NESRGB board available now

[Bancho]

Yeah i think to much heat was to blame. And your right about feeding some fresh solder into the old solder. As i say, it was a practice to see how i got on. Really don't want to wreck my famicom

[Zer0-2k11]

Alright i know it's been a while since i said i would compare the Hakko 808 and the Aoyue 474++ desoldering stations. Not much could be said other than is the Aoyue 474A++ turned out to be a great desoldering station and works just as well as the ole 808. Long story short, with the 474A++, it has an advantage of having a better grip to tip ratio and digital temperature display (Better than the 808's dial). The disadvantage with the 474 is the tip life is shorter compared to the Hakko equivalent but don't let it stop you though, the tips hold strong for a good while. Also if you can, replace the Aoyue filters with the Hakko filters and you'll have an awesome station that will last you a long time.

When using any desoldering station/tool with a through hole pad that's connected to a decent sized copper plane or if your having trouble with stubborn pins, try adding solder while heating up the pad. After adding solder, count to 5 and pull the trigger or release the pump. This technique works very well so far and with no damage to any IC's (PPU in this case with the NESRGB installation).

Ordered my NESRGB on the 18th of May from Tim and looking forward to installation of it and possibly offer services to people in Canada and the US if no one can take on work there. Of course i'll follow with adding installation pics.

[Ed Oscuro]

When I desoldered a cap with the 808, I didn't do any counting stuff - I looked for the solder to wet before I hit the trigger. No worries about lifting if you do it quick. Unless I'm mistaken, once the solder has wet in one point, it should bet wet on both sides of the via.

Nice review though, good to hear there are some reasonable budget alternatives for stuff! I'll be interested to hear from somebody about the new Hakko 808 replacement once that's in somebody's hands.

[Voultar]

The best upgrade for any of the 474 variants is to use real Hakko filters.

[mvsfan]

Has anyone tried a 993A desoldering tool?

its an inexpensive 808 clone. I havent found any reviews on it anywhere.

[Einzelherz]

Well my board showed up in 6 days from Aus>UK so that was pretty impressive.

I'm just waiting for my AV Famicom to turn up after selling my PAL toaster.

I'm ok at soldering but not really done any de-soldering before, so ! decided to have a practice on a Pilotwings board I had spare which I removed the DSP chip using the stove method which worked brilliantly actually but I don't fancy waiving a famicom board over a stove lol. I used one of those cheap Maplin £16 de-soldering iron/pump combos. Worked for most of the pins but there were one or two stubborn pins. I learnt a lot doing this and will be using some wick on the top side to remove some of the solder before attacking the bottom. It looked like one of the pin holes was slightly damaged on my practice but that was one of the stubborn pins and probably used to much heat trying to suck out the solder.

Took me about 45 mins to get the chip out. Don't think I did to bad for my first attempt. It's most definitely worth practising on something before working on the precious famicom board!



Excited now to get the board in and enjoy the RGB quality on my trinitron

A trick I learned was to make sure each pin moves freely with finger pressure. You should never have to force-pull a chip. If it's stuck and there's not much solder in the eyelet, add more and it'll suck out easier.

[ApolloBoy]

I recently got a new revision NESRGB for one of my regular modding customers, and currently I have it installed in my AV Famicom until my customer sends out his NES top loader for modding. It was labeled as having the 1.5 firmware, but I just got through some testing and I haven't experienced any kind of glitches. It's definitely not the old 1.4 firmware since Orb 3D works just fine. I wonder if what Pasky said earlier might have some truth behind it...

[ms06fz]

I recently got a new revision NESRGB for one of my regular modding customers, and currently I have it installed in my AV Famicom until my customer sends out his NES top loader for modding. It was labeled as having the 1.5 firmware, but I just got through some testing and I haven't experienced any kind of glitches. It's definitely not the old 1.4 firmware since Orb 3D works just fine. I wonder if what Pasky said earlier might have some truth behind it...

Yeah, I just installed the second of my two NESRGB boards (marked 1.5) and neither has had the SMB2 issue. I've tried Metroid as well but I don't know what to look for there. I haven't got Orb3D to test with...

