SNES / Super Famicom XRGB Mini help

[SaaayGaaa]

Hi all,

I picked up an XRGB mini recently and am starting to receive cables in the mail to get RGB from my consoles.

So far, I have just been using my AES and Super Famicom via S-Video. All is working fine.

Today, my official Nintendo Super Famicom RGB cable arrived in the mail. I hooked everything up, pressed the RGB button on the XRGB mini remote and got the following:



That photo is with the brightness cranked. If I have it at normal levels, you can just make out the outlines of characters.

I tried playing around with different settings, but no luck. I also tried both my 1 & 2 chip PAL systems. The image is the same from all three consoles. Am I missing something? I guess all things are either pointing to a dodgy cable or user error.... Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Fudoh]

PAL cables and NTSC cables are not the same on the SFC/SNES. One uses capacitors while the others don't. You obviously have the wrong cable. Check the gamesx.com SNES A/V output guide to see the differences.

[SaaayGaaa]

PAL cables and NTSC cables are not the same on the SFC/SNES. One uses capacitors while the others don't. You obviously have the wrong cable. Check the gamesx.com SNES A/V output guide to see the differences.

Thanks for pointing me to the site. I assumed my cable was the Japanese RGB cable as I purchased it in Japan (without a box). If I understood the site correctly, my cable should have caps in series. I've opened the cable and it does. So... I'm using an NTSC cable with a Super Famicom. Odd that I get exactly the same picture results with either PAL or NTSC consoles (I just tried my PAL SNESs as a test, intention was always to use the Super Famicom).

Caps look ok, but perhaps its worth changing them?

EDIT: Just to clarify, the image posted is the display output that I'm getting from a Super Famicom, hooked up to the XRGB Mini via an official RGB cable with 220uF caps. I believe that is the right cable for this console...?

[Fudoh]

that's weird then. I have the same setup and it works fine with a number of SFC units. I also see that all colors are present, so it's also the correct pinout.

Certainly worth a shot to replace the caps.

[SaaayGaaa]

Thanks for confirming that I've got things hooked up correctly (as best you can based on the info I've provided, anyway...).

I don't have any 220uF polarised caps on hand, so it'll have to wait a day or two. Hopefully either my AES or Saturn cables will turn up shortly. I really want to confirm that nothing is wrong with my XRGB

[kamiboy]

Your XRGB is fine, believe me. I have the exact same problem and it was the same whether I hook it up to a LCD via my XRGB or directly to a CRT. I think there is a particular model of the North American SNES that does not work with the official SFC JP21 SCART for some unknown reason. Either that or both our cables have bad caps.

Anyway, I was a bit disappointed at first, but then I just switched to an S-video cable which looked pretty good. To my eyes there is no discernible differences between S-video and SCART for my other systems and S-video always just simply works whereas RGB has a nasty habit of being riddled with strange issues on most systems, what with cables not working, sound buzzing, jail bars and what have you. So when there is a choice I usually go with S-Video.

Of course it would be interesting to know why some NTSC SNES models do not work with that cable when other models do. If replacing the caps does the trick let it be known.

[Sparky]

If you have a solder iron try tapping the ground pin on the Super Famicom RGB cable to the metal shielding of the SCART connector. Use the pinout from gamesx.com to find the ground pin. I had a similar picture with a custom cable I made that was missing the ground on the metal shielding of the SCART connector. Let me know if you need more information.

[ceramiclion]

I am having the exact same issue but with an XRGB-2 plus. Has anyone found a solution to this?

[ceramiclion]

well what do you know. Sparky is absolutely right the problem was the ground. Turns out that I had a cheap SCART cable that didn't have the ground connected to the metal shielding. It was a simple as that. The moment the connection is made the screen clears up. Thanks Sparky! Hope is not too late.

[Fudoh]

glad to hear that it worked out and was an easy fix like this!

[ceramiclion]

glad to hear that it worked out and was an easy fix like this!

Yeah, I personally didn't think it would work at first.
Thanks to you too Fudoh, you're always there to lend a helping hand.

[kamiboy]

I might as well mention for posterity that if you have an official Super Famicom JP21 cable that gives you a picture like above then your problem is leaking capacitors.

That damn cable is a deuce to open, but better be a bit rough with it and get it opened as those capacitors have most likely left a rather dangerous mess of corrosive fluids inside that housing.

Curse whoever was responsible for all those sub-par early 90's capacitors.