Some updates: Dec 12 2024: The Lava RSC team emailed me and they have released a new firmware for the console to fix the Rev E sparkple issue! I didn't even ask them to look into this, but I guess they watched the video and fixed it? (Or perhaps they already knew about it?) Either way, it is firmware 1.6 that contains this fix. Thanks to Patron Daniel, he pointed out that the DIN-10 connector might be using the Sega Saturn pinout. (I was unaware the Saturn used a Mini DIN 10) I compared the physical pinout on this console with the Sega Saturn and it's a perfect match.! gamesx.com/grafx/satpin.jpg The only potential issue is the RGBS cables you can buy are likely wired with the "Sync" being wired to the Composite video pin. This will work fine on SCART displays and probably the Sony PVM, but for monitors like the Commodore 1084 this will not work properly when using the DE9 input. So I am probably going to make a cable.... Also some info on the PPU composite strangeness from viewer @chepossofare: "The signal from PPU is perfectly normal: There are 5 EXTs pins on the PPU that, when configured, outputs indexes for the palette color. Those are used by the FPGA to understand the pixel color. EXT0-3 are on the PPU but EXT4 is multiplexed on the composite pin21, so you are basically seeing composite video + bit for EXT4." So it turns out this is 100% normal and is just how the NESRGB and this implementation of RGB for the NES works. I have also figured out how to get custom color palettes, so I will make an update video on the second channel once I get my DIN-10 cable (to show off RGB) and I'll discuss how the custom palettes work. In that video I will also test the Rev E PPU on a real NES to see if that sparkle problem carries over to real hardware.
You either watch my viewing history, Or UA-cam uses my history to give video suggestions. This is not the first time I spent a day looking up a topic, (Nentendo) And the next day one I see a new video about the subject.
@@JohnWojt The chip usually isn't the problem. It's usually that they cheap out on the motherboards. The chip itself would likely be 100% compatible if not for that. (they don't use all of the cartridge slot connections a lot of the time, etc.)
@@maxxdahl6062 NES-on-a-chip clones don't have much of a mainboard... they typically have one board with the so called NOAC chip.. a cartridge slot and some supporting power electronics and a second board with the that does the video interfacing (especially to convert to hdmi) they typically epoxy the chip... Intellectual property concerns amongst Chinese chip makers??... they suffer from video glitching, sound and compatibility issues.
NTSC: Approximated color palette from an original NTSC console. PC-10 = Derived from sampling Nintendo PlayChoice 10 Arcade’s RGB color palette (same PPU used in Sharp Famicom Titler?). FCEUX: A popular emulator’s digital RGB color palette.
Doesn’t matter if it’s common knowledge when I’m literally responding to the part of the video where Adrian says he doesn’t understand because there is no manual. He speculates that that PC10 is simply “more vibrant” but “less accurate,” proving that he does not know the truth behind them no matter how common that knowledge is to you and I. Because PC10’s pallets can be more accurately sampled, reality is the opposite of his speculation: More accurate, but definitely not a comparable palette to NTSC PPUs, none the less.
I'm not a console kid but I'm glad I stayed for the whole video. Hardware hacking, oscilloscope probing, esoteric video signals discussion... great video!!
That new retro-device looks like a really good find, @Adrian - thanks for walking us through it! -> Picture comes up fantastic on the 1702 CRT. Love that you've modded the new toy within 5 mins of getting it, too 😂
Adrian spent hours and hours testing the games on this device. What dedication, what great effort this man goes thru to make content for us ! (surely he wasn't playing just for the fun of it)
8 years ago I got my NES rgb-modded and it cost me between 200$ and 300$ CAD. This "clone" having rgb and s-video is an absolute steal! And will give better nes video to many people.
there were two main reasons as to why the international cartridges were bigger than the japanese ones. the first is that nintendo wanted the console to feel more like a professional piece of equipment more than a toy, so they made the console and carts feel similar to a VCR and VHS tape. second, the bigger cartridges appealed to stores as it made them more difficult to steal them by hiding them in or under clothing.
Hey Adrian! Now sure when you made this video originally, but the website where you got the firmware and palettes file NOW has a user manual in English right under the zip file dated November 2024. It doesn't say how to do the palette switching, but there is an email address for support. The manual does also mention that it should user the Sega Saturn 10 pin din.
@1:03:27, marginal may not be an issue with a bad or marginal PPU. The timing of the data pins with reference to the clock may just me a little slower or faster. This occasionally happens when designing an MCU/FPGA project when you interface to tap signals from an existing third party device where you do not have access to all the variants of components or the original intended design specifications for proper pin timing ranges to ensure 0 data errors under all circumstances.
I almost ventured into the SCART cable/switching fiasco. Luckily, RetroRGB started making awesome component cables for everything. No NTSC-J cables to deal with and no sync on whatever issues. If only the industry embraced YPbPr, at least.
Ince the NES does not output RGB signals itself, the actual color rendition of an NTSC TV is going to vary from set to set. The first RGB mods for the NES were using the PPU from the PC10 arcade hardware which indeed DOES output RGB for a standard arcade monitor. This has a palette that makes it look very different to your typical NTSC TV but it worked. As the newer RGB mods kept being released, they didn't require the PPU from the rare PC10 arcade boards but they would still use the pallette from them while others would use a palette intended to mimic a typical NTSC TV. Of course, as time went on there would be discussion on what is the 'correct' way to display fc/nes video over RGB when no home console version of the hardware generated RGB in order to take an acceptable palette from. Nowadays, the mods for any output besides composite I have ever seen always allow you to switch between the palettes used. FCEUX just happens to be one of the most popular NES emulators and it's the palette it uses on PC hardware, which was obviously RGB. I would be willing to bet the SD card has standard NES emulator palette files on it and you might be able to download more or alternates and pop em on there. I have seen this many times before. I have even seen internal SD cards on some clone systems that are only there to hold the palette files and they only have one on them, must have been the cheapest and easiest way to handle it in whatever overseas manufacturing plant they were made in. Anyways, being able to change the palette on the system wile connected via composite implies that it isn't routing the PPU video directly to the jacks like the fc/nes but is instead using something like a video encoder that also handles the composite as well as the RGB/SVID etc. I just so happened to own a retail buy/sell/trade video game store and fc/nes clones from around the world were one of my personal obsessions, which is why I know this stuff. :D Anyways, I love your videos! After finishing the video. Lol, then he proceeds to guess half of it. hehe
Side story back then, in Hong Kong official got same grey machine as in USA, however almost 99% of people directly buy "parallel import" version of Japanese "red & white" machine since both the unofficial support and choice of games are more (grey machine did have few games), so Hong Kong children play the same game as Japanese with all kind of weird non-kanji characters without knowing Japanese at all.
