CD. It's MPEG-1 video at 240p/288p with similar quality to VHS. It was popular in Asia and easy to make bootlegs. It shouldn't be confused with CDV, a LaserVision derivative.
Acclaim used this to make some of the Turok games. Makes sense since they always had money problems so they must have saved big time. I wonder if Nintendo people ever went to their studios since Turok was a N64 exclusive they hid their Bung V64s under the desk or something
4:44 the reason in audio/video input and output is you could feed the n64 output through the unit and get Spatialized Audio, the video in / out saves swapping cables about, pick an option from bung unit, then power on n64, , no messing with cables you could also play video CD with the unit (amongst other things.....), bung got sued into the ground (acording to wiki) around march 2000
The Video-In ports on the back of the Bug Doctor V64 is where you were suppose to plug in the video out from the N64. Then you wouldn't need two separate monitors.
you can mod these to take 52x or 72x speed drives faster loading, there is also firmware to remove dev functions and simplify the menus into just an n64 backup maker/loader, hard disks can be fitted to replace the cd a different firmware gives expanded file structures so you could backup you library and play them all like a game jukebox i once saw one like that built into an arcade cab. this was years ago before everdrives and such.
"economies of scale" might be the phrase you were seaching for when filming. Thanks for making this video. I love my SNES equivalent called Super Wild Card DX2.
It's good for archiving games precisely as they are on the cartridge.... all n64 games have been pretty much backed up but to be safe a copy of all games need to be preserved in multiple locations.
Great video boys, been watching you a long time. Glad you've found ways to continue reviewing the rare and hard to find stuff, that was probably a challenge to get going at first.
You should put in the CD for Wip3out (aka WipEout 3, if you're American) and see what happens. On the one hand, it would probably play the awesome music just fine, but on the other it might just crash because it doesn't know what to do with PS1 games.
Commercial vcds might have only had a very limited run in North America, but I think they were much more popular in Asia as they were a cheaper option. I know they were in Indonesia specifically, but I'm all but certain Honk Kong would been the same.
Good informative video as always guys! I always wanted one of these as a kid when I would see it listed for sale in old gaming mags, usually under the imports ads(along with the wideboy 64). Thought it looked cool as I was anticipating the 64DD like crazy.
I alway’s tout that that cd drive would give homebrew developers the benefit of taking advantage of the 700MB capacity of cd’s in order to use the full capabilities of the N64, but no, because it only has ram space for presumibly 64MB games in mind, but it is atleast possible to make games for it in a cheaper way.
It only goes up to 256Mbit (32MByte) but that is an UNGODLY amount of RAM for any CD system of the time. Think about it: CD systems could only fit one level or menu in RAM at a time, hence, loading between levels and menus. The 32MB RAM this thing has could hold an entire game, like Zelda, which was also 32MB. This is why PlayStation had to pause and load in the middle of a fight when Shang Tsung morphs in Mortal Kombat Trilogy but the N64 did not (cartridge ROM maps to memory). It would have been the best of both worlds if games were written to use it. Of course, one of the easiest copy protections for a game to do would be to check if the ROM addresses are writable to see if they are running from RAM when they shouldn’t be, so the V64 write-protects the RAM during execution unless you disable that. A CD game written for the N64 merely needs to disable that and control that CD-ROM, which I believe the V64 does allow according to a conversation I has with Ash Evans (ElectronAsh). Also, the V64jr512 provides 64MB of RAM and can use the PlayStation itself as a CD-ROM ZIF you have the companion device, Bung Multi Xchanger. This plugged into the parallel port of the PlayStation and could then tether to the V64jr. They are both part of the Multi Game Doctor series 3 (“MGD³”) along with stuff like the GB Xchanger and Doctor GB Card.
Hi, ;) It actually uses a NOAC as well, which is something I only realised when working on it around 2008. They didn't bother using the graphics nor sound of the NOAC, though, so no character ROM either. They instead chose to use an NEC (or Sanyo?) character generator chip (6450GT, but it's been a while,. That was very likely so it could easily overlay the menu text onto the MPEG video, since the Winbond chipset doesn't have its own OSD. Another side benefit of the menu (later on) is that you could overlay the menu on the N64 output, so you could choose a ROM after loading a boot emu patch. lol I did a hack to the BIOS years ago so the V64 could load ROMs from FAT32 HDD / CF. It was my first real attempt at 6502 assembly coding. It did work OK, but I wasn't caching the filenames etc., so it got really quite slow when looking through more than a few pages of files. And yep - Technically the N64 would normally pass through the V64 via Composite, btw, so would work on one display without switching. It has a relay that switches to the external input after the ROM has loaded. The weird thing is that I mentioned the V64 again on Twitter about three days ago, and then this vid shows up. lol
I, erm, didn't exactly write a nice progress indicator while loading. lol (not my vid.) ruclips.net/video/y0y3XfiDffw/видео.html Oh, and on some of the V64 units, both the NOAC and Gate Array were epoxy blobs, but mine has the proper QFP chips. The NOAC is identical to the one in the Russian "Dendy" NES clone. I did actually hook up the NOAC's Composite output to a TV once, wrote some values to the PPU, and got sync. But, obviously it could never display anything without hooking up a char ROM, and it just wasn't worth the effort. They could have allowed loading of NES games too, but yeah, it would have added too much cost. I imagine they tried to market it more as a "VCD player" in some regions, to try to throw Nintendo off the scent, or to get around some taxes perhaps?
