The perfect nes

Here's some pictures of the completed system:







Specs of this system:

The composite ppu has been removed and I've installed a rgb ppu from a playchoice 10 arcade pcb. The ppu kit amps the video, cleans up the sync, and outputs clean rgb, s-video, and composite video. The rgb, sync, s-video, and composite video are wired into the multi av port at the back of the system. The video signals are wired up to the same standards and pinout as a ntsc snes. So this machine is fully compatible with ntsc snes av cables.

The audio circuit has been rebuilt to have pseudo stereo sound, increased bass, and proper audio mixing. This is also the only upgraded audio circuit that properly mixes in audio from famicom games that come with advanced audio chips (like castlevania 3j). I also installed a switch on the back of the system that lets you switch between using the upgraded system audio and the default audio. You can flip the switch real time while the system is running and the audio circuit changes with no delay. Here's a demonstration video showing the difference in audio quality between the default circuit and the upgraded circuit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLGo_P-MNG4&feature=channel_video_title

I swapped out a chip in this system that lets you use the powerpak with the rgb ppu. If you don't swap the chip you get garbled graphics when you try to use a powerpak.

The nes to famicom adapter I'm using has been modded to support 100% of nes games (there were a couple of traces that weren't connected by default). I also modded the nes to famicom adapter to mix in the extended audio outputted from the powerpak for fds games and other upgraded audio games.

This's a video taken from my capture card comparing a non modded av famicom to my upgraded machine both running the exact same game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v7e-bjB13s&feature=channel_video_title

 

Too me that is the best Nes ever,Good work

 

I've seen mods to do stereo separation as a matter of moving some channels to the left output and others to the right but I'm not familiar with that level of bass increase.

 

thanks!

Other audio mods out there are very simple, and don't really do anything special to the audio besides putting the one cpu pin on the one channel and the other cpu pin on the other channel.

The reworked audio circuit that I have uses a couple of op amps and a virtual ground from what I've seen. I didn't design the circuit I just built it from a custom pcb that I ordered from japan that's specifically designed for upgrading av famicoms. The video circuit is much more simple it's basically feeding the sync through a lm1881 into a cxa1645. And the rgb lines go through 10 uf caps into the 1645 which amps the signal and converts it to proper looking rgb, s-video, and not so great looking composite video.

The reason why I installed the audio circuit switch is because 3 games (tmnt 2, ff3, some of kirbys adventure) that use popping sounds for drums the popping is filtered out with the new audio circuit. I've played through hundreds of games on my powerpak and all other games besides those 3 sound perfectly fine with the upgraded audio circuit turned on.

So far I've only found 2 games on my powerpak that didn't work with the rgb ppu, felix the cat and....the immortal I think it was. They just give you a white screen with audio. The only other bug is about 3-5% of the colours displayed on the screen are changed. The colours just look like a slight pallette swap (because quite literally the playchoice ppu chip has a slightly different pallette than the standard composite ppu). 99% of the changed colours are changed to a colour that's almost the same as the original colour that was used. And the other 1% looks fine and is fully playable.

oh yeah I forgot to post a picture of the mods done to the nes to famicom adapter



the extended audio coming out of the powerpak getting mixed in doesn't sound as good as the real hardware but this was as good as I could get it to sound. But that's one of the great things about this system. Since it's a famicom I can buy the famicom games with advanced audio chips and they're plug and play. And I'd much rather use a powerpak with near perfect extended audio for fds than a real fds with magnetic based media that breaks easily and takes forever to load.

 

NES is mono, what is separated are different kind of sound. The two audio pin of the NES are design to be mix together... So personally I prefer to let the audio as is.

Anyway I got that board too. Video quality is nice, but that don't solve the jailbar problem people get using an XRGB3. But It less than other RGB mod. But I guess that the picture will be perfect if plug directly on a TV. XRGB3 is great because it show 240p signal correctly unlike modern TV but it's a bit picky on signal quality.

Btw, Drakon you post this on how many forums?? At least 4 for sure. That kind of funny

 

I wish I had the skills to solder in the ppu from a pc-10 , maybe some day someone will be willing to take on the job for me :crying:

 

Didn't you post this on NESDEV or another site? While the image might appear sharper, atleast in the capture, the colors being off are pretty annoying. While you may get used to it and tolerate it I guess I just don't want to take a big negative of incorrect colors for a small positive (from my point of view) of a slightly sharper image. Also the audio mod sounds horrible. Arbitrary moving of channels to the left or right is annoying. The bass could sound pretty good though depending on the game.

What I really want to see if someone cloning the NTSC PPU and modifying it to output RGB but still having the correct retail machine palette, so there is no drawback.

 

no 1080p capture card?

 

For the audio I do find mono annoying these days but I'm not entirely sold on splitting the channels either. The only compromise I can think of would be to run the mono signal to stereo plugs duplicating the signal for both sides. Not as if any games were mixed for stereo or selectively output to one side or the other natively.

On top of that my personal preference has always been for the "toaster" NES. Heresy I know, but I'm a weird one.

 

I fact that's was nintendo did with the AV Famicom both Left and Right audio pin receive the same mono signal. So you can output the same signal on both your TV speaker. You can also use a Y splitter to do the same with NES.

Btw what the NES CPU output is not two channel, it's the component of one.

 

Meh. The perfect NES will be an enhanced logical clone dropped into an original assembly (so no not Kevtris' or these gimmicky mods).

 

a drop in replacement board which offered easily added RGB out would definitely be the bees knees

 

Fantastic work. Im really impressed. Can you reveal how much it cost all up?
Im guessing ALOT.

 

nice work

 

The best NES is an modified AV Famicom. :thumbsup:
Jokes apart, GREAT JOB ! :clap:

 

Darthcloud and I ordered our kits together. I think they look fantastic and go together quite easily.

 

Did you just recently do this? / Did you purchase the PC-10 from ebay / me?

 

We did but I had the PPU from a VS duck hunt set already. I have several VS sets for my VS machine so I robbed one from there

 

I've always been rather horrified at the thought of purposefully rendering one piece of hardware dead for a mod or other repair work. Be nice if I could score some dead PC-10 boards.

 

Don't each of these VS boards have two PPUs ? :shrug: