Adrian in 10 years: "Why did i put 2 checkmarks on this pcb? It MUST mean something, right?"

@HarrysDogmalaysia

19 күн бұрын

I can see that happening

@LordOfNihil

18 күн бұрын

i can do that with old projects and code i haven't touched in a decade.

@TheSliderW

18 күн бұрын

@@LordOfNihil Comments are always a blessing, if not for your co-workers, at least for your future self

@LordOfNihil

17 күн бұрын

@@TheSliderW yea. there are comments, but most of it is profanity. there are no coworkers. the only contribution is when lizzie took a nap on the keyboard. i commented out her code and wrote "meow" on the first line. not sure what she was trying to accomplish but it caused a segfault.

@TheSliderW

17 күн бұрын

@@LordOfNihil hahaha X )

I’d love to see you take that broken board and revive it in an OpenTendo board. Especially with something like a HDMI or RGB mod. Great video as always!

@seanabsher5577

13 күн бұрын

yeah an RGB or HDMI mod should be possible with the broken board, especially after the reset hack

It's criminal that you don't have a Deoxit sponsorship 😂

@vicroc4

19 күн бұрын

Remember: Deoxit that socket!

@scotshabalam2432

19 күн бұрын

1980's Nintendo would've never suggested deoxit for the un-plated connector because for that to happen Nintendo would have to admit a fault and we all know Nintendo is faultless. So instead third parties gave us dozens of cleaning cartridges that barely fixed anything for a problem Nintendo pretended as if didn't exist.

@docwhogr

19 күн бұрын

deoxid should make a statue of adrian and place it at their offices

@Shulamana

19 күн бұрын

@@scotshabalam2432 Howard Phillips said Nintendo of America was afraid kids would set themselves on fire if they had suggested using isopropyl alcohol. So anything remotely flammable would have been a "DO NOT USE". -Official cleaning kits contained some alcohol but it was in tiny little bottles.- edit: It looks like even the official kits might not have included any liquid solvents at all, just abrasive pads. 3rd party cleaning kits did though.

@c1ph3rpunk

19 күн бұрын

Heck yea, stuff ain’t cheap.

My favorite NES repair from during my game store days. A customer returned a game because it didn't work, and had a rattle. Uh-oh. We got him a working copy and threw in extra store credit for his trouble. Opened the game and found that one of the ICs was lopsided. Flopping around under it was a resistor, legs bent from the factory. The game had the correct number of resistors installed, so we think what happened is that a loose resistor fell onto the board, the IC got soldered down on top of it, and the game worked fine for decades. At some point the resistor got dislodged and made contact with the pins, causing the game to crash. I didn't even pull the IC off, just grabbed the resistor legs with fine pliers, fatigued them until they broke off, tested the game, and put it back on the shelf. In hindsight I wish I'd kept it, because that was a really neat curiosity.

Playing the game from the oscilloscope is like Tank's role in 'The Matrix'. "That's the woman in red, that's a car." while watching the Matrix waterfall.

@orangecat4ever

18 күн бұрын

>that's the plumber in red, that's a goomba.

You need to mark AND date these things.

13:00 Worth noting that oxidization isn't the only problem the connector faces. With a lot of use, the pins can get bent a little too far up. This is mostly seen with a lot of Game Genie use, which has to bend the pins farther than they were intended, which can lead to the system no longer able to make contact with normal games without the Game Genie wedging itself into place. This can usually be fixed by adjusting the pins back at the same time as cleaning it, though, so still usually no need to replace the connector.

Instead of cutting the pin, you can just solder in two wires. Safer and fully reversible.

"Displaced Gamers" on youtube goes into extreme detail about how code on the NES really works. It's my second favorite channel next to Digital Basement :)

you may not realize it, but that small nes mobo that looked like it had an encounter with a VERY hungry caterpillar was a whole rollercoaster of emotions for the 19 minutes you handled it, that little guy lived through some stuff and is still roaring to go

@stevethepocket

16 күн бұрын

"It's only a flesh wound."

