Is it legal to chip a snes and then sell it on ebay?

Alocer · Post by **Alocer** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 8:49 am

Living in the UK, Nintendo run all of their consoles and games on 50mhz. IF I chip a snes so that I can make it run 60mhz instead of the 50mhz and so the games will run faster and be able to run NTSC would i be able to sell them on ebay legally?

Thanks

totokan · Post by **totokan** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 8:50 am

read ebay's TOS.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:14 am

what are you talking about man? do you mean the 50/60Hz of the power in europe vs north america? if so that has nothing to do with the speed of the snes. the main processor is 3.58 Mhz and the turbo-y graphic chips things run at around 20Mhz... in any country.

so anyways, if you take a snes made to take 240v/50Hz and mod it to accept 120v/60Hz (which basically means swapping out the power supply) theres no reason you couldnt sell it on ebay.

Alocer · Post by **Alocer** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:26 am

timmeh87 wrote:what are you talking about man? do you mean the 50/60Hz of the power in europe vs north america? if so that has nothing to do with the speed of the snes. the main processor is 3.58 Mhz and the turbo-y graphic chips things run at around 20Mhz... in any country.

so anyways, if you take a snes made to take 240v/50Hz and mod it to accept 120v/60Hz (which basically means swapping out the power supply) theres no reason you couldnt sell it on ebay.

http://www.yiu.co.uk/snes/?page=snes60 Thats what I am on about sorry I was typing mhz instead of Hz. 50hz runs 20% slower that a 60hz machine and also on a 60hz you can play NTSC games.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:08 am

interesting information...

anyhow, theres no reason why you couldnt sell that. it dosent do anything illegal as far as i know... it just makes it so you can use a different TV.

Post by **marshallh** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:03 pm

It might possibly be illegal if Nintendo sees it.. As long as you don't circumvent the region code lockout, then you're good.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:10 pm

yeah i was wondering to myself if the original NES had region preotection. anyhow, i dont think anyone gives a crap these days.

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 4:19 pm

i'v seen a pal/ntsc switching N64 on ebay and an overclocked NES. i don't see why a modded snes would be illegal

psychotic_mechanic · Post by **psychotic_mechanic** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 5:15 pm

timmeh87 wrote:yeah i was wondering to myself if the original NES had region preotection. anyhow, i dont think anyone gives a crap these days.

The original has a chip which can be defeated easily, the weird thing is that the SNES and N64 rely on physical lockouts that can be hacked out with pliers or a hot knife.

I don't think anyone really cares, I saw someone selling instructions on how to mod an SNES to be region free (for those people that have never heard of google I suppose) and was charging $10 or so I think. Technically, when I sell Japanese famicom systems to american buyers I am breaking the law because it has "only for sale and use in Japan" stamped on the bottom. If I were selling 360's or PSP's I may be worried about the police breaking down my door, but not 10-20 year old systems.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 9:15 pm

Someone has already said it about the security on keeping people from playing Eur/Jap games on the US systems. However to be honest, all you have to t do to do that is change the region code (very simple) and snap off two plastic pieces.

For the change on region coding go to gamesx.com

And the whole thing about it being illegal... dont worry your moding the system your not breaking any copyright laws.