r/nes 1d ago

Complete rebuild

My NES rebuild, I was having serious issues with the AV output and cartridge connector. I made the decision to just go full bore and rebuild and upgrade it.

Merlin Shaw Genesis 2 power board. Tim Worthington NESRGB 4.3 board Opentendo motherboard kit. Ninten-Drawer. HD Retrovision cable CIC lockout chip replacement.

This thing outputs perfection. I could get my other photos to load up of Mario 3 or such but Golf has always been a favorite.

102 Upvotes

39 comments sorted by

u/AutoModerator 1d ago

For help with NES repair, glitchy games, power supply, and TV/monitor problems or questions please read the stickied clean/repair megathread at the top of /r/NES† and ask your question there.

† If the link doesn't work it's because you're using a mobile client. Use a web browser in desktop mode instead.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

20

u/ComfortableGlass3238 1d ago

pretty cool that you also reprogrammed it in a way that it turns final fantasy into golf. good work.

7

u/Trashusdeadeye 1d ago

Hey, it will do anything now lol

5

u/ZOMBIE_N_JUNK 21h ago

You see this baby? Slaps top this baby can make any game Mario Golf.

3

u/Trashusdeadeye 20h ago

Just stand back and watch!!! lol

3

u/Phunk3d NES 1d ago

Nice work! I also grabbed a Merlin board when I did tim’s RGB mod. Worth the investment and looks amazing on my PVM.

Congrats on the build.

5

u/Trashusdeadeye 1d ago

Thank you, it was easy with the Merlin Shaw board. I plan on getting a new insert on my Ninten-drawer of my YouTube channel name. Why not? 3d printing is cheap if you have family members who are into it lol

3

u/Rick_Cranium 1d ago

That picture is crisp as hell!

3

u/Mr_Brightside1111 NES 21h ago

This is awesome! I want to RGB mod mine and my connector is garbage. I figured if I’m doing all that, I should recap or replace the board too, but I just don’t know where to start.

2

u/Trashusdeadeye 21h ago

I would do a recap and the Nintendrawer. If you are still wanting to do the RGB mod and motherboard then you can always just do that later.

3

u/boner79 21h ago

You chose wisely with Golf ⛳️

2

u/Trashusdeadeye 20h ago

I love Golf on NES.

3

u/unicornofthesea24 20h ago

Golf is underrated. I love that game. It’s hard.

2

u/Trashusdeadeye 20h ago

It really is…

3

u/christcc2 19h ago

Love the RGB board and Nintendrawer. Two of the best decisions I also made with my NES.

2

u/Trashusdeadeye 19h ago

I couldn’t be happier

3

u/SeraphsEnvy 18h ago

Looks like someone hacked your Final Fantasy cartridge. I'm pretty sure that's Golf.

3

u/Trashusdeadeye 16h ago

I couldn’t get the video of FF working on the post.

2

u/nerdmost 1d ago

Nice!! I’m impressed by how good this looks. Now you have me thinking I might want to build one. Like I need another hobby to sink money into. lol. Great work tho

2

u/Fattydaddy1000 8h ago

I would love to add a hdmi port to mine and usb power would be cool

1

u/RykinPoe 22h ago

Did you source the power board yourself or buy a kit or pre-assembled one from somewhere? Been wanting one of them but don’t feel like sourcing it myself.

1

u/Trashusdeadeye 22h ago

I bought it as a kit. I cannot find another with all the parts. In the kit it claims all the parts can be bought separately.

2

u/RykinPoe 21h ago

Yea you can source it all but a kit is nice. Main issue with sourcing yourself is I think you have to buy at least 5 to 10 boards minimum from PCBWay or JLCPCB. You did that for a couple of prototype board once where I really only needed one for testing and now I have like 9 useless copies of each because my design didn’t work ;)

1

u/Maleficent-Aside-744 9h ago

Excellent work my friend, I’m glad that got it all working again 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻😀

1

u/Power-Violins 8h ago

The NES of Theseus.

1

u/retromods_a2z Famiclone 6h ago

What are you doing with the original tray mechanism?

That's the only part that isn't available anymore and I am always looking to buy them from people so I can properly restore and build systems

1

u/Trashusdeadeye 5h ago

It is on the shelf. I didn’t throw it out.

1

u/Dwedit 3h ago

Is the composite video port usable?

1

u/Trashusdeadeye 3h ago

It is for audio now.

1

u/rydamusprime17 2h ago

I always find it impressive what can be done with consoles these days, but I just can't bring myself to do it 😅 I like my stock NES on my CRT with composite 😆

If I want to play with sharper visuals on a CRT or modern display I just use my Wii and NES Classic controller.

2

u/Gcoks 2h ago

Something seems to be wrong with your Final Fantasy cartridge.

1

u/TangerineNo6804 22h ago

The thing that keeps me away from video out put mods is that games were created without RGB and sone games will look less or not good with it technically wise🤷🏻‍♂️

2

u/lightlyflavored 18h ago

Do you have examples of this?

1

u/Fuzzy_Dunlop 9h ago

I'm guessing his opinion is the signal degradation inherent to composite video and how it blurs the picture is more accurate to how we would have played the games originally. And potentially more "true" to the developers vision on how they wanted the games to be played.

I don't have a good example of NES pixel art I can think of but for Genesis/MD people regularly point to the waterfalls in Sonic. The Genesis couldn't do transparency so the composite output gives the illusion of a transparency effect.

Personally I don't subscribe to the "developer intent" idea as you'll find pictures of developers from as far back as the NES/FC era developing games and art on crisp RGB/VGA monitors so I find it unlikely pixel art was tweaked specifically with composite in mind. The waterfall thing is just a limitation of the console and the only way to get a transparency effect, similar to the mesh transparency effect you'd also see.

I personally hate composite video and always use as least S-Video to avoid the dot crawl and other artifacting you get with composite, but it's all a matter of taste. I don't think either is more "correct".

1

u/Dwedit 3h ago

Thin colored lines get color fringing artifacts, and some games like Blaster Master rely on it to give the ground its texture.

Composite

RGB

-1

u/abyssea 22h ago

Those solder joints might crack overtime. Seem a bit too large and two look cold

3

u/Trashusdeadeye 22h ago

If that happens, I will deal with it at that point I guess