Side note: I bought an AV-Multiout to S-Video cable for my AV Famicom, and if I hook up just the Luma signal to a composite input while that cable is connected to the system, I see a bit of faint color in the picture. So I guess there's some crosstalk in the cable. How significant of a problem is that likely to be? Should I be demanding my money back for this cable?

Also side note: It feels so good to have the mod finished on my AV Fami! It's so perfect now. What a lovely little machine.

[viletim]

What line(s) need to be cut on the AV Famicom board in order to use audio from the NESRGB?

None, actually. It is only necessary to solder some wires between the R,G,B points and the A/V connector. Everything else is optional.

2. I accidentally mounted the adapter board upside down, but that shouldn't matter, should it? Doesn't it just shift the pins?

No, pins 14-17 and 20 are connected to the ground plane.

Mounting the adapter board on upside down will not work, but it should not cause damange (unless it is left running like that, perhaps). To fix it mount the NESRGB board in a vice and cut the adapter board off using a hacksaw with a sharp blade. Cut through the pins that hold them together. Don't worry about the adapter - destroy it. Then remove each pin from the NESRGB board one by one. Buy a replacement adapter board but first send me an email and I'll have some round pind included with the order.

Yeah there's all kinds of simple circuits that could do the "cycle through selections" thing. The 4017 would be a pretty natural choice too. But using a micro would let me do things like work the power LED to indicate which palette's selected, do something different when the button's held down, or save the selection and use it again on the next boot.

It also would save the state through power cycles. That's the most important thing. Otherwise I would just implement it in the PLD logic.

Interestingly enough, my front-loader install (still on v1.5, my USB blaster is still in the mail) doesn't get that background glitch with Super Mario 2. I wonder why.

The US distributor had not sent out all orders by the time v1.7 was released. During the Memorial Day long weekend he updated the remaining boards in stock to v1.7. About five orders were affected.

I haven't investigated this issue myself yet, (not that I know a whole lot about this stuff) so I'm just kind of grasping at straws here - but I am taking your discoveries into account here. The interference is apparently present to some degree in the RGB signal, and then encoding it to S-Video makes it worse.

I'm trying to account for possible sources of this interference, and it seems to me that the PPU's composite signal is a strong possibility. Either something in the signal itself, or something in the other connections made to the signal, carrying interference from elsewhere in the NES back to the NESRGB. If the interference is coming from the NES itself via the PPU composite, then the interference may either be getting through the sync stripper, or jumping over to another line via crosstalk.

What Voultar complains in s-video is surely interference from the chroma signal into the luma. I don't know how to fix it other than use good cables and connections. I also can't reproduce it with my equipment. There's no much I can do until I borrow an LCD tv with s-video inputs from somebody.

While the NESRGB is in operation there is no chroma coming from the PPU. Plug the original video output into a TV and you will see only two colours - grey and white. This is definitely not the source of any interference.

For anybody seeing interference on RGB video. You can try to use a small piece of wire to link pins 1 and 6 of the video encoder (pin 6 is near J4). This shorts the chroma subcarrier input of the video encoder to ground. There is a 2k series resistor so it will not trouble the PLD.

Solid colors are definitely where my woes come from in the form of rolling diagonal lines.

Your diagonal lines are rolling? Voultar's lines are static! Are they about 1.5 pixels apart or thicker?

Incidentally, is it just me or does the "native" palette seem awfully bright? Part of me wants to try to tweak the palette, darken up a few of the colors...

Do you normally run your TV with the colour tuned up a bit? Some say the natual palette is too colourful, others say it's not colourful enough. It depends on what you compare it with.

[Voultar]

What Voultar complains in s-video is surely interference from the chroma signal into the luma. I don't know how to fix it other than use good cables and connections. I also can't reproduce it with my equipment. There's no much I can do until I borrow an LCD tv with s-video inputs from somebody.

Tim, have you reviewed any of my troubleshooting notes from the last 3 or so pages? I have indicated that I used several high-quality S-Video cables that were terminated directly to the NESRGB Y/C outputs. I also tapped the Y/C signals from the Encoder pins and built an external circuit to eliminate an interference issue stemming from the encoder to the outputs, the problem persists.

