Okay this thread is going to cover my work on the rgb/s-video/composite video (all in one) av famicom. I'm working on a second ultimate av famicom for myself (my first model is going to be converted back to composite video). Also I currently have 3 people who've commissioned me to build them rgb/s-video/composite av famicoms with various bells and whistles. These people have each all given me the required money to order the custom kits from japan needed to do these mods so they're all serious clients who've already put money into this.

With the help of doug I got myself a new toy today:



For some bizarre reason you can't find a store selling a desoldering iron like this in Canada. Which is why it took me so long to finally get one of these. As you can see in the picture it's the same model as my soldering iron. The only difference is that the desoldering iron is 40 watt and the soldering iron is 25 watt. I probably could install the desoldering parts into my soldering iron if I want.

Anyway I took a dead nes pcb I had laying around and did some practice desoldering. After about 3 minutes I learned everything there is to learn about working this desoldering iron. I discovered that this desoldering iron sucks out solder slowly but safely. This desoldering iron also does absolutely no damage to the pcb or the traces even if you press it right against the pcb and suck like crazy. In fact this desoldering iron has such a weak sucker that I have to keep squeezing and releasing the bulb while it's on the spot over and over to get all the solder off. Squeezing the bulb like crazy causes solder to sometimes shoot in random directions but you can always suck the bits of solder away after you clean out the pin.

After mastering my new desoldering iron I took my second av famicom which had a factory pcb with no mods done to it and I got to work. Working slowly and carefully on my av famicom worked great, and in record time I managed to desolder the original ppu chip without causing any damage to the ppu chip or the pcb!






Next I carefully loostened all of the pins with some tweezers. Any pins that didn't come loose easily I used my desoldering iron to clean out those pins until they easily came loose. Then I carefully pried the ppu chip off of the av famicom pcb using a small flat blade screwdriver. I also used a needle to widen one pin hole that was a little tight.








There is absolutely no damage to the pcb here. All the traces and ppu pin solder points are 100% in tact. Then I installed a precision socket into the ppu spot and soldered it in place. I left all 40 pins connected on my precision socket because the pcb of the custom rgb/s-video/composite video kit I use seperates the required pins of the rgb ppu from the av famicom ppu socket pins.








Since I blew solder around when desoldering the composite ppu chip the chip had extra solder on a lot of the pins. I used my desoldering iron to clean up the extra solder on the composite ppu pins. Then I stuck the composite ppu into a standard 40 pin ic socket. And I installed the 40 pin socket into the precision socket. The reason I use a standard 40 pin socket between the ppu and the precision socket is to be sure that the ppu pins don't get bent or damanged. Sticking a standard socket into a precision socket is a bit of a tight fit so I just wanted to be safe.






And what do you know....the system runs perfectly






This system really is as good as it gets. There's zero damage to the pcb. Zero damage to the original ppu chip. And this av famicom has a precision slot soldered in so there's no way that the ppu chip will break the connection or come loose. Finally I have myself an extremely cleanly modded ultimate av famicom. Now all I need is for my rgb kits to arrive so I can build myself one to add to this system. The kit I have right now is going to one of my clients since I plan to build myself a version of the kit that has the extra parts needed for psuedo stereo seperation. Again many thanks to Doug for hooking me up with this MUCH needed desoldering iron

This desoldering iron makes my work 100x easier and safer. This desoldering iron also allows me to do a much cleaner and more professional looking job. You can buy one of these desoldering irons from radio shack in america but unfortunately on their website it says that radio shack only ships to america. Therefore if you don't live in america you need to get an american friend to buy you one of these handy desoldering irons and ship it to you

I had some free time on saturday so I took the rgb kit from my first model s-video av famicom and desoldered the terrible standard 40 pin slot I was using to connect the kit to the system. This slot had issues with the connections going in and out of working because they weren't very good connections. Since my new model av famicom uses a precision socket I was able to solder nice strong pin connectors to the kit after I desoldered the standard connector. Now the system works amazingly and never has any issues. Also for this model I wired up the av wires as neatly as possible and I wired them into a header so it's really easy to swap kits inside the system. I plan to use this kit for one of my clients because I'm going to be installing a kit with the extra audio components into this model 2. Also it's nice to be able to quickly and easily disconnect the kit from the system without having to desolder 8 wires and remove a lot of electrical tape.

Here's the bottom of the pcb with all the video connections wired up. This includes rgb, s-video, and composite, all are working perfectly. You can see from this picture how neat and tidy all the wires are.



