This is my NES. It works great. This is Mateus Beis' NES. It works mostly great. So if it's working, there's probably another
good reason it's here. It's modding time. Mateus, or Mateus Beis, the retro Sega game
dev, to give him his full name, asked me if I would take a look at his childhood NES. I don't get to work on many of these and Mateus
is a top bloke and supporter of the channel. So I said yes please. A pile of Nintendo soon turned up and first
things first, I went to work on the power supply. This unit is Mateus' own childhood console
and very precious to him. So precious it ended up with his cousin. But don't worry that story had a happy ending
after he'd bought it back from his cousin for £5. I first checked the mains plug, something
I always do. Back in the 70s and 80s in the UK, electrical
appliances didn't come fitted with the plug as standard. You were expected to buy that separately and
fit it yourself. Which led to all kinds of horrific messes,
some of which you can still see regularly today when testing old devices. This one is not actually too bad. Just a dodgy stray wire poking out of the
live connection. Harmless but I'll snip it anyway. Okay time to plug it in and see. Oh Lee, did you forget something? With UK mains plugs you can't push them into
a socket without that earth pin. It physically won't let you. Right what's this doing then? The power supply outputs AC. The end looks to have been repaired at some
point in the past. Mateus tells me his uncle was responsible
for the fix and that it worked fine as far as he knew. And testing it, it looks to be outputting
an expected voltage. I'm not happy to leave it like this though. There could be anything under that black tape. I think I can do a little better. Under the tape it actually looks to be a good
job. Uncle Beas just needed some heat shrink tubing
and this would have been a good fix. What I'm aiming for here is something that's
like a molded plastic cover and I think that's worked really well. Just a little crooked at the end. Just needs straightening out before it cools
down. Hot, it's hot, it's quite hot. Ah, I'm gonna bend it. It's not that hot you wimp. I plugged the console in and got a nice red
power light but no action on the screen which is pretty much what Mateus had warned me was
the problem. What followed was a few days of mucking about
with the cartridge slot. A known failure point on these including boiling
it, sanding it, bending its pins and everything else I could think of. In the end I got it working reliably and put
the console away ready for the next stage. The next stage being a Tim Worthington RGB
mod which took me a while to organize. Lovely Mateus told me there was no hurry and
waited patiently for the parts to arrive and time passed. You can tell how long ago it was as my pinball
table was still there. After a while the RGB mod arrived and at that
point I made a short video on my second channel where I unboxed the kit and talked about how
I would probably get this knocked out in a couple of weeks. Oh the hubris! That was five months ago and after making
that video I realized that the RGB mod for the NES required holes cut into the case. Something I'm usually not comfortable doing. I contacted Mateus and he was equally hesitant. The project stalled as we discussed different
options such as a completely new case or a second hand one. Both of these were expensive options. Shortly after that video I was contacted by
a really nice guy called Merlin. Yes that's his real name and it's the coolest
name ever if you want my opinion. Merlin answered all our prayers. He offered to send me a board he was working
on. This board would replace the modulator power
board in the NES and as well as cleaning up the video signal with a much better design
layout it would provide connections internally for the Tim Worthington RGB mod and externally
with a Mega Drive 2 style RGB video connector. And best of all it didn't require any modification
to the case whatsoever. Merlin sent over the board and assorted components
and I then was incredibly busy for the next few months. Well it's finally time to get this done. So we can put this old footage away and switch
over to the present. Or something. Right first things first I need to make sure
this is working as I left it all those months ago. So I've attached a composite lead and the
power the original power supply. And I've got this is Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt into the slot. I'll just show you what I'm doing here. So it clicks like that. Press the power button. Nothing. But if I do that it works. And it's not just a fluke. This is a game that Mateus sent over with
the system. This is the game he wants to play with this. Something that he used to play back in the
day with his mate. Nothing with it down. Click it up and it works perfectly. It's a very bizarre thing and I've cleaned
that socket a lot. That's with it up. And this this cartridge is actually a bit