The only thing I did different with the CIC chip was instead of cutting pin 4 off, I unsoldered pin 4 from the motherboard and instead grounded it, so that pin 4 wasn’t floating. I did this on my own NES 12 years ago, and still works perfectly.

@seritools

18 күн бұрын

From the NESdev wiki: "There appears to be an internal pulldown inside the CIC such that leaving pin 4 floating or merely cutting pin 4 will also work."

I'm still impressed with the quality of the original NES - playability, durability, design, longevity - a truly great piece of consumer electronics. Thanks for sharing.

@chrisjones8741

17 күн бұрын

Hey, it’s TO, and he has a retro tech channel! Why am I not surprised? 😄

@TemporarilyOfflineRetroTech

17 күн бұрын

@@chrisjones8741 Hey Chris! yeah, I'm that kinda guy!

That white box that is missing from the broken board I think is a ceramic resonator and that supplies the clock for the CIC chip. Probably that was the problem and not the actual CIC chip.

@paulkoopmans4620

18 күн бұрын

I agree!! GOOD Catch! I was looking at a close up of a board after I saw your comment and the component is marked on the silk screen as X2 and 4.000MHz. Then on the schematic that is off to the left side of the "button and LED" section. That oscillator ties back into the CIC through an inverter on pin 6

I think you should get a new NES replacement motherboard. I know they are pretty cheap then unsolder everything from the old motherboard and move it to the new one. Get one of the new clear plastic NES cases and build it and give it a new life! I would love to do a project like that. I just fixed my old SNES that I bought in 1992 and me and my son have been having a blast playing it I have a bunch of games (I was surprised how much some of my game sell for now!) I would love to find and old NES. I no longer have my NES but I have a bunch of my old games for it. Hey if you don't want to do it, send it to me and I will make videos doing it!

Back in 1988 I cut the CIC out of the circuit and replaced it with a 555 to create the power on reset. It worked great. I wish I knew all you needed was to cut pin 4.

I love seeing some NES content on here. My childhood NES from 1986 is still going strong. 😊

Cypher from the Matrix would be able to play that NES by looking at the video signal on the scope. "I see pipe, mushroom, mushroom, pipe"

We ask that you obtain a NESessity board or Opentendo and swap all the components over on camera...probably a pack of new capacitors will be recommended while you're at it...yes we've seen it on other couple of channels...but you're a real enthusiast that adds to the enjoyment of our retro community

One thing you may be interested in, even if it won't be massively useful, is that certain Japanese cartridges have an extra sound chip on the cartridge(Castlevania 2 off the top of my head has 2 extra sound channels, but there's others, including a shooter by SunSoft that contains a Yamaha chip that I just can't think of the name of) and won't work on an American or PAL system because even though the pin still exists, it isn't connected. There's a mod to connect this pin back up again using bodge wires. Most modern flash carts can emulate these chips, as any NES game made after 1987 will use expansion chips and won't play without them. In fact, I think SMB1(1985) was the last game by Nintendo themselves to not have an expansion chip, as the NES is unable to use bank switching without one and without bank switching, there is a max cart size of 40kb(32kb for program and sound data, and 8kb for graphics data) which, yeah, isn't really enough. The fact that your cart can play SMB2 shows it can emulate at least some of these functions.

@moosemaimer

17 күн бұрын

CV2 was originally a Famicom Disk System game, and used the extra sound capability of that; CV3 had the VRC6 chip in the cartridge that added two extra square waves and a sawtooth wave. Game Sack just did a video on all the FC games with expansion audio chips.

Those boards came from my collection. I was very brutal with them because I was only interested in the sound chip/CPU. I had dreams of building an 8-bit synthesizer from them, but after a while I gave up as I dont have the time or proper tools to do it. The reason there are three was to increase the polyphony and tone options. The sound chip produces 5 voices: 2 pulse wave channels, 1 triangle wave channel, 1 noise channel, and 1 sample/PCM channel. So cool that they found their way to the Digital Basement! ❤

@exidy-yt

18 күн бұрын

So why did you tear off the RF modulator box and controller ports on one of them? And so brutally?

