NESRGB board available now

[mvsfan]

I like what skips did with the headers. Have you tried ebay? just search for 1x14p and 1x4p dupont connector. you can get a whole box of them for a few bucks.

also if you flip the header the other way and raise it up a bit all of the wires will be facing the back of the nes and you wont have to remove the expansion port. saves a ton of de soldering.

in my frontloader I flipped all my wires the other way when i hard soldered them to the nesrgb so that they were facing the back and it made it easier to route everything back in and allowed me to use shorter wires. i just wish i had used headers too.

[thebert]

Cool, I'm glad there's no SMD soldering involved.
Too bad for more wait time, but for now, once I receive the boards, I'm going to prep 'em like Skips has: headers for easy connections. Keeps it all clean, and if I ever needed to pull the NESRGB out, it'd be much easier without having to completely de-solder every wire.

Can you recommend an online store when I can get headers, connectors, ribbon cable, etc? I'd like to set mine up the same way, but I'm unsure of a good place to get components like that.

I believe Skips posted it earlier in the thread.

**edit: Actually, it was shadowkn55:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 46#p966946

Thanks! Found another site mentioned by Skips too.

Thanks mvsfan. I'll check ebay too.

Just as an easy reference for anyone interested:
http://www.jameco.com
http://www.mouser.com

[leonk]

I have fixed the problem in 'software'. All NESRGB units sent out in the last two weeks will need to be reprogrammed. Today I placed an order for 30 USB JTAG programmers, they should show up here in about a week. That gives me time to test the HDL 'software' thoroughly and make sure there are no other problems lurking.

I will send an email to all affected customers shortly. Please stand by for more news on the NESRGB Field Reprogramming Programme.

Are you able to share what went wrong?

[CkRtech]

Got mine today. It is tough to hold off on the work.

[Jeppen]

I have fixed the problem in 'software'. All NESRGB units sent out in the last two weeks will need to be reprogrammed. Today I placed an order for 30 USB JTAG programmers, they should show up here in about a week. That gives me time to test the HDL 'software' thoroughly and make sure there are no other problems lurking.

I will send an email to all affected customers shortly. Please stand by for more news on the NESRGB Field Reprogramming Programme.

That is awesome!

I just got mine installed and my fingers are all burnt and bleeding, so that is some extremely welcome news!!


Btw, i'm having trouble getting the audio to work, i wired Pin 1 and 2 (A + B) directly to the L and R pins on the mini-din connector to get stereo, doesn't work.. what am i missing here?

[CkRtech]

Btw, i'm having trouble getting the audio to work, i wired Pin 1 and 2 (A + B) directly to the L and R pins on the mini-din connector to get stereo, doesn't work.. what am i missing here?

...ground?

[Elrinth]

@Jeppen take Pics and vid and share!

[McCracAttack]

I just got mine installed and my fingers are all burnt and bleeding, so that is some extremely welcome news!!

Yikes! I mean, good on you for rolling up your sleeves and doing the mod but I kinda want to hear what went wrong there.

[CkRtech]

Ahh man. I am now a part of the PPU extraction club, and i have decided to give my neck the rest of the night off.

[Jeppen]

@Jeppen take Pics and vid and share!

haha aaah you just want to see me in pain!

I just got mine installed and my fingers are all burnt and bleeding, so that is some extremely welcome news!!

Yikes! I mean, good on you for rolling up your sleeves and doing the mod but I kinda want to hear what went wrong there.

: )
First it was the PPU stages of eagerness -> mildly unhappy -> verbal discontent -> misery -> declined physical condition -> acceptance -> satisfaction.

I had everything put together according to the diagram, plugged it and the color was all blue... ok back to the soldering station.
Checked the RGB connector plate for continuity and found some open connections, so to make sure everything works before making it look nice I soldered all wires from the plat to the RGB connector pins, which itself was a total PAIN.