ElectronAsh You’re definitely the guy to ask: Was it possible to trigger video playback on the V64’s MPEG hardware programmatically from the N64? A lot of their V64 BIOS updates would talk about “emulator” functions where you could load emulation software on N64 and then load a ROM, and they discussed other things that made it sound like the program running in the N64 could access extra data on the CD, but I never saw anyone do anything cool with it, like the MSU-1 hacks on SD2SNES. I’d love to see what the N64 could do with a 700MB game! ;) If the N64 could do hardware MPEG playback using the V64’s VCD hardware and video overlay, then it could be seen as a legitimate reason to have VCD other than just claiming that it’s a VCD player (as opposed to a piracy device). Never saw anyone use it like that though, and I followed all of the coding compos (POM’98/‘99, etc).
It would be possible, yep. In fact, after getting the FAT32 code working, I was attempting to see if I could get MPEG file playback working from HDD / CF. But, I'd already spent many weeks on the thing by then, and had to keep erasing the EPROM after every code change, which was very tedious, especially with a parallel port programmer. I only managed to get it to display some garbled MPEG, and didn't spend much time looking into how they buffered things when streaming from the CD drive. I was hoping to make it show a background video if it had the same name as the game ROM, a bit like the Slide Show function on the OG BIOS. But yeah, you could in theory even allow the MPEG stuff to trigger off file playback using the N64. The V64 BIOS was pretty full though, especially with the later versions that had the DS1 manager code included, so it was hard to add too much extra code. You can basically get the 6502 (NOAC) to read anything from the V64's main DRAM, so you could have some commands that the N64 writes to a certain address, then trigger things that way. I still don't know exactly how the registers in the Gate Array work, though. The hardest part of all with loading from FAT32 HDD was figuring out which regs the original code set for the different sizes of ROMs. It took me about three weeks just to get Mario 64 to run for the first time, even though I'd loaded it into DRAM just fine. lol
I have been thinking again recently about hooking up an IDE CD-ROM drive to the N64, though, just for the lolz. I know the cart bus protocol quite well, and IDE is actually a lot simpler than something like SATA or USB (unless you use a converter). But, like with all of these projects, there's not much point without some cool software or demos to support it, and I'm not personally one of the uber-clever coders like some of the demoscene guys. I'm still struggling to finish other projects atm, like the various FPGA cores (32x, PS1, SNES etc), but the 32x is the furthest along now. And, I never managed to quite finish the Game Gear LCD / HDMI / RGB / Flash board either. I need to get a move-on with that one, as it needs a new PCB respin.
Ever heard of Partner V64? My box says Partner and not Doctor. After Bung got shut down and tried to keep selling they tried to get sneeky. I havent seen another box like this.
This channel is so underrated. I actually wonder what your age demographic is like? At 23 I feel like I'm one of your younger viewers, but I could be mistaken.
It's a bell curve. Slight majority in the 30s, slightly lower in the 20s and 40s. Even lower in the teens and 50s. Which makes sense considering we are in our early 30s.
You must be a pretty cool dude then! I always assume kids your age have been totally brainwashed by PewDiePie-esque content. Glad to see there's still hope on the horizon.
No, i don't think so, the latest releases are supported, but some dorect too video movies and old classic could be found somtimes ;P EDIT: Also in China and Vietnam there are lots of latest movies released on VCD tot his day
I had one of these Dr 64's back in the day. Eventually I had to tape the 2 together as a slight knock would make it crash as the port that connected the 2 wasn't great.
I will likely do something soon. I’m an original owner and I’ve had people bugging me to sell it for years but I never intended to… then I took a direct hit from an EF-4 tornado and suddenly I’m forced to sell of the parts of my collection that survived. I want to document it before I sell it since I am an original user/owner and know the ins and outs.
Doesn’t this dump roms from carts loaded into it onto PC? It could be your expensive alternative to backing up the rom/iso of games you legally bot but I’m not sure what alternatives there are to it save the backup zip you mentioned earlier
Do you think the input av ports might be for the n64 to go into.. it might have been the only way to get the screen to work out on one... might seem crazy but I would try it.
You guys have obviously not researched this very much, when this came out, I purchased mine for 260 with a 50.00 S&H. And the ONLY official N64 dev kit that we as non company game devs could get was the blue button version of the N64DD (and that wasn't even a true 'dev' kit) .
So I understand that the 64DD has its own development unit. But what about the N64 itself? Is there a development unit for that or were the N64 games developed on blue disks then flashed to N64 cartridges? How did that work?
n64 dev kit? Pretty much a Silicon Graphics Indy workstation? At the time those costed companies about $4995 USD! 100 Mhz R4000-series CPU (MIPSIII Architecture), 9GB Hard Disk Drive, XL24 graphics, and 64 MB RAM
They were talking more about the more basic "cartridge emulators", like the Partner-N carts. They were still used for "development" of sorts, but yeah, writing a proper game back then often needed at least one Indy + Ultra64 dev board.
Easy fix. Heck, it’s not much different from the power supply bundled with any external CD-ROM enclosure back then. Just 5v and 12v through a 4 pin mini-DIN.
