Game Theory Admiral by Mystery

[camuX]

i own 2 of these systems, looking to buy more, because i originally bought 3, and i have already fried one taking it apart and tinkering with it.  my tinkering background has consisted of making a NES and SNES to PC adapter, i have done many PC mods in the past such as building cases from scratch and modding sound blaster sound cards.  

i know everyone has heard about the Game THeory Admiral, a system made by the aptly named Mystery. There are a few points about this system that are very appealing to me, but many more that are exteremely frustrating.

I bought the NTSC version (blue) of this system, although most retailers at the time said it was pink.  good pictures are on http://www.nesplayer.com/pirates/gta.htm

the system includes a port for a 60 pin famicom game.  despite what ALL retailers including success-hk said in the past, you CAN use this system with a 60 to 72 pin converter to play USA NES games on it.  containing the NES on a chip framework, it does express the same issues other pirate fami's have with certain sound chips.  

oh yeah, and i power this thing with a tip negative AC adapter powering 9-12v just fine.

now this system is basically unplayable using any game famicom or NES, at least the 2 units i have are!  any sort of bump, any sudden movement and the system resets.  i have a 400+ game collection, so i have tried everything.  i have even tried taking some super mario bros. carts out of their casing, i've tried securing games to it, the only way to play is really to keep your hands and arms 100% unmoving.  

what i *really* bought these for was a quick NES on a chip system that i could mount into a 5 1/2" drive bay in my pc.  it includes the A/V out jack and cables, i am going to run it to a TV card, cut a hole in the top of the case to allow games to be loaded.  i have only ONE problem:

the system is advertised (and contains) a controller port.  i havent done a *huge* amount of digging lately, but the last time i checked, there is absolutely NO information regarding this whatsoever, anywhere.  no pinout, not even a name for the thing (and its not written anywhere in the console's packaging)

the plug for the controllers are identical to the one for the A/V outs (looks like a Gameboy Advance add on plug for your lights, system links, etc).  i have no idea what this is, and nothing else i own in heaps and piles of junk from the last 20 years of electronics and computers has the same thing.  the only thing i've tried is wiring a NES controller directly to the plug, using both my NES to PC adapter and a spare controller itself.  doing *anything* to this controller plug so far has resulted in the system refusing to even power on.  

i'm not asking for somoene to spend any time on this, other than to perhaps give me a few ideas on where to start if i were to build an adapter to allow the use of NES controllers (i have piles of NES standards and dogbones so i'm not afraid of ruining any) could anyone here think of how they would go about uncovering this mystery if they had the same inclination, or maybe i am just dumb and this plug has a name that i just have never seen before?  i will take pictures of everything i do, i dont have a whole lot of time right now, but summer is a very slow time at my job so i have lots of nice sunny days, just me and the soldering iron and the workbench in my back yard.

one other thing i did to the system i fried was wire a few IDE cables to the game pak adapter (the yellow thing in the pictures) to a 60 to 72pin adapter then for easy assembly i put a game genie there to act as more of a support for inserting cartridges.  it worked for a while, but after i started playing with the controller port the thing died.  these two acts probably correlate.

[phreak97]

if you can work out which pins on the controller port are ground and +V, you can just try random combos of the others without realy hurting much..

if it is exactly the same as a gameboy link cable, have you tried linking two systems with a gameboy cable? perhaps, to avoid two people looking at the one screen, they made a link feature.

[atom]

Thanks for the link because otherwise I would have had no idea what you were talking about. How many pins are used on that connector? (how many have active traces that you can tell are going to them)

Both the power and gnd will probably go to where ever the power comes from, be it a regulator of some sort or a straight battery. The clock will come from either the NES chip or an oscillator. Oscilattor will be a silver oval shaped thing.  Then their should be your actual data line going straight to the chip. This of course assumes the traces are readable and that your little thingy there has an actual nintendo controller port.

[camuX]

early on in the release of this system, almost every place that mentioned it also mentioned it's dual controller inputs;  however, much like the video output connector and the strange cartridge adapter, these connections look very proprietary.  the video out and the controller ports are shaped (and also fit somewhat) just like a gameboy advance link port.  i havent tried linking two together, i am going to now so thank you for the advice i never would have thought of that.

the unit has input for 2 controllers (supposedly) and its my understanding that they included this for it's TV function to be used as the screen.  tonight i'm going to try linking them together and also, now that i think about it, there is a chance the system will refuse to power on if the controller AND the video cables are not present.  i'm gonna do a lot of fiddling, i hope i dont have to order any more of these afterwards