MMC4

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MMC4
FxROM
Company Nintendo
Games 3 in NesCartDB
Complexity ASIC
Boards FJROM, FKROM
Pinout MMC4 pinout
PRG ROM capacity 256K
PRG ROM window 16K + 16K fixed
PRG RAM capacity 8K
PRG RAM window 8K
CHR capacity 128K
CHR window 4K + 4K (triggered)
Nametable mirroring H or V, switchable
Bus conflicts No
IRQ No
Audio No
iNES mappers 010

The Nintendo MMC4 is an ASIC mapper, used on the FxROM board set. The iNES format assigns mapper 10 to these boards. The chip first appeared in August 1988.

Nintendo's MMC2, used in PxROM boards, is a similar mapper with 8 KB switchable PRG ROM banks, a 24 KB fixed PRG ROM bank, no PRG RAM, and a slightly different behaviour in auto-switching on the left (low) pattern table. This page only explains the differences, see MMC2 for full details on the rest of the mapper.

Banks

  • CPU $6000-$7FFF: 8 KB fixed PRG RAM bank
  • CPU $8000-$BFFF: 16 KB switchable PRG ROM bank
  • CPU $C000-$FFFF: 16 KB PRG ROM bank, fixed to the last bank
  • PPU $0000-$0FFF: Two 4 KB switchable CHR ROM banks
  • PPU $1000-$1FFF: Two 4 KB switchable CHR ROM banks

When the PPU reads from specific tiles in the pattern table during rendering, the MMC4 sets a latch that tells it to use a different 4 KB bank number. On the background layer, this has the effect of setting a different bank for all tiles to the right of a given tile, virtually increasing the tile count limit from 256 to 512 without monopolising the CPU.

  • PPU reads $0FD8 through $0FDF: latch 0 is set to $FD
  • PPU reads $0FE8 through $0FEF: latch 0 is set to $FE
  • PPU reads $1FD8 through $1FDF: latch 1 is set to $FD
  • PPU reads $1FE8 through $1FEF: latch 1 is set to $FE

Registers

The MMC4 has 6 registers at $A000-$AFFF, $B000-$BFFF, $C000-$CFFF, $D000-$DFFF, $E000-$EFFF and $F000-$FFFF. Only $A000-$AFFF is covered here. For the rest of the registers, see MMC2.

PRG ROM bank select ($A000-$AFFF)

7  bit  0
---- ----
xxxx PPPP
     ||||
     ++++- Select 16 KB PRG ROM bank for CPU $8000-$BFFF

Hardware

The MMC4 is implemented in a 44-pin TQFP package: MMC4 pinout

Only one revision is known to exist.

See also