The best video upgrade for your N64 in 2023! PixelFX Retro Gem install and demonstration

[Music] hey guys welcome back to fix it Friday so this week we are back with the Nintendo 64 and we're going to be looking at the latest HDMI mod for the Nintendo 64 and this is the pixel FX retro gem so what's nice about this particular solution is that you get a fully digital to digital HDMI out from your Nintendo 64 and it can go up to 1440p um and uh it has all sorts of really nice options for just making your 64 look as good as possible so I have covered um this mod before it's really cool because you can install it in a variety of different consoles so for now at least you can install it in the uh Nintendo 64 the PS1 PS2 and I believe the Sega Dreamcast as well um so yeah what we're going to do today is go over how to do this installation and then we will also do a brief overview of some of the features that this modification has all right so let's get to it okay so I have the Nintendo 64 taken apart and I'm going to just very briefly go over the steps you need to do in order to disassemble it first thing you got to do is get a game bit screwdriver like this one right here and you have six of these little guys on the outside that hold the top and bottom shells together once you take that apart then you've got the motherboard right here and you've got these extremely long screws that go where the cartridge slot is you've got these longer white screws and these go where the AV multi out is and the power supply um All Around The Edge you have these standard Phillip screws and then you've got these two screws that are machine screws with lock nuts that are going here and here and then finally on the um memory pack slot you've got these two long thin screws right here so that's really all you got to do a Philips screwdriver and a game bit screwdriver is very easy to use in order to disassemble this thing the only other thing you've got to do is when you remove the um heat sink on the top you have to push kind of like this um just so that you don't do any damage to the RAM chips so I'm just going to go ahead and do that really quick there we go and as long as you do it like that then everything should be fine you just have to make sure that these guys um you don't push hard on on these RAM chips but otherwise um It's Perfectly safe to do that okay so now that it's disassembled we're going to go ahead and start um soldering in the flex cable okay so now we're going to go ahead and get started with soldering on the RCP Flex cable this is definitely the hardest part of the installation and um as you can see I have also pre-tinned the pads on this Flex cable as well I found that just makes things a little bit easier uh because there's already a decent amount of solder positioned on each of the pads so first thing we're going to do is just clean everything off with some isopropyl alcohol and we're going to line up this Flex cable so that it starts on pin number six so you can see that there are these little dots that indicate the fifth pin so we're just going to go count up to pin six okay and then from here what I'm going to be doing is just starting by tacking it into place with my soldering iron and just um going pin by pin and making sure that I have a good solid connection and that there aren't any Bridges it's important to use plenty of flux here because the flux helps to prevent Bridges or uh also helps separate a bridge if you happen to make one um so yeah let's go ahead and get started with soldering this into position okay so now that the RCP Flex is soldered into position the next thing we need to do is solder in three wires um so these three wires are connected to the piff chip which um is this little chip located down here and what we need to do is connect the reset line the um RC line and the controller line to uh the flex cable from this piff chip this allows us to do the button combination and do in-game reset and basically just control the um the Retro gem using button combinations so um what we're going to be doing is soldering to three pins so we're going to be soldering to pin number two pin number 16 and pin number 27 on this chip um so let's go ahead and get started with that okay so now we are all set with the reset RC and controller lines and there's actually only one more step left to do which is to solder in the 5V power supply on the flex cable which is going to go right here to capacitor C130 so all we've got to do is just give this Flex cable a little crease so that it runs along where the multi out is and then that little spare leg there is for the 5 volts and that's just going to go onto the positive side of capacitor C130 okay so we're getting ready for assembly and so you can see that we have this N64 FX daughter board that goes right over here above where the multi out goes and there's a little 3D printed Mount that's holding this in place and we're going to be doing a note cut version so we're going to be using this 3D printed multi out over here so that everything sits nicely and we don't have to make any cuts to the Shell um so once this is located here we're just going to add this Flex cable right here and as you can see I already installed that with the blue stripe facing up towards you uh one cool thing about the Retro gem is that you can leave the RF shield on the bottom here um with the older N64 digital and with some of the other HDMI mods you actually have to remove this but with this new mod you can actually leave this in place and I honestly really do like that quite a bit um now that that's all situated where we want it to be we're also going to take this little 3D printed um mounting block right here this holds everything down forces everything to stay in place and you just line it up right over here okay so let me go ahead and put the multi out shroud on and there we go that's a very nice neat and tidy fit um so I'm going to go ahead and um just cut this little uh actually you can't even see it this little Peg right over here this is like a mounting Peg to help everything get centered but it gets in the way of the retro gem so we're actually going to go ahead and remove it really quick there we go so it's just flush with the N64 motherboard and it's not going to get in the way all right okay there we go so everything is back together um so let me go ahead and screw this into place and then we're going to oh okay so before I put on the upper portion of the RF Shield you'll notice that I took a piece of capton tape and I placed it right over here next to the upper heat sink going all the way to the edge that's just to protect any accidental contact between this Flex cable here and the shield cuz that would obviously short stuff out and not be a good plan so I have that in place and now that that's there just going to go ahead and yeah there we go