Murasame sounds really really flat compared to original hardware in the 3DS VC. I don’t think they emulated the extra sound channels properly. But it’s a really great game.
I also have a reproduction of Recca on NES because I wanted to see if original hardware was really capable of pulling off the game - it was. It’s quite a wild/manic shmup. It’s very twitchy, but in a good way. It’s definitely worth a few bucks as a historical curio.
Just picked it up! I wish Gun-Nac were on there too, love Compile’s early games.
Interesting. I only have the Famicom Mini version, I wonder how far off the audio was on that?
Just beat Famicom Double Dragon II on Normal! I really enjoyed it, particularly how the enemy design constantly nudged you to try new moves, the more effective ones of course being riskier to pull off. I used a lot of continues in the last few stages due to some dodgy and impatient platforming on my behalf…
When I get an actual Famicom this will be among the first carts I pick up to go with it. I already started a new playthrough on Difficult and enemies are satisfyingly relentless to tackle, but it would certainly feel better to play with the intended controller - 3DS face buttons are a bit too small for pulling off the A+B jump move robustly.
Despite the horizontal stretch to non-square pixels being troublesome on a 240p pixel grid display the art still manages to look pretty handsome for the most part. From a regular viewing distance that patterned door looks extremely detailed - good stuff.
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!
Nice work!
I did this years ago with a desolder bulb. Getting the PPU out took like 30 mins on its own and I tore a couple vias, they were easy to bodge at least. Never had an issue with the ribbon cable!
If I can criticize one thing, please connect Y/C so s-video works too 
I always love seeing other people’s mod work! The NES/Fami RGB is a rite of passage if you ask me. Heck just desoldering that PPU is a trial! What are you doing for your palettes? Which 3 are on your firmware? I installed a 4-position rotary switch in mine so I could have 3 palletes and leave composite enabled. I basically have a guitar knob on the back that cycles with a satisfying click. I also installed a J-Tag adapter with a break out board so I can update the palettes whenever I want. There’s a great little tutorial over at FirebrandX’s page about it.
Nice having the composite option on there! Love that. I doubt I would use it much in play but it would be nifty to show people who come over and can’t tell what they’re really looking at.
Is this a mod you do for hire @Danexmurder?
Yep! Happy to do any upgrade to the NES or Fami! I have a Sharp Twin Fami on the way that I plan to do an RGB upgrade to along with making the controllers detachable. I’ll probably stick to the rotary 4-position switch because I just like it and find it very satisfying to click through. I actually just wrapped up a resurrection/recap of an AV fami for one of our members!
I purchased the kit directly from Tim so it gomes with natural, garish and improved. I just set it to natural and haven’t installed a switch yet. After seeing the results I’m not sure if I’ll bother.
@poptart Funny you say that because that was my original plan. I was so laser focused on getting RGB hooked up that I completely forgot!
Nothing wrong with that! That palette looks great! I usually leave mine on wavebeam.
One thing I’ve started doing lately is seperating my recaps out from the other mods. That way I’m able to isolate variables better. Usually I’ll do the recap first and test to make sure everything is working. Then move on to whatever else.
I have an RBG AV Fami but have been interested in getting my NES done at some point.
Just shoot me a PM when you decide to pull the trigger!
If I had my time over I would do exactly that - a quick recap and test before moving on to the install.
I learned a lot during this mod so I would do things very differently next time.
He changed the included pallette several times, current ones come with:
Pretty sure YUV is the same thing as the old Natural. I’m rather fond of this palette, it’s mathematically derived from inspection of the PPU output signal. Very good results.
Speaking of palettes, one of the reasons I ordered a NT Mini Noir is to get native YUV generated s-video, so clean signal with color generated in NTSC colorspace. No palettes needed!
Yeah, I learn so much on everything I do! I learned a LOT wrenching on that Model 1 Sega CD recently. Main thing I pulled away from that that I’ve been trying to apply across all my work now is to be very methodical and isolate variables.
You’re right!
Tim’s website is a bit of a mess that way - the pinout .pdf hasn’t been updated on the NESRGB page itself he only references the palettes on his “errata” page.
Anyway it looks like I’ve got YUV selected. It looks great to my eyes but I mostly played NES on composite so I’m not used to the punchier emulator colours some people are used to.
Yeah, Smooth is supposed to be the most accurate from what I gather. I think FirebrandX did a ton of research to come up with that. And then wavebeam takes that and just kinda punches it up a bit.
Is there a way I can select palette 2. (smooth) without installing a switch?
Yep! You would need to open it back up and bridge the appropriate point on the board. Right now I’m assuming you have a solder bridge between ground and your current palette. You would just need to remove the solder from your current bridge and run a wire from the other palette pad to ground.
Really all a switch is doing is creating a mechanical bridge for those pads instead of a solder bridge. That’s why you wire each pad to a position on the switch. When you flip the position it is changing which pad is being tied to ground.