Just out of curiosity, could one dump a rom using a 3.3 GameShark and the parallel port? I know goldeneye hack veteran Subdrag, has used the parallel port and GameShark to run custom roms on real hardware back in the day before ever drives where popular
@@hard4games Oh good. N64 is one of the consoles I haven't gotten to yet, in that regard. Have you/do you plan on covering a modern method? I'd totally give it a watch. Thanks for the reply!
You don't need two TVs for this. You plug the N64's output into the V64's input and the V64 handles the switching.
Cool!
It’s terrible though. You have to bypass the 3D Spatializer audio thing every time or else it would ruin the games and the video quality definitely suffers. Every user I knew back when the scene was active would bypass it with the console straight to the TV.
Will this device provide TP for my bung hole?
If only lol.
I need Bung Doctor for my N64
I need v64 for my bung hole
i'm glad someone went there before I did
*receives a cease and desist order*
Are you threatening me??
the bung doctor made the prettiest image on that tv when it loaded Turok. How can something with that name be so beautiful on the inside
The most beautiful things come from bungs
Bung is the company. Doctor V64 is the product. It’s just fun to say “Bung Doctor” but I don’t know why so many say “V Doctor,” “Doctor 64,” “Doctor V,” etc. ;)
There was an Austrian magazine called "101% Nintendo64" that only ever released one issue that had a double review of the Doctor V64 and the Mr.Backup Z64. Even as a kid I knew this shit was illegal and the magazine only released for spreading knowledge about these devices. Back then I reaaaally wanted one.
Actually "Paten" is the correct spelling. It originates from 1200's Normandy as the alternative to the Anglo-Saxony form of the word, which has entered the vocabulary now as many Anglo-Saxon words have as slurs. I think having a level head on this should make it easier in the future to avoid these mistakes.
Nah, just kidding. It's spelled wrong.
Ya got me!!!
I recently got my hands on one of those with white buttons instead of black, still it's a blast playing with this, it's just so cool
I can’t believe I just learned the origins of the z64 filetype
Love your content guys! I live in China and Im still learning the language- watching your videos makes me feel less lonely. Thanks again
I used to have one of these! Well, I still do, actually. Looks a little different. I think mine might be a slightly earlier or later model. Or maybe from a nearby parallel universe. Hard to say as I'm not sure which universe I live in. Not the good one, that's for sure. The reason I bought it was to download TEH GAMEZEZ, burn them on a CD-R and play them illegally like a criminal. Playing the Japanese version of Star Fox 64 was very exciting for me because my friends had to wait for the US release. Well actually they didn't because they came over and played it. The Doctor V64 is meant to be hooked up like a 32X, with the N64 composite video going into the Doctor and then spit out from there so you can get away with only one display. I used s-video at the time so I just had them on two different inputs on my AV selector. Not that S-video matters much with the N64. Christ. Oh and the game cart that you plug into the adapter? It's also used as backup RAM, so if a game you load from CD saves, it will save onto that cart. Bye bye Mario 64 save! Anyway I had no idea that these go for hundreds these days.
First off, the obligatory...Senpai...you noticed me! 😉 But yeah, I wish I knew this existed back in the day. When the N64 came out I was in late elementary school and really didn't have a source of income aside from birthday money and mowing the lawn - so new games were rare. However, my father did have a habit of obsessively buying bulk CDs whenever he could...so this device could have come in handy.
@@hard4games You have no idea how many lawns my friend and I mowed to get one in 1997. Collected wheelbarrows full of cans too. ;)
I was 16 and he was 10 but I knew about it from the start. I became aware of Bung years earlier thanks to ads in the back of Popular Science for the Professor SF7/Game Doctor 7. I even mailed one of their US distributors for information since I had no idea what it was or what it did (they obviously couldn’t say in the ad). That turned me on to Bung hardware years earlier. I had home Internet by the time of the Doctor V64 and no longer had to mail off for info but I still had to stand there and drool over the Game Pro article at the grocery store magazine rack. I was a penniless welfare kid saving for something that cost more than the console that had just wiped out my savings months earlier.
It took us months and my younger friend actually contributed a lot more of the money than I did. I recall that there were two US distributors and I think we ordered from Carl Industries or whichever one was in Florida (Game Doctor 7 ad was from the New York guys). I still have it today. I actually bought my own years later from Lik-Sang but my friend eventually gave me our original after breaking it (stepped on the drive tray). Now that’s the only one I can find but it’s got other problems even after replacing the broken drive. It still works fine as a 128mbit unit and it’s paired with my box, documentation, and accessories from Lik-Sang.
If your EEPROM save games were over-writing Super Mario 64 saves you needed a Bung DX256. It had 256 different selectable save banks and you could even use it with boot carts that had no EEPROM save. Both of my V64 units came bundled with it.
I thought DVDs was introduced the same year as PlayStation and N64.
@@patrikbengtsson3883 Only stand-alone single-layer players for the absolute earliest adopters.
It was almost non-existent in consumer PCs… and recordable DVDs were totally non existent in consumer PCs. Only the most hardcore had even heard of CD-R drives in 1996. Even if they did, CD-R discs were still $10 each back in 1997.
