SHVC-CPU-01, tell me about it - the good , the bad, mods I should do?

I finally opened the SNES I bought for $5 at a church sale 7 or 8 years ago, the horribly yellowed plastic hinted at it being an old one, and the motherboard confirms a 1990 unit.

A couple of the ICs on the board have a lot of flux residue around them - is this common? I've only seen this before on re-flowed 360s.

I know this unit shouldn't suffer from the vertical bar issue, does it have any inherent problems I should be aware of?

What's my best choice for video output on this machine? Does it produce S-Video as is?

Anything else cool I can do with it?

 

It outputs RGB and S-Video. Use atleast S-Video. Unless the machine is damaged, there is no reason to "modify" it. The only reason to consider anything like that would be if you collect import games. If you don't do imports there is no reason at all to modify it that I can think of.

 

Do you have the very old one with the BA6592 and the big Capacitor on the power input?

If you have the big cap, power cycle it before taking it apart. Otherwise a dangling power switch could kill the SNES in a second.

Personally I like the SHVC-CPU-01, I find that it has cleaner audio than the other revisions. Better signal to noise ratio.

 

Thanks for the info guys. MotZilla; I've already removed the tabs in the game slot so I can play Japanese games, what form is the RGB put out in? Can this unit produce a component signal my Samsung LCD will accept?

MaxWar: Yes it does have the big (huge!) cap on the power input, fortunately I'd already read your thread on that danger and cycled and detached the switch before I did anything else! Thanks!

There's some cool, odd stuff in this console - the modular SHVC box that plugs into a connector on the board and the removable cartridge connector are unlike any other console I've opened. It all seems unusually well engineered. Was the expansion connector on the underside of the unit ever used for anything? What is the purpose of the hole with the threaded metal insert near the front of the machine?

 

To the best of my knowledge, the BS-X Satellaview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview was the only official product to make use of the expansion port. If there's anything else, I'd like to know as well.

 

Since it's a first revision board the RGB output is going to be fairly blurry. Some people don't mind this, but I certainly prefer the sharper output of the 1chip and SNES mini models.

 

After trying both 1 chip and old consoles, I think I might prefer the "blurry" graphics of the old one for some reason.


I felt the 1chip looked washed out and pixelated. The old SNES felt like it has more vibrant colors, and was sharp enough for my tastes. I guess I am not one of those who only swears by razor sharp pixels.
Still that is a first impression, I have not made any kind of truly objective comparison.