flaky. This is Mario Bros 3. Perfect. We'll come back to that at some point but
we know it's working. So I can I can not worry about the cartridge
slot for now. While this is opened up the top part of the
case is going out sunbathing. It's not too bad. It's not terrible. Yeah so this is going to go out in the garden. You can see here and the lighting doesn't
change very much in here and I have these cameras color balanced. So we should be able to get a good before
and after. But I mean you can see it changes shade depending
on what angle I hold it at. So let's go for flat because then that's controllable and dead center and we can do a before and
after. I'm going to put this on a chair out in the
garden. I'll take a picture. So we've still got the inside bits so let's
get that taken apart. It's such an over engineered mechanism. The top loaders are just a much much better
thing. There we go. Things I need to do. Remove the PPU flatten down these capacitors
so that they don't foul the bottom of the unit that's going in there. Might need to move that one and that one. And then I need to remove this. This is the modulator and power board. Why they combine the modulator. So there's a 7805 regulator in there is it? 7805. There's a regulator in there. I'm pretty sure it's a 5 volt regulator. There's also the video and sound out there. The power in and an RF out. So it does RF conversion in here. It has the video signals routed through there. The power going through here and being converted. This is an elegant solution. This is a mess. So I think I have to remove the sold from
those points there. And these points here to get this out. I might do that first. Because this board, once this goes in here,
this will work as a standard output because it's the inputs come into here from the video signal comes
into here and then the composite mod goes out here. Like it does normally here. So it does exactly the same but it has all
these other bits and pieces to convert to the RGB. So this section here. What Merlin did is he designed this so that
the ground plane will be uninterrupted. This is a solid ground plane on the back here. Which is going to act in much the same way
as that. Probably a lot better. But the other thing it does is it doesn't
cross. I've put up a little graphic on the screen. It doesn't cross any power and video lines. So there's no interference from that. Okay, so first job is going to be remove this, fit this and then worry about the next stage
after that. This was a bit of a pig. I moved the solder from that point, that point,
that point and that point. And all of these points using a combination
of braid, old solder suckers, new solder suckers, solder guns, two different soldering irons,
another soldering iron with a bigger tip on it. In the end everything is loose. I can see those wobbling. And yes. There we go. So now I can fit that. Right, the next thing I've got to do is solder
this board onto these connections. But they've got to be level and straight that way as well. We're going to do one to start with and get
it level before I solder all of them. Nope. That feels like it got it. Yeah, that looks good. That looks pretty good to me. Lovely. Now we can test it. Before I do, there's one thing on here that
I'm missing, which is a ground connection. There's a point here, connect ground to NES
PCB. So I have to connect that ground to this ground
on here. Otherwise there's no electrical connectivity. Yeah. Wonderful. Okay, I've got my bench power supply hooked
up. Yes. So I can't see the difference because I'm
only looking at this on my OBS capture on my laptop, which is a tiny little window about
a quarter of the size of my laptop screen. But I have to say it still looks good. Still looks really good. All right, I need to clean up. And then the next thing to do is the RGB mod. So the PPU unit, PPU chip needs to come out and the RGB mod needs to go in. A little bit nervous about that. It's a lot of money and it's not my money,
but let's have a bit of confidence. So have I shown you this? There we go. Oh, that's that looks like it might be a tight
fit. We've got a palette selector switch there. I see. We've got video, but that can also be stereo. Well, it's not stereo audio, but you can have
a left and right channel coming out of here if you need if you want to. Yeah, and that's all controlled with these
switches in here. That one's a bit awkward to get to external
or internal audio, but that's fine. He's, it's an amazing job. I'm so impressed, Merlin, you're a very clever
man. Right, so the next thing to do is the remove
the PPU and fit the RGB mod and put it back together. Because it's going to go plain sailing. Fresh splosh of solder. Lovely long pins. So good. I'm looking at you Commodore. That feels like it went well on this side. There's one or two lobs. Yeah, especially that one. Maybe that one and that one, but that one
definitely. Oh yeah, this is doing it. These are all free. Might be a bit more tricky getting in down