@cgxone7578

18 күн бұрын

​@exidy-yt iirc, that machine had been dropped on that corner and the modulator was bent up. So I just chopped it off because I only wanted to preserve the cpu.

@exidy-yt

18 күн бұрын

@@cgxone7578 Makes sense. Thank you!

This video brought back memories to Christmas morning 1986 when I got an NES (with the light gun and ROB). It was defective and it would constantly flash reset when you put in a cartridge like when the CIC chip has failed.

Fantastic display of troubleshooting.

On the last board you made me fell so much better!!! Many times I get something working in the kludgey testing set up all day long and then connect everything like its supposed to be and now its not working!!!!

Someone has probably already said this, but OAM = Object Attribute Memory. It contains attributes about "objects" (essentially sprites) on the screen, i.e. the X, Y, sprite index, palette, in front of/behind background flag, and horizontal/vertical flip flag. This system was also used in the Gameboy/Gameboy Color's PPU, though with a slightly different layout to the bytes and flags.

Yep, light gun trigger and sense were a distinct input to the CPU. Triggered an interrupt vs. being read from a shift register. On the SNES it was also wired to a pin on the PPU that latched the exact beam position, as the Super Scope, Enforcer, etc. were pixel-accurate and didn't require the blank-and-flash blocks like the NES did.

I'm so glad your heatsink fitted lol

For the PCB with the missing section, you don't need the RF Modulator, but you do need the power supply bits and the AV out, and there are some open source replacements for that circuit. There's only a few signals that go to that area of the board, so even if it's mangled, it could be salvagable. For the weird shutdown state, try adding a large electrolytic capacitor with higher than 5v, this should prevent brownouts. Btw, I highly recommend disabling the CIC chips. I would do the full procedure; i.e. don't leave the cut pin floating but tie it to ground. OAM is Object Attribute Mapping. It's basically the data for each of the 64 sprites it can display each frame. Also with a couple of resistors on the edge connector you can enable the extra sound channels that you get when running Japanese games (either via adapter or flash cart). I think it's called an "expansion audio" mod. Also there are a few open source motherboards now, that you can reuse the old chips on. Do not replace the 7805 with modern 5v buck converters; even if they're compatible and it seems to 'be working", they introduce a lot of noise into the circuit and can add jail bars to the video output.

I remember wikipedia claimed some bootleg games used to defeat the CIC chip by sending some kind of voltage spike, I wonder if that nuked it somehow? Physical damage I guess would be more likely, given how close it is to the broken part of the board.

When I made my portable NES in 2001 I removed the the RF modulator and just fed 5V from a DC-DC converter and tapped into the composite video and audio. I had to make a breadboard composite video amp (using a 2N4401) That NES with the broken off RF modulator could still work.

if you ever come across Nintendo consoles in the future, I recommend you running some hardware diagnostics (often called "aging tests") to determine possible edge case failures

Build an OpenTendo! You have a donor board now with the PPU and CPU. I built one and it was a fun electronics project. Its now my main NES I play games on.

Been fixing and modding NES consoles for many years. IPA works just as well on the PCB contacts. Transistor 2SA937 (Q1) is where the PPU is sending the video. I would pull the chips and build a Opentendo or something. Pop the NES CPU into a C64 would be fun.

I loved the nes I played it in my early adulthood once again great video!

This was great (even if they are built like tanks with little to repair). Definitely interested in more console repair content. Your explanations and troubleshooting process is superior to other channels. Optical systems like PS1, Saturn have more to go wrong which I'm currently wrestling with.

Seeing NES content here is a very welcome and pleasant surprise! It never hurts to have spares of one of the all-time best consoles, as I can attest. When I moved out of state, it was handy having my original at my parents' while having a duplicate in my apartment.

For the board without the video output & power circuit box, there is an upgrade board which replaces it & offers RGB output!.

I've cut pin 4 on the cic and my nes still works to this day.

Yes! The ADB deoxit drinking game is alive and well! :D

ENIG was first used in 1990, so it would not have been available to put on a 1985 console. ENEPIG would have been the best option at the time, but because it contains palladium, it was prohibitively expensive, hence HASL.