With the full motherboards on aliexpress, the output jack is actually a Sega Saturn jack! Its becoming semi standard to use as a fully featured jack, as the Sega Saturn outputs composite, s-video, and rgb, so thats how you would get s-video, just like rgb. However, I don't know of any good quality saturn s-video cables, ive only had cheap ones that are pretty sucky, so i suggest anyone make their own if you're able and can't find a good quality one out there. I might've gotten ahead of myself, sent this while i was watching hah, but my word of warning for Saturn s-video cables still stands Also! The precise issue with a lot of the UMG made chips--which i believe were originally reverse engineered and produced by Micro Genius--is that the two bits that define there duty cycle width of the pulse channels (00 for 12.5%, 01 for 25%, 10 for 50% square, 11 for 75% which sounds the same as 25%) are read wrong which reverses the order of each duty cycle setting, so Mario which mostly use 50% for the music ans 12.5% for sound effects, which is what makes games sound so different! Also also.. spare famicom boards, which very commonly have the E varient chips (Ive never seen an NES with Es instead of Gs, are themselves pretty abundant and can cheapy be bought from Japan, so that must be how they got legit chips in this system! With the weird different signals you saw with the original PPU video signal and the FPGA video signal, i believe that is totally normal output when the NESRGB is hijacking the PPU. there was a pin on it called PPUV, and when the FPGA is active, the output is usually solid white with some of the sprites being all gray, Thats most likely what you were seeing, with the small spikes likely being the sprites on screen. (Great choice with 8BIT Music Power ;) )
i've been playtesting my Lava RSC (white with pink❤) for about a week now, and i'm thoroughly impressed. the shell feels high quality, on par with the original, and the image quality is crazy good, even composite on my CRT is pixelperfect. i have owned Twins, Titlers, and RGB modded dozens of AV Famicoms myself back in the day, and honestly, the RSC beats them all hands down, in picture quality, features, and ease of use/versatility. i predict these will sell out quickly, and/or go up in price, so get one while they last. white and pink is already sold out atm.
God, i have memories of "Zelda" on the NES. We never figured out how to save the game, so while we were in classes, we'd just leave the game running with the TV off. Watching friends finish the game after close to a month of non-stop (as it were) playing was epic.
Btw the signal from PPU is perfectly normal: there are 5 EXTs pins on the PPU that, when configured, outputs indexes for the palette color. Those are used by the fpga to understand the pixel color. EXT0-3 are on the PPU, EXT4 is multiplexed on the composite out on pin21, so you are basically seeing composite video + bit for EXT4.
Awesome, thanks for the explanation. So this method renders the original composite output inoperative (when using an add-on board) or I suppose it injects a new composite signal into Pin 21 for the on board composite output?
@@adriansdigitalbasement Yep the mod does not pass through the composite output from the PPU to the output jack. The composite signal coming from the jack is recreated by the mod's electronics.
You can even find those cartridge adapters inside some early 5 screw NES cartridges the one most people point to is Gyromite, but they have been in some early excite bikes, and the way you can 100% guarantee to get one though it will be a little bit more expensive is to get yourself a copy of stack-up because 100% of copies of stack up have the Japanese ROM board connected through an official Nintendo adapter
You probably know this, but in case your comment confuses someone- The adapter you mentioned only does fc->nes, not nes->fc… which means the adapter in those cartridges works for playing famicom games on the nes, but not nes games on famicom (so it wouldn’t be relevant for use with this particular clone hardware).
Before the NESRGB the only way to get RGB was to use an RP2C03B from a Playchoice-10 or certain Vs. boards and modify the main PCB to grab the RGB output. And that would only work on an NTSC console.
That's because they are (at least believed to be) based on NTSC PPUs. I'm glad other solutions, like the NESRGB, exist since I hate to think about the PlayChoice-10 and VS. System boards that were sacrificed for RGB. Though, with the VS. System games were sold (also?) as individual chip sets.
@emmettturner9452 The base palettes don't look too different (at least on the NESDev wiki). It might be because the emphasis bit works differently on the 2C02 vs. 2C03. The former will darken the color while the latter will set it to full brightness. Thus, it would cause a more striking difference in a game's colors.
@@douro20 it’s a lot closer than most Vs System games where making them different was a form of copy protection but the difference is striking when cycling through on devices like NESRGB, Framemeister XRGB Mini, etc
Trivia on the short cables (which also plagues the Super Famicom, making it very easy to distinguish between japanese, US and european versions): the reason they are so short is because, instead of treating the console like a TV add-on (like a VCR), they treated it more like a computer, so it was supposed to be placed away from the TV and near the players. That also explains why the official RF cable and power adapter are so long.
To be fair, it was the same here, years ago. My first Colecovision and the Intellivision had about 15' of RF cable and the systems had short controller cables.
@@AtariBorn It was the front-loader design (as well as the fact they marketed it as an "entertainment system") what contributed to the change in placement. The shape also contributed to some people using it as a table replacement, which led to some unfortunate accidents. It took some more time before the japanese consumer started placing the console closer to the TV and further from the player (and I believe only with some consoles)..
Another thing is Japanese homes traditionally don't have carpet floors, so there were less concerns about putting the consoles on the floor and the potential of the vents getting blocked, etc.
Getting the NES in 1986 was pretty early. The system came out in North America on October 18, 1985. I managed to snag an HDMI modded NES for around $300 a couple years ago. It would be awesome if someone was able to come out with a new version of that.