I was an early adopter when I got my first CD burner in 1998. DVD burners took a few more years to become mainstream. Even then, the earliest consumer format for burning DVDs was DVD-RAM which required a caddy and was incompatible with standard DVD-ROM drives and players. There was no benefit to having that for N64 ROMs when even a single CD-R could hold nearly every game for the first couple years. Even when the library grew beyond what a single CD-R could hold, well, it could still hold every game worth playing and the cost was significantly less than $1 a disc while DVD-RAM was still $20 a disc. You could spend far less on a few CD-R discs and have enough for everything… or be a cheapskate like me and continue reusing the same CD-RW disc for two years (came with my drive).
Then there is the file system. Even Windows couldn’t read DVD’s UDF file system without a proprietary driver back then so writing a UDF driver for the 6502 processor on the V64 would’ve been a tall order. The V64 doesn’t even support UDF on CD-R. Pretty sure it will only see the first session of a multi-session disc and you have to master it with the most simple disc label and file names as if you were detailing with DOS, 8.3 filenames, and no special characters.
Believe it or not, being able to play VCDs on your N64 was more important in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc where the V64’s biggest consumer market existed.
Neat - so the official N64 dev kit was basically a SGI workstation - so quite a bit more expensive than the V64.
*Facepalm*
The video looks like it can’t sync well because it hasn’t been given one. It gets its sync from the composite output of the N64.
You don’t need two displays to use this, that’s what the composite and stereo input are for. That’s where you hook up the N64 video output and you ended up with one screen with the VDR’s OSD superimposed over the game.
Wow! This takes me back! I remember there was a video game rental shop near my grandma’s house that had this thing hooked up to a N64. The owner used it solely to run games without needing to own or buy the cartridges. I spent hours there with my brother playing GoldenEye and Mario 64.
Did the owner had any more for sale?
why is it both of your friends have the weirdest hair ? and yours is perfect
I love this comment. Though we have tons of people on the channel so I'm not sure who you're referring to.
@@hard4games OH YOU KNOW.
LOL
His hair absorbs the souls out of his friends hair
No offense to John, because I love the Hard4Games crew, but he reminds me of a low budget Marc from MyLifeinGaming.
That cease and desist joke (which I assume was partly about the emulator websites takedowns) made me think maybe Nintendo is trying to cut down on all the emulation distribution right before their N64 mini console comes out. Chasing down piracy might be easier in Nintendo’s view then negotiating with Rare/third parties. They really want us to only play their games on a N64 classic if/when it comes out (and after you jail break it). Also realizing that .v64 and .z64 come from those types of development hardware is so cool to me for some reason. Awesome video guys!
They will play self burned VCDs I used to use the VCD profile on Nero back in the day. You don't "need" two screens: the idea is that you connect the N64 into the input on the V64 and the V64 switches over for you. The main reason to use a separate cable is for scart/svideo. It's not as nice as something like an everdrive these days, as a lot of games need patches to work around the copy protection. These aren't as easy to find as they were back in the day. Also Bung sold two save cartridges - one for SRAM and one for flash. These were necessary if you wanted to play many games otherwise you borrowed the retail cart in the top to save. You could also dump/load roms and saves via the parallel port. Lastly the PSUs were notoriously unreliable I went through 2 official ones before repurposing a spare Amiga A500 PSU and sticking the weird Svideo connector on it.
Kevin Winfield-Pantoja The DS1 was for SRAM and the DX256 was for EEPROM. They never made one for FlashRAM or dual EEPROM games, but you could save dual EEPROM games to the inserted original cartridge. Also, the main reason I bypassed the video pass-thru was because it degraded the video and SEVERELY distorted the audio. In order to act like it had some legitimate N64 function for end users they added some DSP effect that supposedly added “3D Surround Sound” to your N64 games. ;) I don’t recall it being optional, hence, the bypass.
Yeah, they couldn’t just use VCD playback to claim it had a legitimate consumer reason to interface with an N64, since it did that with or without an N64 attached. ;)
@@emmettturner9452 Thanks for the corrections about the save carts I got it a bit wrong. You could toggle the spatial effect but it may have been a firmware update. The signal degradation is absolutely a valid point but even so you don't need two screens just flip inputs on the TV. :)
oldgraphics I had two different units purchased years apart, one from Carl Industries (Bung’s USA distributor) and the other from Lik-Sang after the import ban. The 3D audio effect was definitely not desirable on either of them, nor was the notable decrease in video quality. Granted, I was more picky about that than most kids and usually didn’t like the results through a simple composite switch or extension.
I don’t recall there being a way to turn it off but there may have been a way. My earlier unit’s manual was written for a completely different (pre-release?) BIOS where you had to hold different combinations of keys to perform different functions even though the shipping FW only responded to menu selections. It even had instructions for dumping a game using certain key combos though it did not ship with a backup-enabled BIOS! Instructions didn’t work though, not even with a backup-enabled BIOS. That was very confusing for me as a teenager but my friend and I eventually got it updated to a backup-enabled BIOS and we proceeded to borrow/rent everything we could get our hands on. ;)
The friend and I had pooled our money to buy the first one and I eventually paid him back his half to own it out-right but he had thrown away the box and manuals. The second one I purchased when I was old enough to work and I still have it boxed with the original manuals and CD (full of Bung promo videos). I’ll pull it down from the shelf tomorrow to see if there was a way to disable it that I just missed all those years ago.
oldgraphics Excuse me? You implied that it was just mine to say that I was “generalizing” based on one. I was relaying my first hand experience and added the context of having seen it across multiple units manufactured years apart. Of course it would, since it’s an advertised “feature.” Unlike my original, my later one had a laptop-style CD-ROM that happened to be DOA but Bung had closed up shop. There were several other minor differences. They were very clearly made years apart at an ISO9000-certified factory that would not be selling them with the same audio defect years apart. Of course, that’s because it’s not a defect. I never said that it was. It’s an undesirable feature that was put there purely to give a piracy device a seemingly legitimate use. They did this for deniability about its primary intended purpose (piracy).