Didn't work, but this time I had no picture, so I desoldered the wires and flipped the RGB connector, still no picture.

After another round I plugged in the RGB cable and check continuity from the NESRGB all they way to the tip of the cable, ground shield wasn't working.

So I took my second RGB connector, thinking the first one was broken after all my soldering/desoldering/soldering/desoldering, stillt he same problem.

Though I noticed my RGB cable's ground shield (an old grey printer cable I think, that I rewired to be straight pin to pin) seemed a bit to small and didn't really make contact with the RGB connector, pretty demoralized by now I just BENT the cable ground so it would touch SOMETHING inside the connector.

That worked, I now had continuity

Still no god damn picture though.


Anyway, I could go on

In the end I had some bad solderings shorting out on the RGB connector and I needed to use Composite Sync from the NESRGB, I tried both but couldn't get Composite Video Sync to work with my XRGB-mini, except that first time when it was wired after the diagram and I got the blue colored Super Mario Bros, no idea what that was about.

Something I found confusing was which way you should connect the RGB video connector plate to the RGB connector pins.


Also when removing the PPU, one trick I learnt was holding the NES board on high edge keeping the soldering iron on one side while being ready to solder-suck on the other, that went sooooooo much faster and left the hole much cleaner.

Then when actually removing it, I took a thin, thin wire and stuck it under the PPU and grabbed the other end, pulling it carefully out with both of those wire ends.
Well I tried to be careful, but it was more like.. caaareful... caaaareeefuuul *SHLOPP!!!*.. shit did something break no we're ok, we're ok *phew*.

Also I totally screwed up the pin headers haha.. I put the double sided pins inside the NES board and then the one sided pins into the NESRGB, so it's upside down.

I guess the result is more or less the same, but when I noticed it I was like -oh no *sigh*.


So if you wish to be a bitter man with no skin on your fingers for 12 hours, I definitely recommend doing this yourself.
If you value your life and don't want to shorten your life with 4 years, then get a modder to do it for you.

But I had a lot of fun too and really enjoyed doing it

[Jeppen]

Btw, i'm having trouble getting the audio to work, i wired Pin 1 and 2 (A + B) directly to the L and R pins on the mini-din connector to get stereo, doesn't work.. what am i missing here?

...ground?

Ok I wasn't totally truthful ;D

I wired the pin 1 and 2 out from the NESRGB in two separate cables, going to a 1 microF cap (negative leg) to a pot middle leg and the other to the left leg, from there the cables go into the RGB connector's audio left and right. (one cable in each of course).

How should I ground those?

[Jeppen]

I don't know much about this, but tested a wire from another ground pin and held it against one of the audio pin on the RGB connector, to no avail.
I also tried it against the pot legs and cap, no difference except some sporadic crackling as they touched.

No idea what to do

[darcagn]

The A and B pins aren't outputs, they're inputs. You need to solder a wire from CPU pin 1 to A and another wire from CPU pin 2 to B. The NESRGB then takes those two inputs, mixes them together, amplifies them, and outputs a mono signal on the O pin.

If you want NES "fake stereo," then you'll have to build your own separate amplifier.

[darcagn]

I got my NESRGB in yesterday and spent the day installing it. It's now 8am and I'm still up playing with my NES!

A few things:

1. What an amazing picture! I loved my RGB PPU NES, but man, this is even better. No jailbars, no artifacts, just crystal clear razor sharp graphics. I'm playing on a 51" Samsung plasma (with a beautiful deep black, which is great for NES games) with an XRGB-mini Framemeister. I'm also running an Everdrive N8. This is the perfect setup for an NES gamer. I'm in heaven.

2. I feel very bad for Tim, this will be a clusterfuck of a situation to figure out logistically.

3. On the flip-side, I'm pretty shocked he hasn't at least emailed his customers yet and there's no mention of this on his site. If I didn't happen to visit this forum then I wouldn't have even known there was a problem until I hooked up my board, discovered it first-hand, spent a few hours frustratingly tracing all my connections, and then finally emailing Tim for support. Tim, everyone here is being very understanding and we understand shit happens. But please communicate with us.

