NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

The place for all discussion on gaming hardware
Post Reply
mbstone
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 3:27 am

NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by mbstone »

Hi,

I made a super amateur mistake forgot to solder my PPU onto the NESRGB daughter-board. I currently have the PPU sitting in the socket, unsoldered in place. I tried turning it on and the power LED light comes on and an audio hum can be heard, but no video is displayed. The screen makes the slightest glitch for a split second. The palette switch is set to "off". I've tried composite and S-video and get the same issues. I'd try RGB, but my cable hasn't been assembled by Retro Access yet.

NES is NTSC, plugged into a known working RGB-modded CRT (currently set to off). My NESRGB is wired for composite (wired to 'V' not PPUV), S-video, and RGB.

Thanks in advance.
User avatar
NoAffinity
Posts: 1018
Joined: Mon May 07, 2018 5:27 pm
Location: Escondido, CA, USA

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by NoAffinity »

Is this a serious question? You have a major component not making full contact and you're asking if it's necessary and why it doesn't work?

The power led has nothing to do with major component operation.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
Last edited by NoAffinity on Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
TooBeaucoup
Posts: 398
Joined: Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:31 am

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by TooBeaucoup »

Ummm, yeah, you're going to need to solder that in to place.
User avatar
Josh128
Posts: 2123
Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2014 9:01 am

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by Josh128 »

lol theres been quite a few crazy questions popping up in the forums lately. Must speak to the explosion of retro-gaming popularity in the last 5 years or so.

Yes, it must be soldered. :mrgreen:
thebigcheese
Posts: 707
Joined: Sun Aug 21, 2016 5:18 pm

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by thebigcheese »

Just to be clear, I believe the PPU goes into a socket and the socket must be soldered. The PPU does not need to be soldered into the socket. It's highly recommended that you take the PPU out of the socket, solder the socket, then put the PPU back into it.
User avatar
Syntax
Posts: 1774
Joined: Wed Aug 09, 2017 12:10 am
Location: Australia

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by Syntax »

His issue is the AV has a stack adapter, and a certain order in which you need to solder the stack, now he has no access to one row of pins.

If it was me id push on the PPU hard without the socket, power on and see if it runs, then if I was confident solder the PPU from the top and not use the socket.

If its not an AV but a front loader and you accidently soldered the socket in well... you have to remove it as the PPU will sit too high, but it should still run fine.

Make sure the power jumper is soldered if not powering from an external source.
mbstone
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2020 3:27 am

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by mbstone »

Thanks for the replies and for your patience. I'm an analog electronics newb so I appreciate the time people have taken to help me along. I figured since the PPU was sitting unsoldered in the NESRGB socket that sufficient contact was made. Apparently not. I'll be soldering it in the afternoon this Friday with a buddy of mine who has the skills that I lack.

As mentioned before, my CRT TV is RGB modded with a VGA plug, so the only pins that are being used are R-1, G-2, B-3, ground-5, and sync-13 (csync). With that in mind, I've soldered jumpers J3 (using NES power supply), J5 (TV and NES are NTSC), and J8 because TV will be using csync.
User avatar
Bratwurst
Posts: 273
Joined: Mon Jul 31, 2017 3:09 am

Re: NESRGB - work without PPU soldered?

Post by Bratwurst »

Please take a picture of the NESRGB board before you actually do anything.

When people here are talking about soldering the PPU in, they're talking about interfacing that chip directly with the through-holes of the NESRGB board itself. If you've already soldered the included machine-pin socket into place, you DO NOT solder the PPU to that.
Post Reply