Tips for a clean NESRGB install?

oooh oooh I know!
Buy a broken NES and sacrifice it's booty too the RGB gods!!!

 

Anyway, I've got my NESRGB all installed! Here's what I ended up doing:



I removed the RF and enlarged the hole so that the RGB connector could fit. Then, I cut a square of sheet metal (from part of the shield) and soldered it over the channel switch hole. I drilled a hole in it for the 3.5 audio jack then attached it. I also needed to remove some of the jacket from the video connector plug on the cable to compensate for the thickness of the console's shell. It looks like this from the outside:


I needed to slightly enlarge the channel switch hole for the audio, but it doesn't look too obvious. If anything, making the hole similar to the other holes makes it match! Doing it this way means nothing is attached to the case, so I can easily disassemble the console later because nothing from the mainboard is attached to the case.

I ended up giving up on the palette switch, it was too much of a pain in the ass to mount the switch without the wires getting pinched or pulled out during reassembly. I just set it permanently to "natural" it looks great!

 

Nicely done! Is this doable on Famicoms as well?

 

The Famicom is actually easier! The new NESRGB kit comes with a replacement for the circuit board at the back of the console, which includes the video and audio jacks, as well as the palette selector.

Did anyone else have no luck de-soldering the PPU? I even bought a fancy solder sucker with a silicon tip but I couldn't get all the legs 100% free of solder. In the end, I just used a hot air gun and a spudger to pry the PPU out.

 

Desoldering is an art sometimes. The tools to make it easier are very expensive and are unjustifiable if you're not doing these sort of thing all the time. A solder sucker in conjunction with some wick would've probably done the trick. You have to be careful with the heat guns because you can damage nearby component. Either way, glad you got it out!

 

Yeah, I used solder sucker and a wick, but I couldn't free all the legs. I used a small nozzle on the heat gun, so it was mostly just the legs being heated.

I've noticed I've got a bit of audio buzz going on. I'm not sure if this is from the RGB mod or not though, do NESs normally hum? It's a pretty low hum, you can only hear it with headphones and when there's no audio playing.

I've found a thread where someone fixed their buzz by lifting the audio legs on their Famicom's CPU and using the NESRGB's ground instead:
http://www.retromods.net/viewtopic.php?t=232

Does the NES have the same issue? Would doing the same thing solve my problem too?

 

I've heard about audio interference with the NESRGB mod. This is why it's not recommended to run audio out through the same port with the RGB output and instead audio is separated. A bad or dirty ground could definitely be causing your hum. I personally haven't started my NESRGB mod yet, so I don't have a whole lot more to say.

 

Yeah, that's why I used a separate audio jack. Define "dirty ground", I just soldered the ground on the headphone jack to the big solder point that grounds the RF box to the mainboard. Or is this a case of there always being a hum that you can't really hear until you turn the volume up and use headphones?

 

dirty ground meaning a ground in a location where interference from one component is leaking to another component causing noise. a hum is likely caused from a crappy preamp and is just gain noise, but a dirty ground will cause noise leak. sort of like when your cell phone rings near your computer speaker and you hear that clicking and beeping sound.

 

Nah, it doesn't sound like that. Like I said, you can't hear it when you use speakers, so I think it's some kinda pre-amp hum like you suggested.

 

The audio interference on the cable isn't specific to the NESRGB mod; all SCART cables for any console without the proper shielding will have an audible hum. Because Tim Worthington wanted to create a kit with the best possible output he recommends running a separate audio cable.

That having been said, the NES does have its own hum as well, and I haven't been able to get rid of it. I've replaced all the capacitors in my console, replaced, the bridge rectifier, tried different PSUs, tried the mod you linked from Skips in that post above, etc. and nothing so far has eliminated it.

 

Yeah, I'm using a SCART cable that uses a 3.5mm jack to keep the audio separate until it reaches the SCART connector itself. Sounds like my issue the same as what you're seeing.

 

From what Helder just posted I feel confident about what I said earlier about it just being a characteristic of the audio amp of the NES. The noise floor is just high since it's obviously not audiophile grade.

 

I think you need more watermarks...

 

definitely
(actually, the time I tested watermarks was where pictures of my collection as well as from my hardware were used to cheat people on ebay...)