Seriously, dude, you just need to calm down. You got defensive and completely missed the point of me describing multiple units from multiple sources. “I bought one” ... “I bought three!” I mean... *woosh*
The facts are that Bung promoted this 3D audio “enhancement” as a feature... a feature where the PURPOSE is to manipulate the audio. Is it really so hard to believe that this unneeded manipulation is not desirable and is, therefore, a “severe distortion?” If it never bothered you or you found a way to turn it off, great, but don’t pretend that it didn’t exist when it’s absolute fact that it did. Any change from the original audio output is a “distortion.” This isn’t “opinion.”
Kevin Winfield-Pantoja Yeah. Wish mine had more than one. :) This was 1997, the era when front-mounted composite jacks were a new idea that was starting to appear mostly in hotels (for vacation camcorder convenience without risking the hotel TV). If you had an older TV you were lucky to have a single composite input at all! Heck, I remember having to use a VCR as an RF modulator almost everywhere I went before getting a Multi-out RF modulator years later just for the freedom to take it more places. Of course, that didn’t help if I needed to connect the V64 too, but I learned to operate it blindly for most of those situations.
i like the way John handles the doctor's bung
... or is that the bung's doctor?
Or the bung's doctor's bung? 🤔
I still have mine, it was a day 1 purchase and it was friggen expensive in AUD, cant remember exactly but it was around $600 AUD. I justified the price with being able to play backups, prices of N64 games was expensive so just having 10 backup games paid itself off. I had the parallel cable connected from my PC to this back in the day to transfer roms, it took ages to transfer but it worked, this was the time when I didn't have access to a CD Burner and was the only way to transfer roms. Out of the box it came with Bung's official bios which was limited as to what it could do but a specific site had modified versions of Bung's bios. I still have the original box and its advertised as a VCD player.
Still have mine too XD best piece of hardware ever, how many parties with friends and how many weekends out of home? haha
@@mauriinx6514 yep, I bet you and I were the coolest kid around, I knew I was. The only mod I done was swap put the CD driver to something faster, those old IDE cd drives getting pricey.
Can you hook it up on a 64DD with a N64 over it? It would be cool, kinda like an awesome Power Rangers episode.
Love learning and seeing these obscure hardware !
4:57 Whoa that's an ET thumb.
This was legit the first video I've ever watched on this channel. Probably the most calming video I've ever watched about technology ever. Definitely subscribing!
Thanks! And welcome!!
hell yeah Tony + John!!!!!!!
I love my Sunday mornings because of H4G!!!
Jay-Lu Same
Why can’t someone make a V64 V2 with modern USB connectivity, a super fast CD drive, a Micro SD card slot, HDMI (out and in), Ultra CIC 3 chip, Real Time Clock, and all of the other N64 development kit features? (expect for being rare, bulky, and fragile) It would be a 64drive, or Everdrive 64 on steroids.
Ah finally the v64. I had this thing back in the days, but it was faulty as F. Errors all the time. A lot of people including myself changed the CD drive for a faster version (IDE connection only), because the original one was as slow as a snail. The 2 separate 128mb memory banks weren't very reliable either. And try to buy 1 nowadays... Same for that weird brick of a power adapter.. U can't buy them anywhere, but i know 1 company in the UK who made a replacement version (also smaller) and its cheap.
I sold the whole thing last year for about 150dollar.
I regret it now.. I want it back for display-use only in my game room. Stupid me... (hitting my head against the wall now)....
Thanks 4 the great review guys 👍
I still have mine with the upgraded memory banks and the original PSU that amazingly still works. But yeah, errors everywhere. I haven't been able to even write my own discs as there is surprisingly very little info on how to do it. Converted roms to .V64, changed the names of the roms so the system recognizes it, used different methods of burning the CD, but still it won't launch any games. Got a disc with the console, and that works just fine, so obviously I'm doing something wrong.
It's a cool system, but I don't really use it anymore, it's more of a showpiece. I wouldn't wanna fry the PSU when I know it's working, since they indeed seem to go bad very easily.
@@CIubDuck Can’t use UDF like Windows’ built-in CD burning (which didn’t exist at the time) and Adaptex EZ CD Creator. You had to burn it as a standard ISO9660 data CD. I just name all my files with 8.3 file names then drop them into the list on IMGBurn. I then use a short CD label like “N64” with no special characters since you can see that getting long and fancy with spaces and characters causes many of the formats to get grayed out or get converted to underscores in the IMGBurn dialog (meaning they aren’t compatible). Just make the most basic single-session burn you can and it will work.
Didn't even know this thing existed, sick video as usual!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it! :)
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it! :)
Video CD's are picky, I use to record TV on them in 2008-09 while I was at work and the CD's would only play back on the same device I recorded them on.
