NES Toaster Commissions for: Onyxdomain

Upgrade kits have been paid for and the order has been placed.

Since I already had an av famicom kit sitting around (and four are on the way) I figured I'd have a little fun with the toaster. The way the av famicom kit works is it plugs directly into the socket of where the ppu used to be and the ppu plugs directly into a socket on top of the kit. Unfortunately since the toaster nes pcb is upside down there's not enough room to install the av famicom kit that way. The kit would collide with other parts (expansion port, av box) and even if it didn't collide there wouldn't be enough space between the pcb and the system case for the kit to fit. However....I found a solution....

If you study the traces connecting the rgb ppu socket to the pins that connect to the av famicom socket almost all of the pins are directly connected to the nes / famicom ppu socket and don't get diverted to the circuit on the kit. Really the only pins that go to the kit circuit are rgb and sync....everything else from the ppu connects directly to the system. So since I needed to relocate the kit far from the ppu socket I figured I could install the rgb chip into the ppu socket on the system and simply divert rgb and sync to the kit.

Now this particular nes was previously "rgb" modded by acem77. This was done the old fashioned way following the moosmann guide exactly. The rgb chip was sitting in a standard 40 pin socket with rgb being diverted to a crappy 1 transistor rgb amp and the sync was being taken from composite video out. Unfortunately whoever acem77 is he screwed up a couple of things.

1: The socket that the ppu was sitting in had some goup in some pin connections making me seriously doubt that the pins would connect.

2: One of the pins on the rgb ppu was broken

3: The broken ppu pin and another ppu pin had solder on them (I don't know what the f#ck this guy was doing)

So I desoldered the crappy standard socket and soldered in a precision socket soldering all 40 pins in so you can stick a composite ppu back in if you ever feel likt it. I stuck the rgb ppu into a precision socket and soldered in the broken pin to give it a new set of pins. Then I stuck a precision socket in between that diverted rgb and sync to wires. Made a nice precision socket sandwich.

Once that was done it was just a matter of routing the rgb and sync lines to the rgb + sync inputs on the kit (easy job). Then I wired +5v and ground from the ppu solder spots to the kit pins that're supposed to be connecting to those ppu spots. Turned on the machine and everything worked perfectly (after screwing around with the stupid zif socket for a while to get a good cart connection). After that I installed a multi av port in the back and even wired up the advanced audio circuit that's built into the kit. I also plan to wire up the extended audio connection for the powerpak into the advanced audio circuit the same way that it's wired into my av famicom. I would have wired up the powerpak audio but I forgot to buy some 10k ohm 1/8 watt resistors so I'll pick those up tomorrow. Anyway here's some pics:

Original video circuit wiring (before I wired up the multi av port and audio)



Multi av port installed:



Kit installed (and running) without the ppu chip sitting in the kit where it's designed to be:



And proof that it truly works:



The picture is a tiiiiiny bit more blurry than the av famicom only because the rgb signals travel a short distance before they reach the video encoder but that's the only way you can install one of these kits into a toaster nes without flipping the entire pcb upside down. This pcb revision is the nes-cpu-07 and it has just as nice of a rgb picture as my 06 revision toaster. The picture looks really amazing and is almost completely jailbar free. I'm extremely happy with how this system turned out! Tomorrow I'll pick up the resistors and wire up the rest of the audio circuit and multi av port and this sytem will be 100% done.

Today I 100% finished the wiring. I wired up the entire multi av port except for 5v (for safety). Tested every single connection on the multi av port and all connections work as they should. Wired up the entire audio circuit and installed the switch that lets you switch between default system audio and the advanced audio circuit on the kit. Also with both default and advanced audio the powerpak extended audio is mixed in. Glued the wires on the kit down so they won't break off. Wired up the multi av port and the audio connections to headers incase you need to take the nes pcb out of the case. This's really the red violin of toasters. Seriously a toaster can't get any better than this.



All that's left to do is shorten the wires to the kit and mount the kit inside.

Toaster is 100% finished:

And here's the demo video showing off the completed ultra toaster

I saw that you were using a radioshack desoldering bulb/iron. I always had the worst luck with that when I was trying to desolder components off a gamecube. What I found at school that worked wonders is this:

http://www.alliedelec.com/search/productdetail.aspx?SKU=70159744

You should be able to find it for aroune $25 if you look around. Just take some flux and apply is to the pins you are trying to work with, apply the iron to the pin and wait 1-2 seconds, hit the button, and all the solder is removed from the pin.

GooniesMan wrote:

I saw that you were using a radioshack desoldering bulb/iron. I always had the worst luck with that when I was trying to desolder components off a gamecube. What I found at school that worked wonders is this:

http://www.alliedelec.com/search/productdetail.aspx?SKU=70159744

You should be able to find it for aroune $25 if you look around. Just take some flux and apply is to the pins you are trying to work with, apply the iron to the pin and wait 1-2 seconds, hit the button, and all the solder is removed from the pin.

