CPU power up state

The following results are from a US (NTSC) NES, original front-loading design, RP2A03G CPU chip, NES-CPU-07 main board revision, manufactured in 1988. The memory values are probably slightly different for each individual NES console. Please note that you should NOT rely on the state of any registers after Power-UP and especially not the stack register and RAM ($0000-$07FF).

At power-up

P = $34 (IRQ disabled)*

A, X, Y = 0

S = $FD

All internal memory ($0000-$07FF) was consistently set to $ff except for a few bytes, which probably vary from console to console:

• $0008=$F7
• $0009=$EF
• $000a=$DF
• $000f=$BF

$4017 = $00 (frame irq enabled)

$4015 = $00 (all channels disabled)

$4000-$400F = $00 (not sure about $4010-$4013)

• IRQ was first asserted about 1/60 second after power-up, by APU.

After reset

A, X, Y were not affected

S was decremented by 3 (but nothing was written to the stack)

The I (IRQ disable) flag was set to true (status ORed with $04)

The internal memory was unchanged

APU mode in $4017 was unchanged

APU was silenced ($4015 = 0)

Notes

• The golden log of nestest differs from this in the irrelevant bits 5 and 4 of P.

See also

• Power-up state of PPU