Official Hong Kong Super Nintendo with 50/60Hz switch

Hi guys, thought I'd post this because I couldn't find any article or information online. Please do add any comments or corrections, as I'm absolutely not a technical person and have close to zero knowledge of modding and circuits.

Nintendo released both the Super Famicom and the Super Nintendo in Hong Kong. The Super Famicom is the Japanese one, no big surprise here. The Super Nintendo is a different story though. Just like the Famicom before it, it comes equipped with a 50/60Hz switch.

For those of you who are still confused about the "Hong Kong was PAL" thing, yes, it was PAL, as in the TV system was PAL like in the UK and most of Europe, and unlike Japan which was NTSC. What this means is that you could play your HK SNES with an RF cable hooked up to an HK TV or any other PAL TV, but not to a Japanese TV. Composite AV cables would solve the problem, as they work on both PAL and NTSC TV sets.

I believe Nintendo shipped standard NTSC SFC units to HK and later realised they had to give them PAL units instead. Unless they sold NTSC and PAL units at the same time, not sure. I'm also not sure if HK at the time was using NTSC together with PAL, but I haven't found any evidence so far. I believe HK owners with an NTSC unit would just buy the AV cable and not use the RF cable - makes sense to me. You could swim in fake AV cables in HK back then, I'm pretty sure they were already ditching RF cables very hard.

So, in conclusion, the NTSC/PAL problem is only related to RF. If you use a composite cable, it doesn't matter what your console is. The only thing that would matter is that you use a 220V adaptor, and not 100V like in Japan. HK used and still uses 220V. I think my unit has a PAL 220V adaptor fitted with a UK plug. It's hidden behind the TV so I'll have to check later.

Another thing to remember, is that PAL HK consoles do NOT play European games (FC, SFC/SNES, N64...). A lot of people are stuck with this idea.

Let's see this step by step. The front of the unit appears to be PAL. Which is funny as it plays Japanese games only. Did they use UKV casings with Japanese internals?



The label indicates that it's a PAL UKV model. I'll need your help to check any UKV SNES you may have around, see if the label is exactly the same, and if the serial number is close to mine. I'm also curious about the round "C59" sticker... what is it?



Here's the interesting part. A round hole in the casing houses a small switch. There's even a sticker to remind you that 50Hz is on the left and 60Hz is on the right.



The switch connects to 3 wires. A brown one, a red one and an orange one.



The brown one goes to nowhere. I suppose it's for static/ground?



The orange one goes to the back of the S-PPU1 chip and connects to... something. I suppose this is what controls the 50/60Hz output.



I don't even know what this is. I should have taken some soldering/electronic classes, I know, but I was too busy playing Snake on my Nokia back then, hey.



So there's one wire left. The red one goes to the S-PPU2 B chip and then magically transforms into a short green wire that connects to the S-PPU1 chip.

 

Thanks for the photos, very interesting. So this is the official 50/60hz mod?

 

I don't see a 2nd switch to choose NTSC or PAL color encoding. PAL60 composite would play black and white on many older NTSC TVs.

 

Yes, this is the official mod by Nintendo. They did a very similar mod to the HK Famicom, with the same switch thing.

Lum, you are correct, and I should add pictures of the box where it says that the console will only work with PAL TVs.

I'm still confused about how it works though. If PAL TVs couldn't handle 60Hz, and this console was made for PAL TVs, what's the point of using 60Hz? Unless they did?

Moreover, if NTSC-J games were made for 60Hz, can you play them at 50Hz? I haven't tried, as I always leave the switch on the 60Hz option.

 

Had no idea that was an official mod. Certainly doesn't look it. The famicom mod ran the games at normal speed but output 50hz. Maybe this is similar? I don't notice any difference in speed regardless of which position the switch is in.

 

Being a british territory hk has always used pal as it's tv standard. Ntsc wasn't a hk standard. TVs supporting both standards (as well as pal+ntsc tv mods done by repair shops) became common at a certain point. While the official standard has always been pal.
Until recently, as hdtv made both standards pretty much obsolete.

 

This is not true. Composite video cables still carry either NTSC or PAL video signals. They may connect to both TV sets, but a PAL-only TV will still only accept a PAL signal over composite, just like an NTSC-only TV will only accept an NTSC signal over composite.

60Hz support was absolutely common in PAL TVs, especially as the 90's proceeded.

 

You're right. I think he was thinking of RGB cables.

That depends on the territory, of course. In much of western Europe it was usually found in "premium" tvs that would cost $50-100 more. In eastern Europe it could be found on pretty much any tv, since many of the sellers would sell modded tvs.

 

Yes, it's official and briefly described in the instruction manual.



I went back to reading more information on the HK FC, and I was wrong. As beepboop mentioned, composite still cares about PAL/NTSC. This PAL HK SFC was sold as compatible with PAL TVs only, not NTSC.

What the switch should do is converting the signal (after it has been processed by the machine) to 50 Hz, or leave it at 60 Hz. This is what a nice guy said after testing/analysing the HK FC:

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=5358

So I'm here again with more doubts than before.