Well the radioshack one works great as long as the head is new enough. With this GC one do you need to change the head periodically? I just need to buy more heads for my radioshack desoldering iron as this's my last head. However they don't sell them in canada so I need an american friend to pick some up and mail them to me (I'll pay for it all of course).

I thought I would need to change the head more than I have. The key to making them last a long time is basic upkeep. If you feel the solder sucking ability is decreasing, just check the tank and see if its almost clogged or use the included pipe cleaner and clear the problem away. Also making sure the tank is lubed up a little helps a lot along with emptying it after a couple uses.

I bought 4 extra tips, but i'm still on my included one and I have done maybe 40 or more 32 pin dip removals and I don't see any point soon when I will need to replace it.

I tried to make a video with my droid, but i'll have to get my other camera out since this one didn't turn out.

I'm fine with the radioshack one I just really need someone to buy some heads for me

I'll make you a deal, i'll grab you some if you show me how to make the final fantasy III nes cart or point me to a schematic.

GooniesMan wrote:

I'll make you a deal, i'll grab you some if you show me how to make the final fantasy III nes cart or point me to a schematic.

There's two ways you can do that. Either you buy a japanese final fantasy 3 famicom cart and swap the maskroms for eproms....or....you find a certain version of the mario 2 cartridge that has all 72 pins. Desolder a rom chip, replace it with a certain ram chip taken from another cart. Then solder in eproms and wire up a battery circuit.

I know everything up until the correct way to install the battery.

I think I found it here:

http://nesdev.parodius.com/NES%20EPROM%20Conversions.txt

"
TKROM -> TNROM conversion (mapper 4):
PRG socket:
Bend up pins 1, 2, 24, 30 and 31 (or cut tracks 2, 24, 30 and 31)
Solder pin 2 to hole 24 (A16)
Solder pin 24 to GND (OE)
Solder pin 30 to hole 1 (A17)
Solder pin 31 to hole 2 (A18)
CHR RAM conversion:
Seat the RAM chip 2 pins back (pin 1 of RAM is pin 3 of socket)
cut track to hole 3, 22, 24, 28 and 29
Solder pin 1 to hole 30 (+5V)
Solder pin 20 to hole 31 (CE or CHR /A13)
Solder pin 22 to hole 2 (OE or CHR /RD)
Solder pin 26 to hole 28 (+5V or RESET)
Solder pin 27 to NES pin 56 (CHR /WR), you will probably need to glue in the missing tab on the PC board that goes into the NES, I used a thin piece of metal and super glued it, then sanded it with fine sand paper
"

*deleted found a better one*

Ok, both of those help. I kept seeing people argue about the correct way to do it, i'm glad to get a good answer for once. How many of these do you want:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062732

>??

I'll take 10 heads thanks. Use this diagram as the other one in purple turned out to be wrong.

Ok, I'll go into the shack in the next day or two and place an order for 15. PM your address so I can figure out how much shipping will be

GooniesMan wrote:

Ok, I'll go into the shack in the next day or two and place an order for 15. PM your address so I can figure out how much shipping will be

Actually my client in new york says he'll buy some for me free of charge so let's just put it on hold for now. Consider it a you owe me haha.

Haha, alright. Sounds like a plan.

GooniesMan wrote:

Haha, alright. Sounds like a plan.

Seriously though that was a good thing to ask for it's not easy to find and that is a pretty cool circuit. I f#cking LOOOOVE ff3 (I was playing it today on the powerpak on the ultra toaster I built) so if it were up to me all the mario 2s with full rows of pins would be converted into ff3s. Apparently the more common mapper 4 boards would work with a ff3 conversion if you managed to uhm...add pin(s)

I'm actually sitting here trying to figure out a good way to add that extra pin. I read that the nes top loaders grip the cartridge a lot more than the toaster does, so i'm trying to find a good replacement.

GooniesMan wrote:

I'm actually sitting here trying to figure out a good way to add that extra pin. I read that the nes top loaders grip the cartridge a lot more than the toaster does, so i'm trying to find a good replacement.

I really don't think it's possible. It's quite a shame too.

I'm going to order some of the power pak chips, 74HC373AP, did you need anymore?

GooniesMan wrote:

I'm going to order some of the power pak chips, 74HC373AP, did you need anymore?

No thanks I have about 15 of them plus I have a local store I can buy more from. (I can even harvest these chips from my collection of playchoice 10 arcade pcbs)

If anybody's curious just how well built my systems are. Here's a new video I made where I take the fully assembled toaster. Revert the system back to composite video and mono audio (using the original av jacks), and then convert the system back to fully upgraded in about 10 minutes.