The Zapper has a dedicated pin on the connector so the wire story checks out :), buttom right when looking at the front side of the console This really is a case of they dont build them like that anymore. Goes for all electronics. In my gameroom / attic i have lots of older electronics. VCrs, CRTs, etc everything keeps working. Its the newer "retro consoles" and stuff that gives issues like the X360s, ps3 that sort of stuff that gets laser issues etc. due to all the moving parts. Also when you look at the materials that where used, tvs and vcrs where build like a tank. The last gen vcrs where cheaper plastic already. My 40 year old Betamax vcr still works like a charm with better picture then the 15 year old newer VHS VCR. Weighs 3 times as much lol

For years, almost from new, I remember blowing on the pins of the games to stop the flashing. Worked almost every time... Oxidation and grime are the #1 enemy of of the contacts. Deoxit, is the permanent fix for this. BUT, a Qtip with some on it, run along any of the original vintage game pins, might save you from ever having to apply Deoxit again! It was so VERY cool to actually see "TRON" (Mario), on the oscilloscope waiting to jump into the game!!! Thanks Adrian! Can't believe how long it's been, since I laid hands on my first NES machine... WoW 🤖🇮🇲

I got a bit of PTSD from the casual "pin 4 treatment". With vintage HW I prefer non-destructive / fully reversible modifications

Nice find.

I'm always sad by the condition of NES consoles I see online. Mine is in great shape...and I used to take it apart as a kid for fun! Still works and looks great.

thanks, we love you 🥰

I'd love to harvest the parts off the broken board and use it to build one of the new PCB replacements. I actually have one around here somewhere and I've never gotten around to building it.

I used to power my NES with my Atari 800 power supply too, back in the day. :D

There appears to be something called "OpenTendo". Perhaps swap over the broken boards components to one of those boards?

The chopped motherboard must've come from Bringus Studios :D

greatest game console EVER!, enjoyed this content thx

The downside to having a parts board for a Nintendo is, good luck ever needing it!

I was a bit confused when you said you'd issues with the zapper because I had it in my head that all the signalling was done via the shift register in the controller, but there are apparently two additional data lines that don't get used by the controllers. I'm guessing it's one of these that's used to detect of the zapper registered a hit and that's what was broken in your NES.

You could mount the hardware inside a portable CRT monitor with some extra space inside and have a portable gaming machine.

@stevencarlson5422

18 күн бұрын

this would be sweet to do I have an old 80s portable color crt that could totally do that

@stevethepocket

16 күн бұрын

Ooh, or what about getting a TV with a built-in VCR where the VCR stopped working, and mounting the board in such a way that you stick the cartridge into the slot. I guess you'd have to replace the black piece with one that doesn't require pushing the cartridge down afterwards.

You have a perfect reset circuit in the Plexus machine!

The one missing the RF module could be a good candidate to add a LumaCode mod to once they get one for the NTSC NES worked out.

NEW NES PROJECT! Get one of those new mobos and go to town!

I feel bad for the last motherboard the entire rf/composite modulator was cut off :^(

I have that same Zoyi oscilloscope, and the big problem is that the scope probe BNC connectors at the top are way too tight, so it's hard to get them on and off. You really have to shove the probe connector on so you can twist it to get it to lock. :(

I have two Front loader NES consoles, I've had them for a while. I think I got them both "broken"; the more recent one I got at the thrift store a few years ago for a few dollars because it did not work. I cleaned things up, boiled the connectors and bent the pins back into place and they work just fine. I like bending the pins back beyond where they would normally go so games boot without even being pressed down.

hey Adrian, I believe Macho Nacho covered a modern NES replacement that uses the custom chips that could be a good use for your snapped board.

How can you pass it DC, if it needs to get its clock cycle from the AC input?

Way more time spent on that partial PCB than I would have expected :)

I wonder if sticking an additional resistor inline with the retrotink might allow some sort of picture to be displayed with the motherboard that's missing it's rf modulator.

@Skawo

19 күн бұрын

You need a little circuit: a transistor, couple resistors and a cap. Easiest to look at Famicom AV mod instructions

adrn, could you use a ribbon cable and card edge connectors on the cart? Or is it a wacky pin out.