@Frizzurd
Video CD is the White book standard of CD. It's MPEG-1 video at 240p/288p with similar quality to VHS. It was popular in Asia and easy to make bootlegs. It shouldn't be confused with CDV, a LaserVision derivative.
Did you try plugging the composite cables from the N64 into the Bungs input? It's probably just a pass through for it.
Acclaim used this to make some of the Turok games. Makes sense since they always had money problems so they must have saved big time. I wonder if Nintendo people ever went to their studios since Turok was a N64 exclusive they hid their Bung V64s under the desk or something
4:44 the reason in audio/video input and output is you could feed the n64 output through the unit and get Spatialized Audio, the video in / out saves swapping cables about, pick an option from bung unit, then power on n64, , no messing with cables you could also play video CD with the unit (amongst other things.....), bung got sued into the ground (acording to wiki) around march 2000
The Video-In ports on the back of the Bug Doctor V64 is where you were suppose to plug in the video out from the N64. Then you wouldn't need two separate monitors.
you can mod these to take 52x or 72x speed drives faster loading, there is also firmware to remove dev functions and simplify the menus into just an n64 backup maker/loader, hard disks can be fitted to replace the cd a different firmware gives expanded file structures so you could backup you library and play them all like a game jukebox i once saw one like that built into an arcade cab.
this was years ago before everdrives and such.
I would love to see modern devices like this come out, to be used for modern indy game development on retro consoles
Well, they have everdrives and stuff. So much easier to put a rom on an SD Card.
"economies of scale" might be the phrase you were seaching for when filming. Thanks for making this video. I love my SNES equivalent called Super Wild Card DX2.
It's good for archiving games precisely as they are on the cartridge.... all n64 games have been pretty much backed up but to be safe a copy of all games need to be preserved in multiple locations.
Great video boys, been watching you a long time. Glad you've found ways to continue reviewing the rare and hard to find stuff, that was probably a challenge to get going at first.
You should put in the CD for Wip3out (aka WipEout 3, if you're American) and see what happens. On the one hand, it would probably play the awesome music just fine, but on the other it might just crash because it doesn't know what to do with PS1 games.
Keep up the hard work and high quality in your videos, been a fan for a year now!
I once knew a teacher in computing who had one of these, and actually showed it to me. I became bloody invested in the N64 and Homebrew in general.
Always used to call this the V Doctor, owned one of these years ago was amazing at the time.
Commercial vcds might have only had a very limited run in North America, but I think they were much more popular in Asia as they were a cheaper option. I know they were in Indonesia specifically, but I'm all but certain Honk Kong would been the same.
Been watching for over a year now and this is one my favorites so far. Really enjoyed the video.
Glad to hear it!!! 😀
Neat, I always wanted a V64 Jr when I was younger. I think it supported larger ROMs than most others at the time like the CD64, Z64, or original V64.
Good informative video as always guys! I always wanted one of these as a kid when I would see it listed for sale in old gaming mags, usually under the imports ads(along with the wideboy 64). Thought it looked cool as I was anticipating the 64DD like crazy.
I alway’s tout that that cd drive would give homebrew developers the benefit of taking advantage of the 700MB capacity of cd’s in order to use the full capabilities of the N64, but no, because it only has ram space for presumibly 64MB games in mind, but it is atleast possible to make games for it in a cheaper way.
It only goes up to 256Mbit (32MByte) but that is an UNGODLY amount of RAM for any CD system of the time. Think about it: CD systems could only fit one level or menu in RAM at a time, hence, loading between levels and menus. The 32MB RAM this thing has could hold an entire game, like Zelda, which was also 32MB. This is why PlayStation had to pause and load in the middle of a fight when Shang Tsung morphs in Mortal Kombat Trilogy but the N64 did not (cartridge ROM maps to memory). It would have been the best of both worlds if games were written to use it. Of course, one of the easiest copy protections for a game to do would be to check if the ROM addresses are writable to see if they are running from RAM when they shouldn’t be, so the V64 write-protects the RAM during execution unless you disable that. A CD game written for the N64 merely needs to disable that and control that CD-ROM, which I believe the V64 does allow according to a conversation I has with Ash Evans (ElectronAsh).
Also, the V64jr512 provides 64MB of RAM and can use the PlayStation itself as a CD-ROM ZIF you have the companion device, Bung Multi Xchanger. This plugged into the parallel port of the PlayStation and could then tether to the V64jr. They are both part of the Multi Game Doctor series 3 (“MGD³”) along with stuff like the GB Xchanger and Doctor GB Card.
Woah. It's own video output. I didn't know that. That said I'm assuming the video input is for the N64 so you can use a single screen instead.
Hi, ;)
It actually uses a NOAC as well, which is something I only realised when working on it around 2008.
They didn't bother using the graphics nor sound of the NOAC, though, so no character ROM either.
They instead chose to use an NEC (or Sanyo?) character generator chip (6450GT, but it's been a while,.
That was very likely so it could easily overlay the menu text onto the MPEG video, since the Winbond chipset doesn't have its own OSD.
Another side benefit of the menu (later on) is that you could overlay the menu on the N64 output, so you could choose a ROM after loading a boot emu patch. lol
I did a hack to the BIOS years ago so the V64 could load ROMs from FAT32 HDD / CF. It was my first real attempt at 6502 assembly coding.