this side. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to do that. Get some of these. So all of these ones might need a little bit
here. That one's stuck. That one's stuck. Fairly confident the other side is free. Yeah, that side's come free. This side, not so much. I might need to run the hot air over that. Shouldn't take much. It's tiny little bits of solder that are holding
it now. Yeah, it's already lifting at this end. Oops, use the proper tool. That's out. One PPU and one board with no damage. So this, I'm still not going to take it out
of the packet, needs to go there. So that capacitor there. In fact, what I've got in here, it came with
this kit to recap it, including a 220 microfarad cap for the power supply board, which I bought
separately twice because I thought I'd lost them. But it also comes with all the other caps
for this board. 2.2 microfarad and 100 microfarad and a 1
microfarad. The only electrolytics on this board, 116 volt, that'll be for that one. That might be the one. 2.2. So it was, look, it came with a voltage regulator. It's an excellent kit. They cover everything you need. So the next thing I need to do, that'll drop
in there once I've cleaned out all the holes properly. Notches down here. Perfect. This does need to be straight. So let's solder two corners and check. And check. Yeah, lovely. Amazing thing about these boards is everything
is marked. So PPU, obviously, but look, the logic chip,
74 LS373, the SRAM is marked, the CPU is marked CPU. That logic chip is marked exactly the which
not just the, you know, the U1 or whatever. It's, they're all, the part numbers are all
on here. So that HC 368A, it says on the board, 40H368CI. Even the, what's that? This, no, the CIC chip here, that's a 74 series
logic. But all of the capacitors as well, every single capacitor has its value marked on the board. That's amazing. Why couldn't they carry on doing that? So I was thinking, I don't know, I don't take
these off one at a time, so I don't get in the model. But it says one microfarad on there. This one, 100 microfarad, this one 2.2 microfarad. Amazing. Well done, Nintendo. Keep up the good work from 40 years ago. That one and the polarity is obviously marked. That was the one microfarad, I believe. And the ones that are going back in are tiny,
so I don't need to worry about bending them over. Positive lead there, negative lead there. I'm fairly sure. Maybe I do. I'm going to bend it over. Actually, I can bend it over that way. There we go. That looks good. So I've got nice flat capacitors there. Everything's out of the way. This ceramic one here, I might need to do
something with that. Like that. Okay, that's done. The next stage of this part of the build is
to attach the turn pin headers to the RGB board. The easiest way to get these perfectly lined
up is to place the headers into the socket and then solder the board to that. Cleaning the board of all finger grease and
oxidisation will make soldering much easier and give better joints. 99.9% Isopro Panella and a cotton bud or paper
towel is the way to go here. With the board roughly in place, I solder
a pin in two corners and then check to make sure the board is level, which it is. The board is now and now using my high-tech
piece of wood, I can safely lever the board out of the socket beneath before soldering
the original PPU chip into the RGB board. Before I can do that, I need to snip off the
tops of one row of pins as they hold the PPU too far away from the board. I bet you'd like to see that. All right, so what I think I just failed to
record was me chopping down all of these pins and reflowing them. I did show that this was sticking up much
higher on this side and it's much better now. So you'll just have to use your imagination. The perils of YouTube videos. Number one, not pressing record. I'll put this in
the right way up. I did. Yeah, happy with that. All right, so everything's in place. There is one little thing I've got to do first
or two little things I've got to do first. One is to bridge J7. J7 is over here. And J4, which is here. That's a nice little peak. That's fine. I'll can tidy that up later. But the thing I want to do first is test this
in its non RGB mode just to make sure that everything is still working as it was. I don't know if you need to connect the controllers,
but I will anyway. Please work. It's not working. Oh dear. That's the face of a man who is trying to
work out why the thing he expected to work isn't working. At this point, he's completely unaware he's
missed a crucial step. Did you spy it? As this video has gone on quite a long time
already, I'll cut it short here on a nice cliffhanger. But don't worry, all will be revealed very
shortly in the next episode. It's mostly already edited. Here's a sneak preview of the opening. I'm an idiot. Also, don't worry, there are more mistakes
and blunders in the next video. Thanks for watching this one. I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.