Here's the top of the pcb. The kit is a bit messy because it was the first one I built but it works perfectly. I'll clean this kit up more before installing it in one of my clients av famicoms:



Here's the system fully assembled. Sitting inside of it is my flawless nes to famicom converter and the duck tales 2 english repro I commissioned doug to build (the cartridge sticker's gonna come later)



Here's a picture of the s-video quality from the duck tales 2 title screen. Nice and crisp



Also I think the composite video from this kit looks better than the composite video from the default ppu chip. The colours are much more vibrant and the picture quality is nicer.

A couple of the kits I ordered came in yesterday. But I spent yesterday helping a friend backup his harddrive data. So today I put together the kit I ordered for myself (video + audio circuit). I havn't wired up the audio stuff yet but the entire kit pcb is assembled and the system is running fine pumping out nice composite, s-video, and rgb. Unfortunately a couple of the parts that were supposed to come with the kit didn't show up (I even got 1 extra part that I didn't need...). I borrowed the needed parts from another kit and with the help of Doug I now know what the parts are so I can easily buy a replacement at my local store (just a couple of caps). Here's how things look currently.



Much cleaner than how it looked before. This is basically how my commission av famicoms will all wind up looking like.

I wired up the advanced audio circuit of my kit. This is a really AMAZING audio circuit it sounds perfect. The audio is a bit louder, has more bass, and the audio mixing (including advanced audio from games like castlevania 3 j) is PERFECT. I think the audio mixing on this circuit is better than the mixing from the default circuit on the pcb.

Here's the solder side of the pcb with everything wired up:



Here's the parts side with everything put together



And here's a video demonstrating the difference in audio quality

Here's a time lapse video of me building the video part of the custom av famicom kit



So I got another cheap playchoice from ebay in today. There was just one sllliiiight problem with the rgb ppu chip





I think some fat guy sat on it or something

All the pins were bent in two places because something heavy had weighed down on the ppu too much. And for the icing on the cake I found a dead spider underneath this ppu chip sandwiched between the ppu and the socket

Anyway here's the same chip after a little bit of TLC





you're probably wondering if the darn thing still works considering on the top of it it looks like a small jackhammer went over it...



....it does

oh btw....dual moniter playchoice pcbs with no ppu for sale!

Today doug suggested that I make a guide on how to do this mod but I told him that's not a great idea because this mod is extremely difficult and requires you to play around with a lot of rare and expensive hardware. Even I didn't get this mod right the first time. And I spent a lot of time building different amps and circuits trying to find the way to get the best quality video and sound out of my system (ironically both the best video and sound came from the same kit I ordered). So instead let me show you what happened when other people tried this mod. Here's what happened to one guy who tried to install one of the kits I build:







And for people thinking about doing this mod on a nes (model 1 and 2) or a model 1 famicom here's what the video will look like:



Also before I bought this kit anytime I had a game where the background was a solid dark blue colour you could see the background refreshing which was the most annoying thing ever.

As for the audio I tried some of those "do it yourself" stereo sound/bass boost audio mods. These audio mods sort of worked but when I tried playing a game with custom audio chips (castlevania 3 japanese) suddenly the sound effects were 10x louder than the music....

The kit I build and install has a custom audio circuit that does a far better job making the audio more improved than any other mod I found on the net and tried. And the kit I use mixes in the audio from custom audio chips perfectly.

Oh and for people looking to order the kit I build and make it themself good luck. The website is only in Japanese. The order form doesn't have any mention of paypal. The kit instructions are all in japanese. And even if you're smart enough to figure out the instructions, there's a lot of very difficult soldering involved, I hope you enjoy surface mount soldering.

I'm not refusing the post a "how to" guide on this mod because I want more money for myself. I'm refusing to post these instructions because paying me to do this mod actually is cheaper and a better value than putting in the time and effort to do this mod yourself. But you're more than welcome to try

Ever wondered how a composite nes compares to my av famicoms internally generated s-video picture? Well here you go!

I made an odd discovery today. On the rgb systems anytime you use a piece of hardware that's a reproduction like a reproduction cart or a powerpak the jailbars get a bit worse. Luckily I have a hardware fix for this. I won't say what it is but it will clean up the jailbars noticably. My rockman repro cart is jailbar free on my system because I already have this part installed in my system.

I am extremely curious as to what the fix is for the reproduce carts to not have jail bars. Actually I'm more curious as to how the heck you even find something like that out

It's nothing special it's just a ceramic cap between a video line and ground. I found that the colour green clears up the jailbars the most so I add a cap just to green. I also add it before the signal goes into the cxa1645 so it affects all the video outputs and not just rgb. You have to be careful though because the cap removes jailbars basically by blurring the picture until they go away. So if I wanted to I could easily remove all of the jailbars but then the picture would be so blurry you might as well be using composite video.