everything fits quite nicely um so I'm going to go ahead and screw all of this into position and then we're going to get finished up with everything else okay so I have put the top shield on and as you can see I actually removed this part of the heat sink right here and the reason why is because the gem is going to sit more or less like this right and about here on the um on the motherboard so what we're going to need to do is basically install this 3D printed Mount right here um so first what I got to do is I got to take these little M2 nuts and these are going to go into these little cleverly um placed slots right here so the um the gem is going to screw into place right over here just got to wedge these things into position okay I had to use quite a bit of force on that one it was pretty pretty tough and I found I just have to take my flush cutter and just kind of there we go force it in takes quite a bit to get it in there but um yeah now it's in place so we're going to go ahead and line that up and get it into position okay and finally we're just going to line this up here and just going to use a smaller screwdriver to connect the gem to the Mount there we go that was actually pretty annoying but obviously as you can see it's much easier to just do it off of the gem and then just install like that okay and I believe the final step is right here and you just kind of rotate this and there we go okay so I'm going to go ahead and reassemble everything and we will give it a quick test okay so I forgot one final step which is this little Wi-Fi antenna here um so it plugs into a socket which is right over here and I kind of did that off camera just because these things are super annoying for me to get on I struggle with them um so now that it's on we're just going going to go ahead and attach the antenna okay so just take off the double-sided adhesive just Loop this around and we're going to locate it right over here onto the um onto the heat shield right here all right so now let's go ahead and give this thing a proper test okay so there is yet one more thing that I had forgotten to mention before reassembling everything uh which is the clock mod um that you can do on the Nintendo 64 so basically what the clock mod does is instead of using the internal clock on the 64 you can let the Retro gy handle the clock signal for you and I think the advantage of this primarily is if you want to play out of region games on your console so in other words if you want to play pal games on your ntsc American or Japanese console then um the gem can automatically change the clock so that you're running at 50 HZ and then you can uh accurately play those uh European games and vice versa of course so to do the clock mod um what you've got to do is you need to lift a pin on uh this chip right over here it's pin one it's a slightly different uh pin on the later revision consoles and you can actually refer to the um the Retro gem installation documents it'll tell you exactly which pin it's pin three on the equivalent chip it's um yeah and they have photos for that and all that uh you also have to set some jumpers so you have to close this jumper right here for clock and then here's the gem itself and you also need to close this jumper a um if you're doing the clock mod and then finally there are some jumpers on here that need to be closed for um using it on a Nintendo 64 so specifically you've got to close jumpers J and K which hopefully you can see right over here all right so now that that's all done let's go ahead and install it into the shell all right so I've gone ahead and assembled the console and I just wanted to show you how nice this one looks and um you can barely tell that there's anything resembling a mod going on with this thing you can see a little bit of the flex cable here on the side and of course on the back you've got the 3D printed shroud on the multi out which looks really nice um that blends in rather well as well except of course for this mini HDMI port right here so yeah we're all assembled so let's go ahead and plug this thing in and have a look okay so we are ready to test the Retro gem on the N64 before I do that though I just want to apologize for this not ideal setup I actually just moved recently and so I'm just using one of my main monitors here for testing but in the coming weeks I'll have a dedicated monitor set up just for doing this kind of stuff all right so let's power this thing on and see what it does all right there we go that is looking really nice um let me go ahead and just start up a [Music] game Perfect all right so we've got f0x here and it is looking sharp as hell looking really perfect so what we're going to do now is just go ahead and access the menu so to do that we're going to hit the L and R buttons C right and d right all together and there we go there's our main menu and you can see that this gem has the shiny Edition which means that it has all of the fully featured uh options available um there's a lower cost version which does not have a lot of the features available so uh I don't have that here of course I can't demonstrate that but let's go ahead and go through some of the presets and so we can um easily put on scan lines like how you see here and that actually looks really good there are quite a number of different options for scan lines on the N64 um if we go into video you can adjust settings on the scaler you can also get the output resolution all the way up to 1440p um this monitor doesn't support that so I can't really show it but uh you can go that High um and then of course if you're actually doing this installation yourself and you really want to go test it make sure everything is good you go into the system menu and you go down here to debug and self test and you should see hearts on all of the various signals if there's an X well you'll probably have some kind of problem with video or audio um but it'll tell you exactly which pins are shorted out to each other and then you can go back and Reflow your RCP Flex cable and get that all situated um but yeah looks like we don't have any problems right now we just have a perfectly installed retro Gem and yeah I've got to say this thing is really nice and I'm going to mess around with it quite a bit before I send it back to its owner all right so that's it for this week's video If you guys like this kind of content then consider subscribing to the channel I have videos out like this every Friday and then of course if you have a console that you need repaired or modified you can always reach me directly at oneup restorations.com all right guys thank you very much for watching and I will see you next time [Music] bye

Channel: Long Island Retro Gaming

Views: 12,860

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Id: w9FXNteZAig

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023