This is pretty neat. Was thinking of getting an old NES for nostalgia reasons and to play an old cartridge I still own. Now I'm thinking the clone may be a better buy.
Yeah especially the Lite version -- really I think the firmware updates on the full SD card version is pointless, so I would say save the $30 and get the Lite.
I should note that later Famicom revisions had both NES controller ports and composite out. The first is called the Twin Famicom, which is by Sharp and and was a combo of the NES and floppy drive, and the latter is called the AV Famicom, which is basically the Japanese version of the top loader, same as the American one with the differences being cart slot and socket for the Japanese zapper.
Thanks for this video, I've had my eye on those RGB boards for a while. The replica console is attractive because modifying the original for RGB is kinda involved. Not sure which way to go now!
I had NO idea that the NES zapper could sync to scanlines. I thought it just looked for the bright square in Duck Hunt. Were there any real games that took advantage of this?
17:28 thru 17:35 -- most likely its switching pallettes between other clones and emulators (fceux is a nes emulator) But hey thats just my theory, a colour changing theory!!!! Thanks for reading and commenting and liking. 😎 (and for aiden only, hearting if he so chooses)
As others have mentioned, it does look like it's a Saturn Jack: 10-pin mini DIN with Y and C signals. Of course, it could also be entirely custom pinout. That'd be a bit nuts when Saturn cables already exist. But it could. Interesting video though!
Ah, those cables. They used them for the old non-computer A/V on "TV" cards with S-Video for the PC as well unless I'm mistaken. On a side note the Sega Genesis didn't have S-Video, if I recall, but a bit of bodging and a couple of caps will pull S-Video out of the Genesis chipset directly.
Something I noticed about the NES color palette, is it only appears muted (especially red) on regular TV's, but on Sony's red was actually vibrant, and on SMB1 the sky was actually blue (vs a purple hue we usually know it as). Emulators ironically have a Sony CX palette which emulates that very palette, and I'm not entirely sure which palette is correct. In very early photos of when SMB was being developed, Nintendo was using Trinitrons, but later they had generic TV's by the time SMB3 was being worked on. So perhaps the "intended" palette depends on the game and what TV/monitor Nintendo was using when developing said games. For poor sound on most clones, from what I've gathered, the NES on a chip had the pulse wave duty cycles reversed which is where the sound change happened. But I'm not 100% on that.
NESRGB can use the SNES and N64 type multi-AV output for RGB and S-Video cables. It does require cutting a hole in the back of the case, but it looks pretty stock and matches other official Nintendo connectors and it uses the official NES SCART or JP15 or S-Video connectors for the AV connectors.
There was a youtuber (can't remember channel) that was making mini PC's for DOS retro gaming that used off the shelf aluminum housings and then had PCB's printed up as nice end caps to the housing on each side. I think if I remember right LGR got one.
1:05:12 such noisy pixels used to be visible on my modded GameGear too. Issue was that the pixel clock of the console was wonky. The LCD mod I was using luckily had a local pixel clock as well that could be used and it fixed the issue. Question is where does the pixel clock come from on the NES? Probably internal to the PPU?
While watching Adrian opening his new FamiCom, I wanted to see how bad my FamiClone was inside. And it is three boards with some tiny components and a globtop on each, in addition two of six screws where torked so hard they don't work fully, I washable to remove them and make them not fall out again. The console works, but as it's cheap, I wasn't expecting much, so I am happy enough.
Yes would be interesting to place the PPU into a working Famicom to check for sparkle. It maybe an interaction between ppu & FPGA due to voltage levels. Might need pull up/down resistors. Due to chip technologies ie mos or cmos. Seen issues when repairing games/ arcade machines with modern ic.
You can eliminate jailbars on famicoms via additional modding. I haven't modded enough of them to know what is needed on all revisions, but when I took a video tap straight off the PPU and wrapped it in copper tape (which requires desoldering the PPU), I got no jailbars. People also suggested putting caps across v+ to ground, but that changed nothing for me. Famicoms can be bought for extremely cheaply, so I personally think it's worth doing the mod.
The location of those caps matters - and it also varies from board to board by a lot. There are some boards where putting in a cap in the right place can significantly reduce the jailbars, and there are some where the effect is negligible.
Has everyone seen Mend-it-Mark got a copyright strike and a video taken down for repairing an amplifier? That can't be allowed to stand. That could be the death of every repair channel including ADB.
I think Nintendo made the nes cartridges that big because they wanted to make the nes fit in with other av gear of the time, and they wanted it to feel less like a toy and more like a serious piece of av equipment, to separate it from the negative look on consoles at the time, right after the market crash of ‘83, although idk because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even born yet.
30:41 looking at the format, there's several runs of 3 identical bytes in a row, which makes me think it's something like: each set of 3 bytes is RGB (so if the 3 are identical it's a shade of grey). Could just as easily be in reverse order, BRG. There's enough bytes for 64 colours while I think only 56 are needed, so either there's some padding or there's more real data.
Just a thought re: the palettes. Maybe they need to be flashed onto the device during the firmware update? Try the firmware update again, but with the palettes directory on the SD card at the same time? Seems like a lot of faff just to update the palettes whenever you want to change them, but who knows.
Perhaps! I don't know if I can just replace the firmware with the same version but that's a good idea. I've tried a few things so far like a FAT formatted smaller card but that didn't help.
It would explain why it takes up to 5 mins for a flash if it's copying the palette files. I would dump the Palettes directory on the SD card AND the firmware file in the root. It will probably reflash with the same firmware.
This was also my thought. It probably has a function to update any palettes within the Firmware update. Great thought, @Yarc-1981. Waiting for the second channel video where we revisit this.
I only subconsciously noticed how NES games don't tend to use the yellow region of the color palette often. Makes sense now seeing that color-bar screen @ 54:07.
The reason they used two audio jacks is so that the end user doesn't have to fiddle with the tv settings to find mono. Otherwise you will only hear the sound coming from either the left or right speaker. With both you hear sound coming from both sides.
