So I finally decided to throw caution to the wind and install an NESRGB into my NIB AV Famicom. I am a beginner to intermediate with electronics at best so this posed quite a challenge - I did an extensive amount of research and ended up purchasing a desoldering station for the task.
Thank God I did
Desoldering this little bastard even with the right tools (admittedly in my case the cheapest I could find) was a nightmare that will haunt my dreams until the end of my days. The plating on some of those pins just would not move - I ended up having to pry it off carefully in the end as I wasn’t able to just push it out. The creaking sound of the PPU breaking free of what solder was left on those vias was like nails on a chalkboard for me - I’m still hearing it.
With my dread task complete I proceeded on to the parts of the install I wasn’t particularly worried about - like a full recap. The AV Famicom only has 6 electrolytic capacitors (one of which I wouldn’t reinstall) this would be easy. Anyway it turns out I went a little crazy with the temperature on my desoldering station and I obliterated a trace on the motherboard. Thankfully I was able to patch it up pretty easily and move on.
Following Voultar’s latest tutorial and bodged a resistor leg into a via and and clipped a leg on the relevant ASIC for expansion audio and then soldered the two CPU pins onto the NESRGB board to use its on-board amp. I then grabbed some ribbon cable and soldered the relevant points for my cable to the multi-out.
I was greeted by a flickering buzzing mess.
Dejected I thought I had fried the PPU, or there was some kind of short and that I was stupid to even attempt this because I basically broke even on the installation fee with the purchase of the desoldering station - but nope! as luck would have it I apparently purchased ribbon cable that they only sell as some kind of cruel practical joke. On a whim I decided to quickly solder it with some decent 28 awg and viola! we have a picture.
Please forgive my shitty soldering - I promise I will go back and clean this up somewhat at some stage. The two CPU pins for audio are still hooked up via the terrible ribbon cable but so far the audio is great but once my Everdrive N8 Pro arrives and I can do some more testing so in the meantime I’ll leave them be
Anyway - if you couldn’t tell already this post was more of an exercise in catharsis than anything else - I know there are many accomplished modders on this forum that would scoff at my work and the difficulty of this install. Nevertheless I’m proud of myself for sticking with it. If aynone is on the fence just know that if someone like me can manage this - anyone can.
Thanks for reading!