1- The HK FC has an additional board to handle this 50/60 Hz thing. The HK SNES only has 3 stupid wires. I think this is because the HK FC mod is based on a Japanese console (= Japanese NTSC RF module), while the HK SNES is based on a UKV model (= European PAL RF module). Am I raving? Does it mean you can transform a 50 HZ PAL machine into a 60 HZ PAL machine which reads NTSC-J games.... ehr, what the hell?

2- So they got UKV machines and added those wires. OK, seems easy enough. But this is an NTSC-J region machine, so it doesn't play PAL games. If they used UKV machines, they must have modified something to make it NTSC-J, right? Unless the BIOS/firmware is doing this without requiring any changes to the hardware?

3- So, what happens if I play a Japanese game using the 50 Hz mode on this machine? According to the HK FC, the game will still run at 60 Hz, but post-processing it will send a 50 HZ signal to your TV. So your machine thinks you're doing 60 Hz, but the TV is receving a 50 Hz signal.

4- The instruction manual mentions that some "50 Hz only TVs" may not work properly with the machine. What a cheap way to take away all responsibility! I suppose because the mod is still a mod, so even though it makes it possible to play NTSC-J games on PAL TVs, there are games and/or TVs which may not handle the mod properly.

 

It should be noted that in regards to your first point, the SNES PPU is much more capable than the Famicom one. It can output RGB for instance. Not that RGB is used here, but it makes sense that it would just need a few extra wires if it can handle that stuff in-chip already.

I do wonder how it works with regards to the 50Hz mode, but it should be noted PAL60 is basically an NTSC signal (525/30) without the silly 29.97/59.94 framerate, and in PAL color space. That means it should be fairly easy to convert, and if you don't care for color accuracy that much, straight passed through.

 

1. You can't transform a 50 HZ PAL machine into a 60 HZ PAL machine which reads NTSC-J games. At least not that easily. I think your confusion comes when you bring the HK SNES into the picture. Leave that aside and just consider the HK SFC. It's a Japanese SFC that has a mod that let's it's RF output work on (99./9%) HK TVs of the time. It's likely just tweaking the signal a bit and not outputting true PAL.

2. They used Japanese machines.

3. The machine runs the same regardless of the switch setting. The switch setting only affects the RF output.

4. This is another dead giveaway they they're outputting 60hz with Chinese characteristics. I didn't know anyone who had a 50hz only TV in 1990 but I suppose they might have existed.

 

I'd assume Nintendo knows the difference between a 50hz/60hz switch and NTSC/PAL switch.
Why would they go out of their way to label the HK SNES the way it is, if it didn't perform as advertised?

 

The HK SFC doesn't work on PAL televisions. The box clearly mentions "The TV colour system of this console is NTSC-M".
The HK SNES on the other hand clearly mentions "The TV colour system of this console is PAL-I".

According to this (and to the machine I have here), the HK SFC is clearly 100% a Japanese unit with zero modifications. So I still think the HK SNES really is a UKV unit, but the modifications done possibly go farther than it looks.

It does seem to make more sense to use UKV machines, which are HK TV-ready, and add the 50/60Hz mod (which they had done on the FC before). What remains to be understood is how it plays Japanese games only. They did a similar thing with the Asian SNES, which plays PAL and NTSC-J games (not NTSC-U games), and is made for PAL televisions.

I'll revise and update the first post with more pictures (and fewer mistakes ) later on.

 

Merely disabling the lockout isn't good enough. Certain games fail to run under invalid security.

 

HK uses PAL for TV, but for VCDs it was mixed (PAL/NTSC) and for DVDs it was Region 3 (NTSC). Most hardware in HK works on both systems so it usually isn't an issue.

 

Hi,
I have one of these HK SNES units. Mine is identical, even down to the wire colour used. Just to clear some things up about the units:
* The units were modded and distributed by a HK company called "Mani Limited" under Nintendo's permission, they reboxed them and slapped their name and logo on the box too.
* The HK SFC units were only made pre PAL SNES release, then they started using PAL models; I expect it was much cheaper that way.
* As well as the 60Hz mod the region lockout chips were also replaced with SFC ones, hence NTSC games only on a PAL console.

Whoever at Mani ltd who worked on mine was a messy worker so it was easy to see the changes as there was liberal amounts of flux paste around the modded PPU legs and the lockout chip.

 

May I ask what is the code # of the diode and the resistor band colors or value seen in the 50/60Hz mod pics above? ( I only see Brown, Blue and Gold missing a band)

 

Its a 10M ohm resistor (brown black blue gold)
I hardly use diodes so I have no idea what the codes mean but from what I can see it says SD1, 03A, ITT.

 

It's just a small signal diode - like a 1N4148. It looks like what that's circuit is doing is making sure that the SPU is in 60Hz mode just after reset even if the console is set to 50Hz - presumably to get past the checks in some Japanese games that won't boot on PAL consoles.

 

I hadn't actually tried an NTSC game in 50Hz mode for a while but yep, sure enough that seems to be exactly what it does. When the switch is set to 50Hz it actually starts in 60Hz then switches to 50Hz after about 8 seconds.