A lot of Famicon clones in central and east Europe (just an example, they were seen in many other places too) had DB9 connectors. I fondly remember various variants, made under Pegasus brands, that were available in Poland. (Literally NES was known as Pegasus in Poland, not NES, or Famicon). I am sure many of these clones were done without Nintendo license, in early 90s, but you could get them even in mid and late 90s in some places. I am sure they were made somewhere in East Asia, but were very cheap (often integrating all original chips into one IC), and were in general same shape as Japanese Famicon, same cartridges (usually set with a set of cartridge with many games, and color variations of games, 99 in 1, 999 in 1, and similar, but usually something like 20 or 30 distinct games probably). The fact that they use DB9 was kind of nice, as it was easy to make extensions, fix cables, or swap them between ports, if you had issues with the other one.
Not a single regular Famicom has controllers ports, but, the 2nd revision, the Famicom AV, which looks pretty much like a NES Top Loader, has controllers ports with the same conector as the NES.
The reason the US NES was changed to look like it does was to make it look more like a VCR and less like a gaming console as they were afraid the crash of '83 had turned the buying public off of things that resembled consoles like the 2600.
I've had a marginal PPU act like that before, it's quite noticable on SMB3, the white thing you can fall through on the first level and clouds. Turns out it was overheating slightly, if I put a fan on it, it stops. So what I did was just undervolt it instead, 4v results in it working fine, but no glitching.
Looking at the NES schematics, it seems that pin 21 gives the composite video out through a transistor, going then to the RF modulator. Maybe probing on the PPU itself was too weak a signal? Seems weird that the output is not correct. Maybe it doesn't like to be floating?
In the 80's when I started in professional video, we changed NTSC to mean "Never Twice the Same Color lol. Those settings seem to be color-space settings. NTSC is probably "NTSC Legal".
I went to the Ali express listing and in the sales graphics near the bottom they definitely say they are harvesting the chips from the ‘white and red units’ meaning the famicom.
Hi Adrian, loved this! :) Regarding the shooter game, can you do a video on how that actually works? How does the game get feedback from a light shining at a crt? I remember having a game that did something similar growing up in the 80’s… can’t remember what it was though. Thanks heaps :)
As I found out when I bought a second hand sfc and controller.. the controller cables in japan were 3ft long because that's all that was needed because the homes were/are small.
That may be a SEGA Saturn video connector. It is compatible with SCART (I own that cable,) and I seem to remember it has S-video compatibility as well.
For the palettes, at one point you mentioned that the system could be rebooted by pressing things on the game controller. Perhaps that is the same for the palettes? I would try holding select and pressing other buttons on the controller to see what happens.
Aw, I was thinking of getting one of the kits before the video went up, but they appear to have gone up in price literally as I refreshed the page :( Not by all that much, but still.
I thought that the audio issues you talked about afflicted NOAC chips (NES-on-a-chip integrated circuit)? I've never heard it associated with unofficial chip clones.
Some of those STM32 microcontrollers don't like SD cards over 8gb, but your card worked for the update, so I guess you got the Chinese clone chip STM32, lol. Any 3d printer I had with the stm32f103, would not read cards over 8gb. Maybe that's your issue with the pallets?
Some updates:
Dec 12 2024: The Lava RSC team emailed me and they have released a new firmware for the console to fix the Rev E sparkple issue! I didn't even ask them to look into this, but I guess they watched the video and fixed it? (Or perhaps they already knew about it?) Either way, it is firmware 1.6 that contains this fix.
Thanks to Patron Daniel, he pointed out that the DIN-10 connector might be using the Sega Saturn pinout. (I was unaware the Saturn used a Mini DIN 10) I compared the physical pinout on this console with the Sega Saturn and it's a perfect match.! gamesx.com/grafx/satpin.jpg The only potential issue is the RGBS cables you can buy are likely wired with the "Sync" being wired to the Composite video pin. This will work fine on SCART displays and probably the Sony PVM, but for monitors like the Commodore 1084 this will not work properly when using the DE9 input. So I am probably going to make a cable....
Also some info on the PPU composite strangeness from viewer @chepossofare: "The signal from PPU is perfectly normal: There are 5 EXTs pins on the PPU that, when configured, outputs indexes for the palette color. Those are used by the FPGA to understand the pixel color. EXT0-3 are on the PPU but EXT4 is multiplexed on the composite pin21, so you are basically seeing composite video + bit for EXT4." So it turns out this is 100% normal and is just how the NESRGB and this implementation of RGB for the NES works.
I have also figured out how to get custom color palettes, so I will make an update video on the second channel once I get my DIN-10 cable (to show off RGB) and I'll discuss how the custom palettes work. In that video I will also test the Rev E PPU on a real NES to see if that sparkle problem carries over to real hardware.
You either watch my viewing history,
Or UA-cam uses my history to give video suggestions.
This is not the first time I spent a day looking up a topic, (Nentendo)
And the next day one I see a new video about the subject.
Definitely cooler than clones from company's like Hyperkin and Retro-bit that use an NES-on-a-chip.
as soon as i saw the connector, i went "oh no, nonono, this is the sega saturn one"
@@JohnWojt The chip usually isn't the problem. It's usually that they cheap out on the motherboards. The chip itself would likely be 100% compatible if not for that. (they don't use all of the cartridge slot connections a lot of the time, etc.)
@@maxxdahl6062 NES-on-a-chip clones don't have much of a mainboard... they typically have one board with the so called NOAC chip.. a cartridge slot and some supporting power electronics and a second board with the that does the video interfacing (especially to convert to hdmi) they typically epoxy the chip... Intellectual property concerns amongst Chinese chip makers??... they suffer from video glitching, sound and compatibility issues.
Loving that VEDIO port. Classic Ali Express!
Vedio killed the ridao star.
Successful Adrian always makes me so happy.
NTSC: Approximated color palette from an original NTSC console.
PC-10 = Derived from sampling Nintendo PlayChoice 10 Arcade’s RGB color palette (same PPU used in Sharp Famicom Titler?).
FCEUX: A popular emulator’s digital RGB color palette.
Do you really think this isn’t common knowledge?
