NESRGB HELP! Black Screen!

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping I can find some help to get my NESRGB v1.4 setup working. I installed the board very carefully almost three years ago now and it has never worked. I shelved the project while attending to other matters in my life, but now I'm wanting to get it working. The NES works fine using the original composite video output, the audio works fine through the NESRGB mod, the JP-21 cable and the Framemeister. It is my original NTSC US NES from 1988. I have jumpers J8 and J5 shorted and all other jumpers on the board are open. Jumper J8 was shorted as suggested when using SCART cables with no inline components, which this cable is. I have continuity from the RGB, Sync, Ground, and +5V pins on the NESRGB board all the way to pins 15, 19, 20, 9, 21, and 11 respectively on the JP-21 pinned SCART cable. With the NES powered on I am getting 5V at the header for the cable connection. The framemeister must detect something when it's hooked up because it goes from a blue "no input" style screen to and entirely black screen, but that's not very good for playing games. I'm not sure what else to do on this to get it working. There is an oscilloscope at my local makerspace, but I don't know what to look for with it.

I also have a SNES Mini I modded around the same time as the NES. It's using the older THS7314 amp and it works perfectly through my framemeister and Sony LCD TV. So I know everything else in the chain works fine. Please help. I miss my NES. Thank you.

--Jeff

 

Tim helped me solve it over email. Thank you to him. Combination of not having jumper J8 soldered until today, and then forgetting to switch the palette selector switch over to either the "improved" or "natural" setting. It wasn't clear to me from the instructions that having it on the "off (original video)" setting meant that the whole NESRGB board was shut off, not just a particular palette. My thinking was that having the palette selector to the "original video" position meant that the settings were as close to original as possible, when in fact it shuts the NESRGB off so that the NES can output through its original composite video connection. This has been a long time coming and I'm very happy it's working now!

 

Tim is the best. Glad you got it fixed.