Good Quality Cables and Solid Connections isn't the problem in the case of the NESRGB's that I've modified. I just want to make that clear.

You can see those posts here http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... start=2550

My lines of interference don't "roll", they simply change direction.

[ms06fz]

What line(s) need to be cut on the AV Famicom board in order to use audio from the NESRGB?

None, actually. It is only necessary to solder some wires between the R,G,B points and the A/V connector. Everything else is optional.

To use NESRGB audio, though, you'd want to cut the system's audio line.

Interestingly enough, my front-loader install (still on v1.5, my USB blaster is still in the mail) doesn't get that background glitch with Super Mario 2. I wonder why.

The US distributor had not sent out all orders by the time v1.7 was released. During the Memorial Day long weekend he updated the remaining boards in stock to v1.7. About five orders were affected.

I guess that's a possibility, though the timing seems off - I installed the first of my two NESRGB units on May 24th, the first day of Memorial Day weekend. I'm not sure exactly when they shipped (my shipment notice arrived after the shipment)

What Voultar complains in s-video is surely interference from the chroma signal into the luma. I don't know how to fix it other than use good cables and connections. I also can't reproduce it with my equipment. There's no much I can do until I borrow an LCD tv with s-video inputs from somebody.

How "surely"? I haven't done any tests myself to eliminate Y/C crosstalk as a potential cause, and the S-video cables I've got are cheap trash.. but I got the impression Voultar had eliminated this as a potential cause.

While the NESRGB is in operation there is no chroma coming from the PPU. Plug the original video output into a TV and you will see only two colours - grey and white. This is definitely not the source of any interference.

My theory (not that there's much of anything substantial behind it) isn't that the interference is coming from the PPU's composite output - rather that the interference is coming from that pin's connection to the motherboard - either via signal reflection or crosstalk with other things on the motherboard. I just want to give it a try, see if it makes a difference. (In fact, when modding my AV Famicom I decided not to include PPU Composite as one of the connections on the AV multi-out, so just to eliminate the possibility of interference coming in through the composite line, I cut it on the adapter board. I haven't had a chance to test the AV Famicom on my LCD TV yet, though.)

Incidentally, is it just me or does the "native" palette seem awfully bright? Part of me wants to try to tweak the palette, darken up a few of the colors...

Do you normally run your TV with the colour tuned up a bit? Some say the natual palette is too colourful, others say it's not colourful enough. It depends on what you compare it with.

I was comparing with NESRGB "off" mode on the same console, as well as my second console which hadn't been modified yet. The rest of the system wasn't quite the same (TV was on S-Video input vs. composite input) but a number of colors seemed significantly brighter than the ones from the PPU. In some cases that made some graphics look a bit odd, things stood out where they shouldn't have. To some extent that's unavoidable when making the picture clearer and more vibrant, but if it's possible to hack in a different palette I'm tempted to give that a try - since I've already got a USB blaster on the way that I may not actually need.

[ApolloBoy]

To use NESRGB audio, though, you'd want to cut the system's audio line.

And if you're adding expansion audio on the AV Famicom, you also want to cut the traces on pins 45 and 46 of the cart port.

[Einzelherz]

Firmware 1.7 seems pretty solid from what I've been reading. Is it time for me to finally take the plunge and start a summer project?

And also, where are you guys getting the pretty angled pin connectors and appropriate cabling from?

[CkRtech]

So here is something rather random - I went to the NW Pinball and Arcade Show today and ran into...Ben Heckendorn. I introduced myself and we talked for just a bit. I mentioned the NESRGB to him, and he was unaware of it and seemed impressed. Just wanted to share that with you guys.

[Mikey]

Is this thing available to order again? I can see that the site takes orders, but post #1 in this thread states that they are out of stock for now.

[Einzelherz]

Is this thing available to order again? I can see that the site takes orders, but post #1 in this thread states that they are out of stock for now.

That post hasn't been updated in months. The online store is more accurate and up to date.

[coffeyrt]

Firmware 1.7 seems pretty solid from what I've been reading. Is it time for me to finally take the plunge and start a summer project?