4. Depending on the game, the glitch could be completely unnoticeable/non-existent, to just a minor nuisance, to a really annoying issue, all the way to unplayable (platforms not visible, etc.). To describe it simply, it turns light gray the background and any visual elements relying on the color of the background. It most often occurs with black backgrounds, but not always. Interestingly enough, it can make some elements that are supposed to be invisible--black sprites on a black background--and make them visible by overlaying the black sprite on a light gray background.

5. As for my setup, my cable was a 6" 8-pin mini din cable and a 6" 3.5mm cable from eBay, I hacked one end off of each and combined them into a SCART connector on that end. So basically, like Tim's cables except I made my own (and without the charge pump). On the NES I of course used the 8-pin mini din connector and 3.5mm jack. I didn't bother with a jack for S-video. I didn't feel like cutting a hole for the palette switcher so I just shorted the standard NES palette pin to ground. I will probably do this correctly when I open up the NES next time to fix the NESRGB. I at least want the switch so I can use composite if I need to (in case I want to use my NES away from my XRGB-mini for whatever reason).

6. I think the instructions could use a little help, there were some things that weren't difficult to figure out but could have been better explained. Like the situation above.

7. Hopefully, this glitch situation gets figured out easily. I have some of the original SRAM chips on their way from Mouser right now, but I'd ultimately rather update the code on the board instead if that will fix it, if it will be possible to do myself. The chips are smaller and will be more difficult to solder than I originally expected.

8. Expansion audio! Yes, I got expansion audio working perfectly on the NESRGB. This is expansion audio coming directly from an Everdrive N8 (the NES version, not the Famicom version). Previously on this NES I had expansion slot pin 3 connected to pin 9 using two 22kohm resistors (you're supposed to use one 47kohm resistor, but I didn't have any laying around and figured 2x22kohm would suffice). The instructions posted earlier were to remove the pin 3 to 9 wire, and solder pin 9 to a spot on the NESRGB board with a 22kohm resistor. I tried this. It works, but I don't know why the image posted earlier suggested to ditch the 47kohm resistor for a 22kohm one. 22kohm makes the expansion audio mixed WAY too loud. The expansion audio drowns out the in-system audio and plays loudly on my speakers even at low volume settings. I replaced the 22kohm resistor with 2x22kohm resistors and it sounded close to what it should. You can hear it in the video here.

So I suggest sticking with the 47kohm resistor and instead of connecting exp. pin 3 and pin 9, connect pin 9 to the this point here:



You can bridge those two resistors, they're connected together there already anyway.

9. And finally, pictures!

The victim:



(the orange wire in the picture above is a wire grounding a pin of the lockout chip to disable it.)

The bottom side of the victim:

(the orange wire in the picture below is for my original expansion audio mod.)



The tool used. Simple desoldering iron I bought from Radio Shack a while back:



PPU replaced with socket headers:



Composite PPU added to NESRGB board:



Had to lay down those capacitors for the NESRGB board to clear. Pulled the legs out a bit and added some additional solder to the joint to make sure the connections were still fine.



The board, now placed in its socket. Note that at this point I attempted to power the board up to make sure the PPU and the board were still all OK. I figured since no palette was selected, it would go into bypass mode and work. That wasn't the case--even in bypass mode, the NESRGB board must be powered for the NES to function. It wasn't until I wired the regulator up that I could get it to bypass.



Everything wired up! You can see that I have the expansion audio wired up as well (the white wire):



The back side of both connectors:



The finished product:



The finished product, plugged in:



Mega Man III title screen. Uh oh... something's wrong!



But... dem pixels, tho!




Super Mario Bros 3.





And here again is a video of me playing Akumajou Densetsu. The camera has a hard time with a bloom effect in the opening, but once you get into the game you can see how beautiful the picture is with the NESRGB.