The broken board... I'd love to see you get an NESRGB (PPU interposer) and build a replacement PSU for it. There are projects out there for it, albeit not intended for this level of carnage. But, I think you could still get it back to stable, usable console! Maybe keep it to see about Lumacode when there's an NES version? Oh! And there are CIC replacements out there. They perform the proper operations, mines the lockout functions. Inexpensive too. Yes, you can spend a lot less and get a repo PCB to repopulate - but you will still need to find replacements for the can (the part broken off, it's the PSU, audio and video circuitry) as well as the CIC chip. Seriously though, I think it'd be pretty rad to get that board back into service.

13:35 It's the same with audio equipment. Just clean the potentiometers and everything works.

Thank you so much showing how to cut that leg, I will take out my Nintendo and do the same mod!!

The CIC chip might not be bad, it just might be more sensitive to ripple/intermittent voltage drops on the 5V rail, since the bulk capacitance seems to have been in the missing modulator section (these types of crocodile clips are quite high in resistance in my experience)

some of those cartridge pushdowns have pins that are bent out of shape or have lost their retention strength. In those cases replacement is the only option

I'd be half tempted to try and rig an output buffer for that board that's missing the RF modulator. If it's a composite output you could just run it into a composite input and that system would still be usable.

Could you fit a NESrgb to that broken one? I think the kit comes with a replacement for the voltage regulator too, and I'm wondering whether someone broke that off as they had modded it and didn't need the outputs anymore.

this will be a good Candidate for an NES Power Module Replacement and the S-Video/RGB NES001 Mod.

I too have found these old consoles, not just the NES, "just work", unless there has been some physical damaged, broken wires, busted up from being dropped, or liquids spilled inside. The main problem is that cartridge connecter being damaged. One time out of about 50 consoles I did find a leaky capacitor.

Fixing The nes game console is not easy but is pure pain in the ass everytime people who tried to fix one of these nes games too-DLH

Interesting. That PCB with the missing modulator would be a perfect candidate for making a nintoaster. If you go to vomitsaw's channel he made the nintoaster that AVGN uses. The video on it is super old, but it doesn't use the modulator. Since then, it's been upgraded with an HDMI mod. But in theory that particular board is perfectly fine. It just needs a little bit of help.

Adrian, could your ZOYI be flaky because its battery is low/empty? I don't have a ZOYI to test, but your battery indicator appears to show no bars.

You have to really appreciate how Nintendo built this machine back in the day. Almost all off-the-shelf parts, besides the 2A03 CPU and the PPU of course, where the 2A03 is practically a 6502 with just some additional support guts and they removed the BCD mode. Which probably didn't have a lot of purpose for videogames anyway. Actually was interesting to hear about how DeoxIT is all that's needed for the cartridge pin connector though. I've replaced a few of them here and there for people, but sounds like that's wholly unnecessary, and maybe even worse not addressing the actual problem!

Does only one side of the cartridge make contact with the pins?

Was the power on when you cut pin 4 is it could have killed the cic 😢

I would love to see a replacement motherboard idk if other people have done it but I was trying to get my own NES upgraded to use HDNES before the whole thing went silent and the only other option to play on current TV's is to have it be HDMI so someone doesn't have to fiddle around with converters and adapters if I want to play a bit of NES from my still sizeable collection of physical carts.

If you break a multi-layer PCB like that, there is a good chance something will short between the layers.

databyte. what a wonderful brand name.

The tutorial I followed years ago told me to not leave that pin 4 floating. It will work but it may be flaky. So just use a resistor to ground it or something.

Adrian, can you tell us exactly what the magic "Deoxiant" is ?

