Skip to content

Any tool/patch/script to enable Famicom APU in a VGM file?

Technical discussion about the VGM format, and all the software you need to handle VGM files.

Moderator: Staff

Any tool/patch/script to enable Famicom APU in a VGM file?

Post by superdeadite »

Hi, I recently acquired the amazing new "GeboFami" hardware VGM player for Famicom.
Very cool device that even uses a custom NEZPlug driver to add support for VRC6, N163, and MMC5 expansion chips!
https://github.com/piigaa-densetu-two-dai/G-EVO_FC

Anyway, I've been testing the FDS support, and this has led to a discovery. A few FDS packs on this site such as Metroid and Arumana no Kiseki,
actually lack the "APU enable" register command. So when played on real hardware, the APU doesn't do anything, and only the FDS audio plays.
Other packs such as Dracula II and Falsion however work fine.

This error appears to be an oversight in the original NSF files floating around the web. To fix this, I've been using NSFImport to convert affected NSF files
into Famitracker modules, and then reexporting them again into new NSF files with DN Famitracker, and finally using NEZPlug once again to generate
new VGM files. The new VGM files this process generates work perfectly, but it's rather time consuming lol.

Any quick ways to patch the current VGM files on this site to inject the "Enable APU" register? Even just a simple "find and replace" code I can use in a hex editor would
save me a lot of time. Thanks in advance!