[kamiboy]

My package arrived today, but I am not opening it. I belive you can send unopened packages back to sender for free by taking it back to the post office and saying that you refuse to accept it.

If these have to go back to be reprogrammed then this is one way to save money on shipping.

[lettuce]

Nice Post darcagn, ill try the expansion audio with a 44k resistor.

Regarding the mini din socket, i think im going to have to mod mine slightly. I have noticed that after having it installed for a while the scoket isnt that great due to the mini din male cable you plug into it being on the heavy side and i fear after a while that the din socket will become temperamental and need replacing due to the sockets becoming lose. I think i might do the same as what the MegaDrive 2 mini din socket is like, where its set back inside the console and the hole in the rear of the console is a nice tight fit for the mini din male cable housing to fit into, thus supporting the cable and not causing it to sag and rely on the mini din socket to hold the weight of the cable

[darcagn]

Nice Post darcagn, ill try the expansion audio with a 44k resistor.

I would go with 47k since that was what was originally prescribed. I am just using 2x22k because that's what I have laying around.

[mvsfan]

nice work, darcagon. But it looks like that capacitor by the cart connector is bulging. Probably time for a cap kit while you are installing the nesrgb.

you can get them at console5.com.

[darcagn]

nice work, darcagon. But it looks like that capacitor by the cart connector is bulging. Probably time for a cap kit while you are installing the nesrgb.

you can get them at console5.com.

Hmm, I think it's just the way the reflection is lighting it. I think I'd notice if a cap was bulging, but to be honest I wasn't really paying that much attention. It's probably fine, but I'll double check when I open it to fix the NESRGB. Thanks for the link, looks like they have plenty of useful information.

[lettuce]

Ah crap maybe the expansion audio mod was working on my NES, i much have just been too stupid to distinguish the difference. This is what Akumajou Densetsu sounds like without the mod carried out on the NES......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipFgI1x- ... e=youtu.be

Very noticable now then

To me when i tried the mod the 22k resistor didnt seem to make the expansion audio sound too loud at all, as if i had of done im sure i would have noticed that!? I'll reapply the mod and then do another vid with the mod carried out

[Vigormortis]

Were you trying to get the sound of the final example in Jason's video? His last example was actually both the NES and Famicom versions playing at the same time for comparison, so it would be impossible to achieve no matter what mod you tried . The NES Everdrive actually has a high and low setting for expansion audio output. Maybe the 22k resistor is for the low setting? When I get mine in, I'm gonna put a potentiometer in there at first, find the perfect mixing volume, then measure the resistance on the pot and replace it with the appropriate resistor. My reference is going to be this recording made from the real cartridge on a Sharp Twin Famicom.

My package arrived today, but I am not opening it. I belive you can send unopened packages back to sender for free by taking it back to the post office and saying that you refuse to accept it.

If these have to go back to be reprogrammed then this is one way to save money on shipping.

Tim mentioned that he would be emailing affected customers with details for field reprogramming, so hopefully the solution isn't gonna involve sending these boards back to Australia. A USB programmer for these things costs less than shipping the board one way back to Australia (at least from the United States).

[lettuce]

Were you trying to get the sound of the final example in Jason's video? His last example was actually both the NES and Famicom versions playing at the same time for comparison, so it would be impossible to achieve no matter what mod you tried .

My package arrived today, but I am not opening it. I belive you can send unopened packages back to sender for free by taking it back to the post office and saying that you refuse to accept it.

If these have to go back to be reprogrammed then this is one way to save money on shipping.

Well, Tim mentioned that he would be emailing affected customers with details for field reprogramming, so hopefully the solution isn't gonna involve sending these boards back to Australia. A USB programmer for these things costs less than shipping the board one way back to Australia (at least from the United States).