It did work OK, but I wasn't caching the filenames etc., so it got really quite slow when looking through more than a few pages of files.
And yep - Technically the N64 would normally pass through the V64 via Composite, btw, so would work on one display without switching.
It has a relay that switches to the external input after the ROM has loaded.
The weird thing is that I mentioned the V64 again on Twitter about three days ago, and then this vid shows up. lol
I, erm, didn't exactly write a nice progress indicator while loading. lol
(not my vid.)
ruclips.net/video/y0y3XfiDffw/видео.html
Oh, and on some of the V64 units, both the NOAC and Gate Array were epoxy blobs, but mine has the proper QFP chips.
The NOAC is identical to the one in the Russian "Dendy" NES clone.
I did actually hook up the NOAC's Composite output to a TV once, wrote some values to the PPU, and got sync.
But, obviously it could never display anything without hooking up a char ROM, and it just wasn't worth the effort.
They could have allowed loading of NES games too, but yeah, it would have added too much cost.
I imagine they tried to market it more as a "VCD player" in some regions, to try to throw Nintendo off the scent, or to get around some taxes perhaps?
ElectronAsh You’re definitely the guy to ask: Was it possible to trigger video playback on the V64’s MPEG hardware programmatically from the N64? A lot of their V64 BIOS updates would talk about “emulator” functions where you could load emulation software on N64 and then load a ROM, and they discussed other things that made it sound like the program running in the N64 could access extra data on the CD, but I never saw anyone do anything cool with it, like the MSU-1 hacks on SD2SNES. I’d love to see what the N64 could do with a 700MB game! ;)
If the N64 could do hardware MPEG playback using the V64’s VCD hardware and video overlay, then it could be seen as a legitimate reason to have VCD other than just claiming that it’s a VCD player (as opposed to a piracy device). Never saw anyone use it like that though, and I followed all of the coding compos (POM’98/‘99, etc).
It would be possible, yep.
In fact, after getting the FAT32 code working, I was attempting to see if I could get MPEG file playback working from HDD / CF.
But, I'd already spent many weeks on the thing by then, and had to keep erasing the EPROM after every code change, which was very tedious, especially with a parallel port programmer.
I only managed to get it to display some garbled MPEG, and didn't spend much time looking into how they buffered things when streaming from the CD drive.
I was hoping to make it show a background video if it had the same name as the game ROM, a bit like the Slide Show function on the OG BIOS.
But yeah, you could in theory even allow the MPEG stuff to trigger off file playback using the N64.
The V64 BIOS was pretty full though, especially with the later versions that had the DS1 manager code included, so it was hard to add too much extra code.
You can basically get the 6502 (NOAC) to read anything from the V64's main DRAM, so you could have some commands that the N64 writes to a certain address, then trigger things that way.
I still don't know exactly how the registers in the Gate Array work, though. The hardest part of all with loading from FAT32 HDD was figuring out which regs the original code set for the different sizes of ROMs.
It took me about three weeks just to get Mario 64 to run for the first time, even though I'd loaded it into DRAM just fine. lol
I have been thinking again recently about hooking up an IDE CD-ROM drive to the N64, though, just for the lolz.
I know the cart bus protocol quite well, and IDE is actually a lot simpler than something like SATA or USB (unless you use a converter).
But, like with all of these projects, there's not much point without some cool software or demos to support it, and I'm not personally one of the uber-clever coders like some of the demoscene guys.
I'm still struggling to finish other projects atm, like the various FPGA cores (32x, PS1, SNES etc), but the 32x is the furthest along now.
And, I never managed to quite finish the Game Gear LCD / HDMI / RGB / Flash board either. I need to get a move-on with that one, as it needs a new PCB respin.
Could you connect a CD emulator, like the ones you can connect an SD or any other card instead of the CD?
Amazing channel. Super underrated!
The Doctor V64 was just a pure Piracy device ;-}
In europe the doctor v64 was mostly sold in videogame magazine for piracy, ton dump and play rom.
I love the fact that the menu on this thing looks straight out of a VCR.
Ever heard of Partner V64? My box says Partner and not Doctor. After Bung got shut down and tried to keep selling they tried to get sneeky. I havent seen another box like this.
Nice to see you guys covering this.
Nintendo: "The Chinese made a knockoff development kit for our console and are charging way less for it!?! Those @#$%ing bungholes!!!!!"
It looks like a VCR with the white odd text and solid colored background.
i love this channel came here from metal jesusrocks channel your just the bees knees
Only on a channel called "Hard4Games" will have a video about something known as the Bung Doctor.
8:40 .....She said ;-) - nice bowie reference.
Great video guys. Nice format!
This channel is so underrated. I actually wonder what your age demographic is like? At 23 I feel like I'm one of your younger viewers, but I could be mistaken.
It's a bell curve. Slight majority in the 30s, slightly lower in the 20s and 40s. Even lower in the teens and 50s. Which makes sense considering we are in our early 30s.
Tijmen den Ouden been watching since 14-15. I’m near 19 now!
You must be a pretty cool dude then! I always assume kids your age have been totally brainwashed by PewDiePie-esque content. Glad to see there's still hope on the horizon.
