I never had an NES as a kid -- it came out in the UK at a time when we were all very much into our home micros and not consoles, which didn't really take off here until the Mega Drive.
But I've always thought the front-loading NES was really very cool. I mean, firstly, it's massive. Secondly, the fun with this thing starts with inserting a cartridge. There's a flap! And then there's the insert-and-push-down latch mechanism to load and unload the cartridge, which feels wonderful.
I finally got my hands on an NES the other day when a friend asked me to take a look at fixing one for a friend of theirs. It was mainly just an exercise in edge-connector cleaning, but I got it working and had fun doing so.
Of course, I then needed my own 🙂
So, I've got an eBay junker that doesn't work and has a busted-up case on the way. I'm gonna fix that, then it'll get a brand-new jelly-red translucent case to live in. Plus, I'm going to fit an NESRGB board to get excellent video output. Lastly, I've also got a Japanese Famicom heading my way. I want to swap the CPU, PPU and crystal from there into my NES to convert it to NTSC/60Hz. The NES is one of those systems which are just not as good in 50Hz/PAL.
The plan is:
- Clean up the machine and get it to work.
- Desolder the CPU and reinstall it with a socket. That'll make switching over the Famicom CPU easy once that arrives.
- Desolder the PPU and install into the NESRGB board. Unfortunately, I can't socket that since there's not enough room in the case once the NESRGB's been installed. When I get the Famicom, I'll need to desolder the PAL PPU again. But at least that'll be desoldering from the new NESRGB PCB and not the old (potentially fragile) NES itself.
- Might desolder the crystal and put a couple of pin sockets in there to make the crystal easily swappable too.
- The new case is jelly-red -- and I'd like the power LED to stand out. So swap the red one for a white one maybe? Or purple? Something cool like that.
- Once the Famicom arrives and I've swapped the NTSC gubbins over, I'll do the mod to enable extension audio on the 72-pin NES.
- Finally, I've got an NES Everdrive cartridge on its way (also translucent red, heh) -- that'll give me almost every game for the system.
- Enjoy!
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