And also, where are you guys getting the pretty angled pin connectors and appropriate cabling from?

Here is one source:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/370879191963?ss ... 1497.l2649
and
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Female-Color-Ri ... 565e20e2b9

These wires are on the short side and the shortest you want to go for the top loader. If you can find ones that are 5 cms longer, I would recommend that.

If you can wait, these are from China:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/331030458409?ss ... 1497.l2649

[bobrocks95]

Here are two other options for 30cm jumper cables from American sellers:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Female-Male-40P ... 35ccd5e312 (select female to female from the drop-down list)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/40Pcs-30cm-Fema ... 2c80cb55ee

[ApolloBoy]

Here is one source:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/370879191963?ss ... 1497.l2649
and
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Female-Color-Ri ... 565e20e2b9

These wires are on the short side and the shortest you want to go for the top loader. If you can find ones that are 5 cms longer, I would recommend that.

I don't use those, I just use an old big reel of colored ribbon cable for my wiring and then I use a crimper along with DuPont connectors.

[ms06fz]

Regarding the whole "Diagonal lines" issue - I finally got around to testing out my AV Famicom with my LCD TV, and there are a few differences.

I have two different Multi-Out S-Video cables: one I bought recently for my Famicom, and one I bought a couple years ago for my SFC. The SFC is one of the ones that also has composite out. The FC one is the one I mentioned earlier as having an apparent crosstalk problem. The one I got for the SFC has similar issues. (But I can confirm it's not using composite as either luma or chroma...)

Anyway, the diagonal lines issue is present with both cables, worse than with my NES and its DIN4 S-Video cable, and it's much worse with the SFC cable. On that one it's like I've got vertical bands superimposed on top of the diagonal lines. (Actually I see that on the FC cable as well...)
However, I think the "shimmer" effect may have been less on the Famicom (not sure)

Seeing how crappy these third-party AV cables are really makes me appreciate the more standard connectors that come with the NESRGB. If I buy a crappy DIN S-Video cable, at least I'm (probably) not getting gouged on the deal. (I haven't seen anything like this level of crosstalk in my $5 mini-DIN S-video cables that I use with the NES. When I hook up luma to composite in, I get a monochrome signal as one would expect.)

To give you an idea of the level of crosstalk in these third party cables, the one I bought for the FC (made by "Innovation") - if I hook it up and then connect the luma signal (from either end of the cable) into a composite input, I get a full-color signal. It looks awful (worse than when I plug the same signal into an S-Video input), but the color is very nearly as vibrant as a properly-connected S-video or composite signal. I dissected the other cable (the SFC one) a bit, and it has no shielding anywhere. Inside the rubber sheath there's just six wires (Y, C, V, L, R, ground)

I have another multi-out (composite) cable made by Hori, it seems much better made. Three wires, each with its own shield. Connector hood is removable as well. In general it seems like a pretty close clone of the official Nintendo stereo composite cable... So maybe next time I try ordering a cable I'll consider looking for one by Hori. If the cable is crap, then if nothing else I'll at least probably be able to take it apart and put decent wiring on it.

I'm sure all this comes as no surprise to many of you... I expected that third-party AV cables might be crap, I just didn't think it'd be that bad. I mean, no shielding at all? And people are going out of their way to install multi-out connectors on front-loaders? *sigh* I'm glad I didn't... Anybody want to recommend a good source for a SNES S-video cable?

But this still leaves another problem: from what I've seen on my NES, I'm not getting Y/C crosstalk, at least nothing I can see on the monitor. But I am getting the diagonal lines and the "shimmer" noise with that system. This may be another indication that the diagonal lines are an unrelated issue.

[leonk]

Silly question: why are folks even bothering with Svideo? A lot of late model TVs and AV equipment don't event support this format. Wouldn't it make more sense to feed rgb out of the Nintendo console into a cheap rgb to component converter and then hook to TV? Component has much better shielding and signal separation than Svideo - a lot of the issues discussed here should go away.

[Voultar]

Because a lot of people as a standard still only utilize 480i CRT's that only offer composite and/or S-Video, for their retro-gaming hardware. A 480i Sony WEGA set is still quite loved in in the States for retro.