Doesn’t matter if it’s common knowledge when I’m literally responding to the part of the video where Adrian says he doesn’t understand because there is no manual. He speculates that that PC10 is simply “more vibrant” but “less accurate,” proving that he does not know the truth behind them no matter how common that knowledge is to you and I.
Because PC10’s pallets can be more accurately sampled, reality is the opposite of his speculation: More accurate, but definitely not a comparable palette to NTSC PPUs, none the less.
I'm not a console kid but I'm glad I stayed for the whole video. Hardware hacking, oscilloscope probing, esoteric video signals discussion... great video!!
That new retro-device looks like a really good find, @Adrian - thanks for walking us through it! -> Picture comes up fantastic on the 1702 CRT.
Love that you've modded the new toy within 5 mins of getting it, too 😂
I'm a simple man. I see low latency. I upvote.
Adrian spent hours and hours testing the games on this device. What dedication, what great effort this man goes thru to make content for us ! (surely he wasn't playing just for the fun of it)
8 years ago I got my NES rgb-modded and it cost me between 200$ and 300$ CAD. This "clone" having rgb and s-video is an absolute steal! And will give better nes video to many people.
It's turnkey meaning no hardware expertise is needed and that is what is so cool IMHO
@adriansdigitalbasement Absolutely! No need anymore to either mod, or getting modded, an NES to enjoy better picture on hardware!
there were two main reasons as to why the international cartridges were bigger than the japanese ones. the first is that nintendo wanted the console to feel more like a professional piece of equipment more than a toy, so they made the console and carts feel similar to a VCR and VHS tape. second, the bigger cartridges appealed to stores as it made them more difficult to steal them by hiding them in or under clothing.
The main reason is that they needed the additional pins for their CIC lockout mechanism.
Right. Every piece of Famicom hardware has that "toy" feel, compared to the NES. Especially Famicom Disk System.
The NES feels like it belongs in an AV rack, not below your home television to play video games.
Hey Adrian! Now sure when you made this video originally, but the website where you got the firmware and palettes file NOW has a user manual in English right under the zip file dated November 2024. It doesn't say how to do the palette switching, but there is an email address for support. The manual does also mention that it should user the Sega Saturn 10 pin din.
Wow! Cartridges are brilliant!! It seems like magic to me who had a cassette player. Typed in was our only alternative to that
@1:03:27, marginal may not be an issue with a bad or marginal PPU. The timing of the data pins with reference to the clock may just me a little slower or faster. This occasionally happens when designing an MCU/FPGA project when you interface to tap signals from an existing third party device where you do not have access to all the variants of components or the original intended design specifications for proper pin timing ranges to ensure 0 data errors under all circumstances.
SCART was a blessing...
A shame it never came to American regions... or ntsc
I almost ventured into the SCART cable/switching fiasco. Luckily, RetroRGB started making awesome component cables for everything. No NTSC-J cables to deal with and no sync on whatever issues. If only the industry embraced YPbPr, at least.
Your so technical, I love it ❤
Looking forward to the part 2 update. Amazing console.
Ince the NES does not output RGB signals itself, the actual color rendition of an NTSC TV is going to vary from set to set. The first RGB mods for the NES were using the PPU from the PC10 arcade hardware which indeed DOES output RGB for a standard arcade monitor. This has a palette that makes it look very different to your typical NTSC TV but it worked. As the newer RGB mods kept being released, they didn't require the PPU from the rare PC10 arcade boards but they would still use the pallette from them while others would use a palette intended to mimic a typical NTSC TV. Of course, as time went on there would be discussion on what is the 'correct' way to display fc/nes video over RGB when no home console version of the hardware generated RGB in order to take an acceptable palette from. Nowadays, the mods for any output besides composite I have ever seen always allow you to switch between the palettes used. FCEUX just happens to be one of the most popular NES emulators and it's the palette it uses on PC hardware, which was obviously RGB. I would be willing to bet the SD card has standard NES emulator palette files on it and you might be able to download more or alternates and pop em on there. I have seen this many times before. I have even seen internal SD cards on some clone systems that are only there to hold the palette files and they only have one on them, must have been the cheapest and easiest way to handle it in whatever overseas manufacturing plant they were made in. Anyways, being able to change the palette on the system wile connected via composite implies that it isn't routing the PPU video directly to the jacks like the fc/nes but is instead using something like a video encoder that also handles the composite as well as the RGB/SVID etc.
I just so happened to own a retail buy/sell/trade video game store and fc/nes clones from around the world were one of my personal obsessions, which is why I know this stuff. :D
Anyways, I love your videos!
After finishing the video. Lol, then he proceeds to guess half of it. hehe
Side story back then, in Hong Kong official got same grey machine as in USA, however almost 99% of people directly buy "parallel import" version of Japanese "red & white" machine since both the unofficial support and choice of games are more (grey machine did have few games), so Hong Kong children play the same game as Japanese with all kind of weird non-kanji characters without knowing Japanese at all.
Hong Kong actually got official versions of both the NES and Famicom. Definitely a topic Nintendo fans should look into.
Yup, I have a Hong Kong edition Famicom that is 50Hz
With the full motherboards on aliexpress, the output jack is actually a Sega Saturn jack! Its becoming semi standard to use as a fully featured jack, as the Sega Saturn outputs composite, s-video, and rgb, so thats how you would get s-video, just like rgb. However, I don't know of any good quality saturn s-video cables, ive only had cheap ones that are pretty sucky, so i suggest anyone make their own if you're able and can't find a good quality one out there.
I might've gotten ahead of myself, sent this while i was watching hah, but my word of warning for Saturn s-video cables still stands
Also! The precise issue with a lot of the UMG made chips--which i believe were originally reverse engineered and produced by Micro Genius--is that the two bits that define there duty cycle width of the pulse channels (00 for 12.5%, 01 for 25%, 10 for 50% square, 11 for 75% which sounds the same as 25%) are read wrong which reverses the order of each duty cycle setting, so Mario which mostly use 50% for the music ans 12.5% for sound effects, which is what makes games sound so different!