I might be an anomaly, but I'm a 17 year old female. I really enjoy this sort of stuff.
@smash bash I was more making a comment on the fact that I'm a chick lmao
Just a guess but this thing must've been released by Bung in mid-November 1996
8:06 In Poland you STILL can BUY VCD in Wall Mart like stores (TESCO and other stuff), they are cheaper than most DVD and BD releases tho
So something like The Force Awakens or Infinity War are out on VCD?
No, i don't think so, the latest releases are supported, but some dorect too video movies and old classic could be found somtimes ;P
EDIT:
Also in China and Vietnam there are lots of latest movies released on VCD tot his day
I still have my Dr. V64 but for some reason I cannot get it to read the games from the CD's anymore. Even tried replacing the drive several times.
Cool that it still works today, but like you said, much better and easier alternatives available today.
I had one of these Dr 64's back in the day. Eventually I had to tape the 2 together as a slight knock would make it crash as the port that connected the 2 wasn't great.
Would you be able to do an episode on the Bung Doctor v64 Jr.? There is very little information out there on it.
I will likely do something soon. I’m an original owner and I’ve had people bugging me to sell it for years but I never intended to… then I took a direct hit from an EF-4 tornado and suddenly I’m forced to sell of the parts of my collection that survived. I want to document it before I sell it since I am an original user/owner and know the ins and outs.
Doesn’t this dump roms from carts loaded into it onto PC? It could be your expensive alternative to backing up the rom/iso of games you legally bot but I’m not sure what alternatives there are to it save the backup zip you mentioned earlier
Had one of these when the n64 was at its peak and knew a place where i would get 40 n64 games on one CD for £20. Fun times :)
Did you guys use that AV input? might be a passthrough so you wont need 2 displays.
Missed opportunity to say let’s explore this Bung
Is there a Bung Doctor 64 that has an extra expansion port at the bottom for an N64DD? If not is there a version that does?
Do you think the input av ports might be for the n64 to go into.. it might have been the only way to get the screen to work out on one... might seem crazy but I would try it.
Lol, I actually still have my old CD64. It was super cool when I got it when I was 16 years old. Gotta love it.
i had one of these back in the day. It was a great unit!
There are so many unique rare Nintendo consoles. I wonder how many more Nintendo systems they are hiding that nobody had seen!
You guys have obviously not researched this very much, when this came out, I purchased mine for 260 with a 50.00 S&H. And the ONLY official N64 dev kit that we as non company game devs could get was the blue button version of the N64DD (and that wasn't even a true 'dev' kit) .
Heh.
_Bung Doctor._
5:10 it's not a serial port, it`s a parallel port
So I understand that the 64DD has its own development unit. But what about the N64 itself? Is there a development unit for that or were the N64 games developed on blue disks then flashed to N64 cartridges? How did that work?
I wanted a V64 so much when I was a kid. My mom didn't see the value in it.
NGL, parameter error sounds like a good name for an Indy horror game.
n64 dev kit? Pretty much a Silicon Graphics Indy workstation? At the time those costed companies about $4995 USD! 100 Mhz R4000-series CPU (MIPSIII Architecture), 9GB Hard Disk Drive, XL24 graphics, and 64 MB RAM
They were talking more about the more basic "cartridge emulators", like the Partner-N carts.
They were still used for "development" of sorts, but yeah, writing a proper game back then often needed at least one Indy + Ultra64 dev board.
Funny how Nintwndo still granted licences to those who developed games using what the Big N deemed as illegal.
Christ. That's a bit of a beast! Wonder if you could put a 52x drive in it!
Wouldn't the PC port on the back be a parallel port?
Is it possible that you make your own N64 game
I think that might actually be the one I used to own! Is RAM upgraded to the max?
They almost always are.
Hey guys. Darn I missed the meet n greet. I live in Novi, btw
Whoa whoa whoa! I'm a gaming collector that lives in Wyandotte. We need to meet up and hang out!!
Why wasn't the 64DD just one of these?
How do you add ROMs to cd? Do you just download the rom and drag and drop or do you need to rename anything?
I want a bung doctor solely because it's called a bung doctor
Is John growing a mullet?
I hope so!
I'm calling off the wedding if he is.
Wow
Impressive
I could also imagine a beta revival of twelve tales conker 64
Oh man! I still have my one of these. The power supply died many years ago. Now I want to dig it out and fix it!
Yep... Same with my one... Psu was iffy. Just sitting in a box now 😭
Easy fix. Heck, it’s not much different from the power supply bundled with any external CD-ROM enclosure back then. Just 5v and 12v through a 4 pin mini-DIN.
Just out of curiosity, could one dump a rom using a 3.3 GameShark and the parallel port? I know goldeneye hack veteran Subdrag, has used the parallel port and GameShark to run custom roms on real hardware back in the day before ever drives where popular
Would it be possible to make expansions and play them through one of these?
I prefer modern "development systems" like the Everdrive and SD2SNES
Show us what's in that box with the X-Men #1 cover on it!
“Proctology”
“Dive right up in to”
Are there better ways to make legitimate dumps of your own N64 cartridges?
Yes absolutely. This is pretty archaic.
@@hard4games Oh good. N64 is one of the consoles I haven't gotten to yet, in that regard. Have you/do you plan on covering a modern method? I'd totally give it a watch.
Thanks for the reply!