This is a guide to ripping NSF's in a detailed manner. A NSF is a sound format file that has been ripped from a NES game system ROM. The process of ripping a NSF from the ROM image requires careful study and detailed observation. The sound is often independent from the other code in the game and can be removed for play in a NSF file. As many know the entire program is encoded on the game cartridge ROM. You have your PRG (program ROM) that is encoded on a chip along with your sound driver that is embedded in the PRG in most cases. The sound driver is then extracted in all it's 5 channels and can be heard with a NSF player. Kevin Horton and Chris Covell are the ones that started the NSF format and we are very grateful to them for the creation of this format. Upon hearing NSF's for the first time you will appreciate the emulated sound Coming from the player. And thanks for that. It is well worth ripping NSF's when you understand how great they sound. In order to extract the data you must analyze the data. And this is where this NSF ripping guide will come in handy. This guide assumes that you know nothing about NSF ripping and even a beginner can rip NSF's eventually after reading and using this guide. After reading this guide you should be able to rip NSF's and you will become the "ripper"
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This guide is an adaptation of the original NSF Ripping guide. The original was written by Izumi and is in Japanese. I have translated quite abit of the guide and also rewrote some of the guide and changed some of the data so that it's more accurate. Also this guide was written quite some time ago and now I have figured out new methods and also there is better tools that you can use and this doc will reflect this.
So you have 20 levels of NSF ripping where the lower levels are easy to rip and the higher levels get really hard. For each level I will show you how to rip them and in some cases I will let you do the work instead of giving you the answer.
We will start you out at level 0. Level 0 is preparation. In this level you will begin and gather tools and docs. You will also learn about the format and other things. Yes, you gotta start somewhere and so this ends the introduction.