Certainly is a rather brutal amputation on that one board, but, despite its' issues, it is a survivor, may be missing parts, but it can live on in a "lightened" form... :P

I actually did that same CIC disable mod on my NES though I attempted to pull the pin cleanly out of the board but ended up breaking it off entirely though for a time it worked. After a few years though I went to turn on my NES and it didn't respond and testing voltage rails I at one point checked the reset line on the CPU to find it was still being held in reset and then discovered that line came from one of the pins on the CIC chip. Ideally I have read that you should ground pin 4 rather then leave it floating and maybe that is why it eventually failed on me and maybe why it failed on you as well on that one board and maybe you've just been lucky with the other ones you've done that to. I eventually just pulled another CIC chip from a game cart from a sports game I never play and replaced the bad one in my NES while grounding pin 4 to a test point I found under where the chip goes for a clean look and it's been working ever since. I can also still play that sports game if I wanted to on the CIC disabled console. Oh another thing to note is you might want to pull out the capacitor on the RF modulator. It might not be obvious but on mine and in some videos I've seen there is a tiny bit of electrolyte that had leaked on the board so I ended up replacing it with the same value but smaller one I had.

Opentendo board for sure.

35:38 it is possible that the CIC chip is good but there’s a disconnected pin on it due to the chunk of missing PCB.

Nice shirt!

Nice "Holy" Capacitor.

It's funny I just bought my first NES as well as a Famicom, multicart, Family BASIC with keyboard, disk drive adaptor and drive emulator. Next would be to mod them and you just showed me how. Thanks..😊

would kinda be fun and intresting to give the broken mobo a second opportunity in life as content, but also because everyone loves to see old beaten up, electronics working. i know this isn't the channel, but it might be a good mobo to design a custom case and do some modding

I have made a video about how pretty much any flashing NES can be fixed with deoxit. So many people bend/boil/sand the pins when all that does is damage the connector.

Am I the only one who thinks that we need to save that left for dead board? Given how much love the Plexus received, and this seems much simpler, would it not be cool to restore it to it's former glory despite the abuse it's been thru?

@pragmax

19 күн бұрын

I mean, it's kind of what Adrian does on this channel. Never forget the "left for dead" C64. Or all the Tandy repairs. Or the SWTP system. Or the banged-up Macintoshes. Or all the misbehaving Amigas...

@woldemunster9244

18 күн бұрын

@@pragmax Teehee, naughty Amiga.

@exidy-yt

18 күн бұрын

The Plexus was a rare, maybe even one of a kind machine. Used NESes are everywhere.

@woldemunster9244

18 күн бұрын

@@exidy-yt Thanks for stating the obvious.

@claudiuoctavian1972

18 күн бұрын

@@exidy-yt agree, not a fair comparison. I was simply saying I loved the attention the Plexus got and would love to see this nes board get to live again. I get it ,Adrian's got a lot in his backlog, and this would most likely not be on top, but still... call me nostalgic

thanks for demonstrating why i never throw away slot covers. they have a million uses other than their intended one. as for what to do with the mangled board, how about a portable nes conversion?

You might look up the Null CIC. A drop in replacement for the CIC.

Think that damaged board has a bit in common with my NES. Someone before me cut the IRQ trace and bridged it with a bodge wire. They didn’t realise they cut an adjacent trace making it unable to boot, just a grey screen. I eventually spotted the issue and added a 2nd wire to take care of that and it boots every time now. I haven’t defeated CIC, yet. I do have an import adaptor though

That broken One, strip it down and make a handheld NES like Ben Heck has done with various console/computers.

I have my own problems with my NES that I got at VCF Southwest. I'm not sure if it's a CPU, PPU, or cartridge connector problem, because I did so much to try to bring it back (including changing capacitors and swapping out memory chips), but it still gives me trouble. (Garbled graphics, freezing of the game at specific points, etc.) I even added solder to the PCB's edge connector (to try to bolster the connection), and used DeOxit to clean the cartridge connector! BTW, I was the guy at VCF SW who wanted to commission you to try to look at my Sanyo MBC-775 to try to get 640k running on it! I don't exactly know if that's necessary anymore, because I happened across an AST SixPakPlus card for only $15 at a vendor next to the Tandy Assembly exhibits!

5:57 OR alternatively you could just mod it to be RGB only, and solder in a better modern NES power board replacement. Alternatively The part that was torn off isn't strictly necessary at least in most HDMI replacement kits.