Famicom av mod instructions?

[famifan]

80sFREAK, can you test your mods againt bigger than 14" TV?

[mick]

I had the same problem with the annoying buzzing and I found a fix for mine.

Just open up the player 2 controller and solder a wire just like in my pic.


Once I did this the buzzing went away and the controller and the mic work fine.

Pikkon,
i joined today just to say this worked perfectly no buzzing/humming at all now - Thanks.

[famifan]

do jail bars depend on the total power consumption?

as far as i measured, my famicom eats about 0.5-0.6A, but NOAC famiclone with the same cartridge eats only 0.15-0.25A.

does av famicom consume less power then original red&white famicom?

[Hamburglar from MC Kids]

Very interesting, I'll take a look and make some of my very scientific rewiring
What I noticed before was that the noise is only present when a game is running, so we might be a few steps closer now to isolate the source of the jailbars.

Size matters, ask any girl

I think I can help figure this out a bit. I compared the blue background in Super Mario Bros 1 both in a legit cart and using the PowerPak on my RGB modded AV Famicom, and the jailbars were way, way worse when using the Powerpak. Perhaps a power draw issue? The SNES Powerpak makes the thick vertical line worse as well.

[133MHz]

I compared the blue background in Super Mario Bros 1 both in a legit cart and using the PowerPak on my RGB modded AV Famicom, and the jailbars were way, way worse when using the Powerpak. Perhaps a power draw issue?

Definitely a power issue. RetroZone's flash carts are packed full of electronic goodies so they draw quite a bit more power than a standard game cartridge and make more high frequency noise as a result.

The SNES Powerpak makes the thick vertical line worse as well.

Ever since I got a SNES PowerPak I pretty much stopped using my actual cartridges and at the same time I started noticing the dreaded vertical line more and more among my consoles, but it never occurred to me to put 2 and 2 together. Thanks!

[Hamburglar from MC Kids]

I compared the blue background in Super Mario Bros 1 both in a legit cart and using the PowerPak on my RGB modded AV Famicom, and the jailbars were way, way worse when using the Powerpak. Perhaps a power draw issue?

Definitely a power issue. RetroZone's flash carts are packed full of electronic goodies so they draw quite a bit more power than a standard game cartridge and make more high frequency noise as a result.

The SNES Powerpak makes the thick vertical line worse as well.

Ever since I got a SNES PowerPak I pretty much stopped using my actual cartridges and at the same time I started noticing the dreaded vertical line more and more among my consoles, but it never occurred to me to put 2 and 2 together. Thanks!

You are welcome! There's actually no way to get rid of the vertical bar in the SNES other than to use the SNES model 2 (aka the Jr. or mini).

The easiest place to see the SNES vertical bar is in the intro of Final Fantasy 3 US.

Edit: I should also note the SNES Everdrive does not show the thick vertical bar as heavily as the SNES Powerpak! So obviously, Powerpaks in general demand more power, and also both the NES and SNES have issues with picture quality and power draw!
Post Merge: May 04, 2012, 07:50:03 am
One other thing to look into is I see the jailbars when using my Castlevania 2 NES cart, and I do not see it when using Castlevania 2 for the FDS.

[famifan]

I had the same problem with the annoying buzzing and I found a fix for mine.

Just open up the player 2 controller and solder a wire just like in my pic.


Once I did this the buzzing went away and the controller and the mic work fine.

Pikkon,
i joined today just to say this worked perfectly no buzzing/humming at all now - Thanks.

i found this completely useless, because
1) it breaks microphone volume slider, so the level adjustment becomes impossible
2) turning off microphone is non-working, because of 1)
3) can't hear any buzzing/humming at all if mic is turned off

[famiav]

I had the same problem with the annoying buzzing and I found a fix for mine.

Just open up the player 2 controller and solder a wire just like in my pic.


Once I did this the buzzing went away and the controller and the mic work fine.

Pikkon,
i joined today just to say this worked perfectly no buzzing/humming at all now - Thanks.

i found this completely useless, because
1) it breaks microphone volume slider, so the level adjustment becomes impossible
2) turning off microphone is non-working, because of 1)
3) can't hear any buzzing/humming at all if mic is turned off

Fot the best result you have to "rebuilt" audio circuit.It includes removing some parts on PCB and replacing some resistors. Also bypass xx368 amplifier stage, so you will get "crystal clear sound mod for Famicom"

P.S. Where is our French friend?

I'm here! Because of my studies (French law), I have no time to take care of my dear Famicom. I have not seen the previous posts, but at least, did you find a solution that really works to eliminate these bars ?

[famifan]

hmmm...

your proof pics ain't enough, because

0) you use 14" CRT TV...
1) i have the tv set, where jailbars become invisible for most games (maybe tv perform some filtering)
2) but on video capture device on the PC these jailbars become slightly visible and recognizable
3) if i set up color power to maximum on the tv jailbars become invisible again, because of CRT ghosting (i'm not sure about how exactly this called, i mean the situation if you see the moving of small white square on totally black screen you seen that some additional time is needed for a transition between white and black color).

so, if you want to see jailbars you need to test it against games with very bright palette such as Felix the Cat, Jungle book, Darkwing duck, and some other titles.

[famifan]

1) i have the tv set, where jailbars become invisible for most games (maybe tv perform some filtering)

Do you understand, why i used these screenshots?

maybe because your want to show us that "it works for me" ( equals to "it works only at my test environment"). This doesn't assume that it works in any environment

3) if i set up color power to maximum on the tv jailbars become invisible again, because of CRT ghosting (i'm not sure about how exactly this called, i mean the situation if you see the moving of small white square on totally black screen you seen that some additional time is needed for a transition between white and black color).

EPIC FAIL You should try to set brightness on maximum LOL

As for my TV set, settings about 50% except sharpness, which is 100%.

tried different color presets for my TV set and if i switching between them i can see that on some presets jailbars become visibile/invisible
I don't like color power to the maximum. But with my favourite 30% color settings, jailbars become slightly visible.

so, if you want to see jailbars you need to test it against games with very bright palette such as Felix the Cat, Jungle book, Darkwing duck, and some other titles.

none of them in my collection and i am not going to get them "just for test", except someone will contribute cart for test.

okay, in other words i just said that:
1) jailbars depend on your TV
2) jailbars depend on your TV color/brightness/etc config at all
3) jailbars depend on game

[famifan]

There is 2 reasons, why "jail bars" exist
1)noise on power lines

hope it is resolved by adding some filtering caps

2)ground layout

this thing is unbeatable unless you make new PCB design from scratch ^_^

[famifan]

this thing is unbeatable unless you make new PCB design from scratch ^_^

beatable, once you understand "why".

okay, have you ever seen PCB pics of av famicom?
it has very good ground layout, i cant imagine how i can fix old ground layout without totally new PCB design

[Da Bear]

Nintendo tried that already with the AV Famicom. It's better but not good enough.

[famifan]

80sFREAK, please take a look at my pics

http://ompldr.org/vZHBoeQ/sam_0071__.jpg

want to show that at the picture the jailbars become unrecognizable at all, but they are still presented!

so, the pics of TV screen ain't enough.

pic taken from video capture device (got it for less then 5$) http://ompldr.org/vZHBpOQ/smb_fami1.png - as you can see jailbars are very slight.

[Hamburglar from MC Kids]

He is correct in that jailbars are a lot harder/impossible to see on a CRT. They only become very noticeable on a plasma/flatscreen or something without scanlines.