Nah, i just couldnt tell if i was getting the expansion audio or not when i first did the mod so i wasnt sure if the mod was working or not (now i know it was), it didnt occur to me that if the mod wasnt carried out then there would be samples missing from the audio track of the intro, but there is, andits easy to tell that your getting the expansion audio. As without it you notice it straight away as demonstrated in my video above

[ApolloBoy]

Everything wired up! You can see that I have the expansion audio wired up as well (the white wire):

Holy shit those are some thick wires

[lettuce]

Ah crap maybe the expansion audio mod was working on my NES, i much have just been too stupid to distinguish the difference. This is what Akumajou Densetsu sounds like without the mod carried out on the NES......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipFgI1x- ... e=youtu.be

Very noticable now then

To me when i tried the mod the 22k resistor didnt seem to make the expansion audio sound too loud at all, as if i had of done im sure i would have noticed that!? I'll reapply the mod and then do another vid with the mod carried out

Ok here a video with the expansion audio mod wth a 22k resistor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GUygyhN ... e=youtu.be

does seem like the 22k resistor is too loud??.....so a 47k resistor is suggested then? Also notice some slight audio interference now and again is that because of the 22k resistor?

EDIT: Or though im not noticing that interference when playing it here, just on the capture file, so maybe something happening in the capturing process thats causing that

[ApolloBoy]

does seem like the 22k resistor is too loud??.....so a 47k resistor is suggested then?

Uh yeah, that's loud to the point where you almost can't even hear the 2A03 audio. I'd go for the 47k ohm resistor without a doubt.

[lettuce]

does seem like the 22k resistor is too loud??.....so a 47k resistor is suggested then?

Uh yeah, that's loud to the point where you almost can't even hear the 2A03 audio. I'd go for the 47k ohm resistor without a doubt.

ok will do, thanks.

Whats 47k, yellow, purple, orange band right, i have a set here where the 4th band is gold. which is 5% tolerance...guess that should be ok

[McCracAttack]

And here again is a video of me playing Akumajou Densetsu. The camera has a hard time with a bloom effect in the opening, but once you get into the game you can see how beautiful the picture is with the NESRGB.

Oh that's strange. With my RGB board Akumajou Densetsu is affected by the bad chip.

[McCracAttack]

So if you wish to be a bitter man with no skin on your fingers for 12 hours, I definitely recommend doing this yourself.
If you value your life and don't want to shorten your life with 4 years, then get a modder to do it for you.

But I had a lot of fun too and really enjoyed doing it

Glad to hear it turned out. I was tempted so many times just to jam a screw driver under that PPU and just wrench it off. I had to tell myself over and over again to go slow and just keep de-soldering, re-soldering, and de-soldering until all the pins wiggled freely when poked. Even then I had to wiggle the chip back a forth for a while before it popped free. It ended up taking me a few very tedious hours. I can't image doing it with just de-soldering braid.

[lettuce]

Ah crap maybe the expansion audio mod was working on my NES, i much have just been too stupid to distinguish the difference. This is what Akumajou Densetsu sounds like without the mod carried out on the NES......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipFgI1x- ... e=youtu.be

Very noticable now then

To me when i tried the mod the 22k resistor didnt seem to make the expansion audio sound too loud at all, as if i had of done im sure i would have noticed that!? I'll reapply the mod and then do another vid with the mod carried out

Ok here a video with the expansion audio mod wth a 22k resistor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GUygyhN ... e=youtu.be

does seem like the 22k resistor is too loud??.....so a 47k resistor is suggested then? Also notice some slight audio interference now and again is that because of the 22k resistor?

EDIT: Or though im not noticing that interference when playing it here, just on the capture file, so maybe something happening in the capturing process thats causing that

Ok now with 47k resistor....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd-s5cmK ... e=youtu.be

thoughts??

[Elrinth]

@McCracAttack: is that the original akumajou densetsu or the hacked "translated" version which the lettuce is running?

@lettuce: that sounds much better mixed...