Also also.. spare famicom boards, which very commonly have the E varient chips (Ive never seen an NES with Es instead of Gs, are themselves pretty abundant and can cheapy be bought from Japan, so that must be how they got legit chips in this system!
With the weird different signals you saw with the original PPU video signal and the FPGA video signal, i believe that is totally normal output when the NESRGB is hijacking the PPU. there was a pin on it called PPUV, and when the FPGA is active, the output is usually solid white with some of the sprites being all gray, Thats most likely what you were seeing, with the small spikes likely being the sprites on screen.
(Great choice with 8BIT Music Power ;) )
MiSTeraddons uses Saturn cables for their new analog onboard and has been having cables manufactured that are probably high quality.
retro gaming cables uk have saturn s-video, component and rgb scart cables
I have about 4 official Saturn S-Video cables, from back in the day. All with decent video and from Japan.
I believe Insurrection Industries makes a high quality Saturn S-Video cable as well.
@@TonyToon oh cool, good to know! I just have the older one with VGA port for all outputs
What a brilliant video, we'd love some more console content 🤩🥳👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
That S-Video on your direct capture gives emulation a run for its money in terms of sharpness. And looks amazing on the Commodore CRT.
fantastic video Adrian really enjoyed watching it
This is pretty slick, thanks for sharing
Very interesting video. Yes I would line to see a second one where you test the chips and that 10 pin cable. Thanks Adrian.
1:13:06 - Nice to see an update on the chinese chassis and that its still going strong! This is one cool clone console, bugs aside.
i've been playtesting my Lava RSC (white with pink❤) for about a week now, and i'm thoroughly impressed.
the shell feels high quality, on par with the original, and the image quality is crazy good, even composite on my CRT is pixelperfect. i have owned Twins, Titlers, and RGB modded dozens of AV Famicoms myself back in the day, and honestly, the RSC beats them all hands down, in picture quality, features, and ease of use/versatility.
i predict these will sell out quickly, and/or go up in price, so get one while they last. white and pink is already sold out atm.
like the "VEDIO" output
👍
God, i have memories of "Zelda" on the NES. We never figured out how to save the game, so while we were in classes, we'd just leave the game running with the TV off. Watching friends finish the game after close to a month of non-stop (as it were) playing was epic.
Very nice Adrian. Nicely done.
Excellent video. Thanks for sharing 👍
Btw the signal from PPU is perfectly normal: there are 5 EXTs pins on the PPU that, when configured, outputs indexes for the palette color. Those are used by the fpga to understand the pixel color.
EXT0-3 are on the PPU, EXT4 is multiplexed on the composite out on pin21, so you are basically seeing composite video + bit for EXT4.
Awesome, thanks for the explanation. So this method renders the original composite output inoperative (when using an add-on board) or I suppose it injects a new composite signal into Pin 21 for the on board composite output?
@@adriansdigitalbasement Yep the mod does not pass through the composite output from the PPU to the output jack. The composite signal coming from the jack is recreated by the mod's electronics.
Google famicom cart cracker if I recall correctly it's just a c clamp
@@adriansdigitalbasement addendum: the composite signal is still useful (and used by the fpga) since you need blank+sync to output the generated rgb.
You can even find those cartridge adapters inside some early 5 screw NES cartridges the one most people point to is Gyromite, but they have been in some early excite bikes, and the way you can 100% guarantee to get one though it will be a little bit more expensive is to get yourself a copy of stack-up because 100% of copies of stack up have the Japanese ROM board connected through an official Nintendo adapter
You probably know this, but in case your comment confuses someone-
The adapter you mentioned only does fc->nes, not nes->fc… which means the adapter in those cartridges works for playing famicom games on the nes, but not nes games on famicom (so it wouldn’t be relevant for use with this particular clone hardware).
@TheBitPunch oh hahaha yeah I was a derp
Before the NESRGB the only way to get RGB was to use an RP2C03B from a Playchoice-10 or certain Vs. boards and modify the main PCB to grab the RGB output. And that would only work on an NTSC console.
That's because they are (at least believed to be) based on NTSC PPUs. I'm glad other solutions, like the NESRGB, exist since I hate to think about the PlayChoice-10 and VS. System boards that were sacrificed for RGB. Though, with the VS. System games were sold (also?) as individual chip sets.
Also, the PC10 colors were extremely different from the NTSC composite PPUs.
@emmettturner9452 The base palettes don't look too different (at least on the NESDev wiki). It might be because the emphasis bit works differently on the 2C02 vs. 2C03. The former will darken the color while the latter will set it to full brightness. Thus, it would cause a more striking difference in a game's colors.
@@douro20 it’s a lot closer than most Vs System games where making them different was a form of copy protection but the difference is striking when cycling through on devices like NESRGB, Framemeister XRGB Mini, etc
Trivia on the short cables (which also plagues the Super Famicom, making it very easy to distinguish between japanese, US and european versions): the reason they are so short is because, instead of treating the console like a TV add-on (like a VCR), they treated it more like a computer, so it was supposed to be placed away from the TV and near the players. That also explains why the official RF cable and power adapter are so long.
To be fair, it was the same here, years ago. My first Colecovision and the Intellivision had about 15' of RF cable and the systems had short controller cables.
@@AtariBorn It was the front-loader design (as well as the fact they marketed it as an "entertainment system") what contributed to the change in placement. The shape also contributed to some people using it as a table replacement, which led to some unfortunate accidents.
It took some more time before the japanese consumer started placing the console closer to the TV and further from the player (and I believe only with some consoles)..
Yes, in Japan, the Console was placed in front of and between the players, with short controller wires, but with a long cable to the tv.
Another thing is Japanese homes traditionally don't have carpet floors, so there were less concerns about putting the consoles on the floor and the potential of the vents getting blocked, etc.
Judging by the thumbnail, Techmoan needs to be in this.
Getting the NES in 1986 was pretty early. The system came out in North America on October 18, 1985. I managed to snag an HDMI modded NES for around $300 a couple years ago. It would be awesome if someone was able to come out with a new version of that.