I now use a Framemeister that's attached to my 47'' LED panel, but several people still utilize S-Video for the equipment that they have to work with.

The jump from Composite to S-Video is quite profound. But jumping from S-Video to RGB (on a consumer grade standard CRT TV set) typically yields only a marginal improvement, at best.

Having said that, I can certainly understand someone's hesitation.

[ms06fz]

Silly question: why are folks even bothering with Svideo? A lot of late model TVs and AV equipment don't event support this format. Wouldn't it make more sense to feed rgb out of the Nintendo console into a cheap rgb to component converter and then hook to TV? Component has much better shielding and signal separation than Svideo - a lot of the issues discussed here should go away.

That's my next upgrade. Of course I could go straight to an HDMI upscaler, which would get around some of the other issues I have to deal with (like the deinterlacing my TV does, which ruins most "flicker" effects) but a good upscaler (as I understand it) costs hundreds. But going to component should be very easy, and very affordable... Except that for the AV Famicom, I will need another multi-out cable: either an RGB cable or some cheap (Hori or Nintendo) composite cables that I can hack up to make an RGB cable.

For now, S-video is generally good enough for me, and it's a huge step above composite.

[JimboJ]

Hi,

has someone here ever had that kind of a problem? (it's my ntsc system, just modded)

Can't seem to find the problem.

[lettuce]

So what is regarded to be the recommended sync to use, Composite Sync TTL (CS#) or Composite Video (V)?

Also which connections do should i hook up for the multi out repo socket...



im guessing pins:

1
2
3
4
5
6
11
12

i guess i only need to connect pin 10 (5v) if im using a CRT TV and want the channel to switch over to the AV channel on powering up the NES, would this damage a device like the XRGB-Mini if connected up?

Also for some reason on the XRGB mini if i try using Pin 9 (Composite video) instead of pin 3 (C Sync/12+)i dont get a display

[lettuce]

Hi,

has someone here ever had that kind of a problem? (it's my ntsc system, just modded)

Can't seem to find the problem.

Jumper 5 been shorted, what sync pad are you using on the NESRGB CS# or V??

[LaC]

I recently opened my NES top loader to do the upgrade to 1.7. I noticed that the board was a bit crooked. The cart slot barely bumps into the nesrgb board and pulls it slightly out of its socket, but not fully. This didn't appear to be causing a problem so far.
So I was messing around trying to keep it in its slot and now can't get it to boot anymore. Even with the top off.
If I press down on the board at a certain angle then I can get it to boot, but then the graphics are usually garbled.
I feel like the headers might not be making contact well with the socket anymore. I tested continuity but it seems fine.
Anyone else had a problem like this?

[ms06fz]

Hi,

has someone here ever had that kind of a problem? (it's my ntsc system, just modded)

Can't seem to find the problem.

It's possible to get this kind of effect by switching from PPU video mode to NESRGB mode after the game has already set the palette. To work properly NESRGB has to set the PPU's palette to two gray shades - but it can only do that while the software is setting the palette.

Some software will set the palette on a very regular basis, other software will only do so when necessary. So you might see if the problem clears up when going down a pipe or getting a star powerup, things like that. If so, this might mean you're selecting your NESRGB palette too late in the startup sequence.

[ApolloBoy]

Also which connections do should i hook up for the multi out repo socket...

Uhh shouldn't that be incredibly straightforward?

[darcagn]

So what is regarded to be the recommended sync to use, Composite Sync TTL (CS#) or Composite Video (V)?

Also which connections do should i hook up for the multi out repo socket...

im guessing pins:

1
2
3
4
5
6
11
12

i guess i only need to connect pin 10 (5v) if im using a CRT TV and want the channel to switch over to the AV channel on powering up the NES, would this damage a device like the XRGB-Mini if connected up?

Also for some reason on the XRGB mini if i try using Pin 9 (Composite video) instead of pin 3 (C Sync/12+)i dont get a display

Huh? Why wouldn't you hook up everything to the multiout connector? Then your multiout cable would use whatever signals necessary depending on what type of cable it is.