The NES toaster.....unlocked
This system started out as a 30$ shipped ebay purchase listed as "working but in extremely rough condition". That it was. The rf box is rusted, The case was a nasty yellow. A couple of pins on the pcb that connect to the cartridge slot were corroded. But I managed to get it going once or twice to confirm that it fully worked.
Done so far:
Flipped the pcb over so it's easier to get at the pcb components. Also flipping the pcb makes the nes cartridge face forward when you turn the slot into a top loader style. I had to relocate two screw mounts and glue them in place but it works fine. It also uses two original screw mounts which is great. I made a few extra holes in the case for the power jack, composite video and audio rca plugs. I also had to completely remove a screw mount that was pressing against the heatsink which can get fairly hot.
Disabled the lockout chip (I actually completely broke the leg and part of the chip because it was so old) :awesome:
Desoldered the ppu and 74ls373 chip and installed precision sockets in their places. When you switch to a rgb ppu for some reason you need to swap the 74ls373 with a 74HC373 to get the powerpak to work. I learned that trick from this thread:
http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopi ... 591b858d10
Also for this pcb revision (nes-cpu-06) I needed to add a 68 pf ceramic cap between ppu pin 24 and ground as suggested here by moosmann:
http://playoffline.wordpress.com/mod/nesrgb/
Before I added this cap the graphics were glitching like crazy. You don't need to do this on all systems so far this is the only model of nes/famicom that's needed this cap to work right
Desoldered the expansion port which was never used. Also extended the wires for one of the controller ports so it reaches the plug (have to do the other port later when I'm not feeling lazy).
Soldered the cartridge pins into a stoneagegamer nes to famicom adapter:
http://stoneagegamer.com/nestofamicomco ... 0-pin.aspx
These things are brand new and have a perfect slot for building a top loader out of. And for 10$ you can't go wrong.
I built one of these:
Since when I install the upgrade kit into the machine the corner of the kit would hit the rf box I built an adapter that moves the ppu socket away from the rf box so everything fits nicely. Making this adapter was actually a lot of work. It's kind of convenient having all the pins on the top which makes it easy to disconnect ppu traces and wire them how I want. The 05 series rgb ppus need something done with the address lines to get them going like this schematic:
If I ever get my hand on one of these 05 series ppus it would be cool to build one of these adapters.
I wired up the famicom to nes adapter to have pins 45 and 46 of the famicom cartridge slot wired into a 2 pin header. This was just temporary so I could easily mess around with how things are wired. Later I plan to wire those two pins into expansion port pins on the nes pins so I don't need to plug in a header anytime I have a game with an upgraded audio chip like castlevania 3 j. I have to be careful though because the nes 2 is missing some expansion port pins so I need to find some unused pins that both the toaster and the nes 2 have.
So now for the fun mods....
Since this system is rigged to quickly and easily install whatever I want I built and stuck in one of these kits:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/F-LABO/ProductsList.html
This kit uses a rgb ppu chip from a playchoice 10 pcb and gives you super clean rgb, s-video, and decent composite video. This kit also adds a really amazing stereo sound circuit that's much better than any other stereo sound mod I found on the net for the nes/famicom.
The video looks amazing. And I even managed to 100% recreate the audio wiring that this kit uses in the av famicom. The instructions for this kit tell you to cut the audio in/out traces going to the famicom cartridge slot and wire them into the c45 and c46 traces on the kit pcb. So I just wired the header of my famicom to nes adapter (which is wired into c45 and c46 of the famicom connector) into those traces on the kit pcb. The other traces are just the two audio pins from the cpu and left and right speaker out. I installed two rca jacks on the back of the system for left and right speaker output.
This system is amazing it looks and sounds as good as my av famicom. The only weakness is it won't play crisis force properly on my powerpak. But for some reason crisis force runs fine on my upgraded av famicom(s). Everything else is fine. This system even plays japanese games with upgraded audio chips.
still to do:
not a whole lot...
extend the wires for the other controller port. Build a cartridge slot into the top of the case so it's top loader style (I wanna see that game art of whatever I'm playing). Glue a chunk of plastic in there that I can glue the cartridge slot against to keep it firmly in the upright position and keep it from moving when you insert a game. Open up my famicom to nes adapter and wire the audio pins into unused expansion port pins so I don't need to use a header for famicom games with upgraded audio chips. Find myself some snes multi av ports so I can install one in the back and wire up everything this kit outputs (rgb, s-video, composite, awesome stereo sound). And also I need to install a switch that switches between the upgraded audio and the original mono since 3 games sound a little odd with the upgraded circuit.