It was only NYC in October '85, full nationwide launch was around June 1986
This is pretty neat. Was thinking of getting an old NES for nostalgia reasons and to play an old cartridge I still own. Now I'm thinking the clone may be a better buy.
Yeah especially the Lite version -- really I think the firmware updates on the full SD card version is pointless, so I would say save the $30 and get the Lite.
I should note that later Famicom revisions had both NES controller ports and composite out. The first is called the Twin Famicom, which is by Sharp and and was a combo of the NES and floppy drive, and the latter is called the AV Famicom, which is basically the Japanese version of the top loader, same as the American one with the differences being cart slot and socket for the Japanese zapper.
the Twin had composite video, but no NES conttollerports, just hardwired controllers like the HVC-001.
Drinking game. Every time adrian says peepee, take a shot 😂. Great video!
Thanks for the entertainment
Another great video, something different.
Nice t-shirt 😀
The video isn't bad either 🤣
Darn it, now I want one!
Thanks for this video, I've had my eye on those RGB boards for a while. The replica console is attractive because modifying the original for RGB is kinda involved. Not sure which way to go now!
Awesome t-shirt!
I have a Famicom Clone that I got off Aliexpress came with 2 wireless controllers and has both composite and HDMI and uses Micro USB for power
I had NO idea that the NES zapper could sync to scanlines. I thought it just looked for the bright square in Duck Hunt. Were there any real games that took advantage of this?
i believe Strike Wolf works like that, Boojakasha has a video about it.
17:28 thru 17:35 -- most likely its switching pallettes between other clones and emulators (fceux is a nes emulator)
But hey thats just my theory, a colour changing theory!!!! Thanks for reading and commenting and liking. 😎 (and for aiden only, hearting if he so chooses)
"But hey thats just my theory"... A Game Theory! ^_^ Sorry - I couldn't resist...
@dennisbartello7682 all good, I was going for a similar reference
You should totally test the bad chips on real hardware and see if it changes,also can't wait to see what the component looks like
As others have mentioned, it does look like it's a Saturn Jack: 10-pin mini DIN with Y and C signals. Of course, it could also be entirely custom pinout. That'd be a bit nuts when Saturn cables already exist. But it could. Interesting video though!
Ah, those cables. They used them for the old non-computer A/V on "TV" cards with S-Video for the PC as well unless I'm mistaken.
On a side note the Sega Genesis didn't have S-Video, if I recall, but a bit of bodging and a couple of caps will pull S-Video out of the Genesis chipset directly.
Something I noticed about the NES color palette, is it only appears muted (especially red) on regular TV's, but on Sony's red was actually vibrant, and on SMB1 the sky was actually blue (vs a purple hue we usually know it as). Emulators ironically have a Sony CX palette which emulates that very palette, and I'm not entirely sure which palette is correct. In very early photos of when SMB was being developed, Nintendo was using Trinitrons, but later they had generic TV's by the time SMB3 was being worked on. So perhaps the "intended" palette depends on the game and what TV/monitor Nintendo was using when developing said games.
For poor sound on most clones, from what I've gathered, the NES on a chip had the pulse wave duty cycles reversed which is where the sound change happened. But I'm not 100% on that.
NESRGB can use the SNES and N64 type multi-AV output for RGB and S-Video cables. It does require cutting a hole in the back of the case, but it looks pretty stock and matches other official Nintendo connectors and it uses the official NES SCART or JP15 or S-Video connectors for the AV connectors.
Great video!
the pallette files seem to just be 3 bytes of RGB for each of the colors
Our computer journey started with the same machine, the same year and the same age.
There was a youtuber (can't remember channel) that was making mini PC's for DOS retro gaming that used off the shelf aluminum housings and then had PCB's printed up as nice end caps to the housing on each side. I think if I remember right LGR got one.
34:50 it the SEGA Saturn Video out, it has RGB, Composit and S-Video !
1:05:12 such noisy pixels used to be visible on my modded GameGear too. Issue was that the pixel clock of the console was wonky. The LCD mod I was using luckily had a local pixel clock as well that could be used and it fixed the issue. Question is where does the pixel clock come from on the NES? Probably internal to the PPU?
While watching Adrian opening his new FamiCom, I wanted to see how bad my FamiClone was inside. And it is three boards with some tiny components and a globtop on each, in addition two of six screws where torked so hard they don't work fully, I washable to remove them and make them not fall out again.
The console works, but as it's cheap, I wasn't expecting much, so I am happy enough.
A married man uses singles day coupons to save money. Absolute savagery.
Yes would be interesting to place the PPU into a working Famicom to check for sparkle.
It maybe an interaction between ppu & FPGA due to voltage levels.
Might need pull up/down resistors.
Due to chip technologies ie mos or cmos.
Seen issues when repairing games/ arcade machines with modern ic.
You can eliminate jailbars on famicoms via additional modding. I haven't modded enough of them to know what is needed on all revisions, but when I took a video tap straight off the PPU and wrapped it in copper tape (which requires desoldering the PPU), I got no jailbars. People also suggested putting caps across v+ to ground, but that changed nothing for me.
Famicoms can be bought for extremely cheaply, so I personally think it's worth doing the mod.
The location of those caps matters - and it also varies from board to board by a lot. There are some boards where putting in a cap in the right place can significantly reduce the jailbars, and there are some where the effect is negligible.
Has everyone seen Mend-it-Mark got a copyright strike and a video taken down for repairing an amplifier? That can't be allowed to stand. That could be the death of every repair channel including ADB.
Awesome
I think Nintendo made the nes cartridges that big because they wanted to make the nes fit in with other av gear of the time, and they wanted it to feel less like a toy and more like a serious piece of av equipment, to separate it from the negative look on consoles at the time, right after the market crash of ‘83, although idk because I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even born yet.
30:41 looking at the format, there's several runs of 3 identical bytes in a row, which makes me think it's something like: each set of 3 bytes is RGB (so if the 3 are identical it's a shade of grey). Could just as easily be in reverse order, BRG. There's enough bytes for 64 colours while I think only 56 are needed, so either there's some padding or there's more real data.
The Sharp Twin Famicom is the best NES clone. It has a built in floppy disk drive, and built in composite out.
55:25 cool how you're figuring out what the pins are!
Just a thought re: the palettes. Maybe they need to be flashed onto the device during the firmware update? Try the firmware update again, but with the palettes directory on the SD card at the same time? Seems like a lot of faff just to update the palettes whenever you want to change them, but who knows.
Perhaps! I don't know if I can just replace the firmware with the same version but that's a good idea. I've tried a few things so far like a FAT formatted smaller card but that didn't help.
It would explain why it takes up to 5 mins for a flash if it's copying the palette files. I would dump the Palettes directory on the SD card AND the firmware file in the root. It will probably reflash with the same firmware.
That was my thought. The system obviously doesn't access the card directly. So a flash upgrade that includes the palettes makes sense.
This was also my thought. It probably has a function to update any palettes within the Firmware update. Great thought, @Yarc-1981. Waiting for the second channel video where we revisit this.
I'd also try just putting the zip file on too? not impossible it uses that directly, as those mini files are a pain on their own!
The video socket looks slightly different from the MD2. There is one more pin at the bottom...?
I only subconsciously noticed how NES games don't tend to use the yellow region of the color palette often. Makes sense now seeing that color-bar screen @ 54:07.
Yeah both yellow and red is not well represented on the PPU, for whatever reason.
The reason they used two audio jacks is so that the end user doesn't have to fiddle with the tv settings to find mono. Otherwise you will only hear the sound coming from either the left or right speaker. With both you hear sound coming from both sides.
Have you tried putting the pallet files on the SD card when flashing the firmware to see if they get flashed at the same time
Yep. I actually figured out the palette situation and will share it in the update video on this console.
Was the sparkling artifacts the OAMADDR corruption NESdev mentions for that revision?
You've got that backwards, sparkle was on the "E" chip that came in the Lava, good video from the "G" chip which is also the one with alleged OAM bug.
You think maybe the palettes need to be on the SD card when the FW update happens and it might copy them over to the internal storage?
Maybe open the image and see if the palettes are part of it?
A lot of Famicon clones in central and east Europe (just an example, they were seen in many other places too) had DB9 connectors. I fondly remember various variants, made under Pegasus brands, that were available in Poland. (Literally NES was known as Pegasus in Poland, not NES, or Famicon). I am sure many of these clones were done without Nintendo license, in early 90s, but you could get them even in mid and late 90s in some places. I am sure they were made somewhere in East Asia, but were very cheap (often integrating all original chips into one IC), and were in general same shape as Japanese Famicon, same cartridges (usually set with a set of cartridge with many games, and color variations of games, 99 in 1, 999 in 1, and similar, but usually something like 20 or 30 distinct games probably).
The fact that they use DB9 was kind of nice, as it was easy to make extensions, fix cables, or swap them between ports, if you had issues with the other one.
Greetings from Poland :)
Maybe you need the palettes on the card while flashing?
Not a single regular Famicom has controllers ports, but, the 2nd revision, the Famicom AV, which looks pretty much like a NES Top Loader, has controllers ports with the same conector as the NES.
This group even has that top loader version available, I saw it on the listing page for the non-lite model in the related items section.
The reason the US NES was changed to look like it does was to make it look more like a VCR and less like a gaming console as they were afraid the crash of '83 had turned the buying public off of things that resembled consoles like the 2600.
I've had a marginal PPU act like that before, it's quite noticable on SMB3, the white thing you can fall through on the first level and clouds. Turns out it was overheating slightly, if I put a fan on it, it stops. So what I did was just undervolt it instead, 4v results in it working fine, but no glitching.
Looking at the NES schematics, it seems that pin 21 gives the composite video out through a transistor, going then to the RF modulator. Maybe probing on the PPU itself was too weak a signal? Seems weird that the output is not correct. Maybe it doesn't like to be floating?
Nah you'd see the video as normal. I pinned a comment but this is normal behavior for the PPU when connected to the RGB FPGA
@ okay. How weird, though!
This is NOW going to be my official NES clone!
can you attach the famicom disk drive to it as well?
In the 80's when I started in professional video, we changed NTSC to mean "Never Twice the Same Color lol. Those settings seem to be color-space settings. NTSC is probably "NTSC Legal".
I went to the Ali express listing and in the sales graphics near the bottom they definitely say they are harvesting the chips from the ‘white and red units’ meaning the famicom.
Hi Adrian, loved this! :)
Regarding the shooter game, can you do a video on how that actually works? How does the game get feedback from a light shining at a crt? I remember having a game that did something similar growing up in the 80’s… can’t remember what it was though. Thanks heaps :)
Yeah might be a fun video. It's exactly how a light pen works on old 80s computers as well
Hi, what’s the model of powerbank you use at 15:29? Looks pretty useful!
As I found out when I bought a second hand sfc and controller.. the controller cables in japan were 3ft long because that's all that was needed because the homes were/are small.
That may be a SEGA Saturn video connector. It is compatible with SCART (I own that cable,) and I seem to remember it has S-video compatibility as well.
For the palettes, at one point you mentioned that the system could be rebooted by pressing things on the game controller. Perhaps that is the same for the palettes? I would try holding select and pressing other buttons on the controller to see what happens.
Aw, I was thinking of getting one of the kits before the video went up, but they appear to have gone up in price literally as I refreshed the page :(
Not by all that much, but still.
I thought that the audio issues you talked about afflicted NOAC chips (NES-on-a-chip integrated circuit)? I've never heard it associated with unofficial chip clones.
forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=17715
The UMC CPU used in many clones has the sound issue as described here.
What a t-shirt!
Some of those STM32 microcontrollers don't like SD cards over 8gb, but your card worked for the update, so I guess you got the Chinese clone chip STM32, lol. Any 3d printer I had with the stm32f103, would not read cards over 8gb. Maybe that's your issue with the pallets?
This zapper test program is awesome. From where to download it?
I'm not sure. I have had a ROMset forever with all these test ROMs included.
Great 😊
why did you cut the trace twice? also your audio is still connected to the right trace on the other side of the board. (nvm you noticed)
Love to hear more on the vic 20.