Famicom - Won't read games - Audio Hum - Fixing Ebay Junk 

Thanks, Did You Know Gaming, but we did indeed know that.

@@mjc0961 Did you know some NES games have Famicom Adapters? As in Famicom cart boards stuffed into a NES cart that had a adapter PCB that just broke it out to the NES 72pin.

@Lassi Kinnunen I opened up my amp and most of it was just empty unused space!

Yeah we pronounce it, DE.. Cows.

Canadian here- my pronunciation for Decals varies lol

Let's drop in on a grommet.

Just to add, Japan used a slightly different version of NTSC called NTSC-J. Those who know "vanilla" NTSC will remember that there is no Channel 1, at least not in analogue VHF OTA television. NTSC-J did have Channel 1.

Ive already got the next one recorded, she makes an appearance. I have to keep the viewers wanting more, can't be all Kona, all the time

Deck-al deck-al deck-al

Eddy_D same.

Could be. They use physical blocks on SNES and n64 carts too.

the reason, that has been stated by nintendo, on why the NES was designed differently for the US and EU, is because they wanted it to resemble a VCR and VCR tape, to distance their product from other game consoles at the time (e.g. Atari, Colecovision) because of the video game crash of 1983.

Excellent point. Could be a way of "futureproofing" for enhancements. Also, some very early carts were actually famicom carts slapped in to a converter, which took up additional space"

Ha, nice. I've done about 4 of these, first time ive left out the eject mechanism. Its usually LED diffusers for me.

Yup. Nintendo also focused all the initial advertising on R.O.B. the robot, to further disassociate itself from video game consoles. I’ve heard it theorizes that the NES cartridges were supposed to remind people of 3.5” computer disks, but I don’t remember if those were a thing in 1985. Might just be coincidence.

3Dsjk They kinda were, but it was definitely 5 1/4 disks that were more widely used at the time.

That's entirely up to you. The pads are easily cleaned, so if they do start to fail, just open it up and clean. Some people prefer the feel of actual switches, theres a guy in a retro modding group im in on Facebook that has actually created replacement PCBs designed for switches instead. Obviously it's alot more work and money, but if you like it, give er.

Yeah, it's a good idea. I was confident in that i didn't damage anything as it was just a simple cleaning. If it were an actual repair, then yes, I'd test before screwing it together

Cool, i didn't know that

Those were for making backups of carts onto standard 3.5" floppy disks. Questionably illegal, but still cool. This was an OEM Nintendo disk player, they produced 3.0" disks with games on them. Advantage is bigger storage capacity, but piracy again was a huge issue. A cool thing was they would have disk writers where you could go in and get your disk rewritten

RetroRepairs howdy, do you ever fix nes or snes on order, i have one of each, they were next to a window facing the ocean for years when I played them, tthen stored in a garage for 12 years, I opened the nes, it was full of black soot and the rust!!! I'd love to get them restored? Thx

RetroRepairs I have something else that's been forgotten, a Panasonic3do, I hardly ever used it as I got it in HK and took it back to Australia, the power converter used to get unbelievably hot after a few minutes of play.

You need a new belt. They're very prone to failure and even some brand new ones are bad. It took me two orders to find one that worked. They need to be a specific length, thickness and strechyness

@@RetroRepairs Thanks! The new ones are falling off actually. I replaced the old ones because they had transformed into a gooey mess. Could you share where you got yours?

It does, however the famicom adapter outputs 10vAC 650mah. It doesn't have a rectifier to convert ac to dc, so you definitely don't want to use an adapter that outputs AC power.

@@RetroRepairs nice info thanks.

In theory, yes

02stampede the famicom was perceived as too toy like for western audiences. It was repositioned as an ‘entertainment system’. Hence the redesign.

@@AcornElectron That makes sense. Thanks for the info.

There's a surprisingly large amount of English usage in Japan. Why? I have no idea. Learning English is a mandatory in Japanese schools, and while i wouldnt go as far as to call it an official second language there, it's on so much stuff. Now, how do they decide between what to print in Japanese and what to print using the English/Roman alphabet? I have no clue. Maybe a viewer who understands Japanese culture better might chime in.

This is a fix things with isopropyl alcohol channel. If you don't like watching videos of cleaning things than this is not the channel for you!

@@spanky3425 Cleaning is kind of repair too. But there's more complex repair with replacing old electrolitics for example. For continuous good effect after repair or checking condition.

@C B S Hey ! I see that you finally got to work with the Family Computer. Well, if you are having an insomnia, or you are in need of reading something quite long here I come with the post why Famicom actually was a revolutionary system here in Eastern Europe - not Western Europe mind you ! Lets start it all with the situation in the gaming market during the early 1990s. Eastern Europe was a place where people used the computers more for the gaming than video game consoles, and this trend was kinda also in the West, when it started to change with the next generation of consoles (Sega Genesis and SNES). But lets be real, here in the east people in general didnt had money to buy such expensive for its time consoles, so there was a real need for something cheaper on the market. Not to mention you could only dream about official sales of gaming consoles, you had to wait for this until the early 2000s ! In the early 90s you could have bought an Atari 2600 clones, that usually came with built in games, but lets be real, those kind of graphics didnt appealed to most of the people at the beginning of the 90s. And then back in Taiwan they started to clone the Famicom console, which suddenly became a great alternative for cheap gaming over here. After all it was much more fresh in terms of graphics and playability. And this is how it all started. The systems were styled in a similiar way to the original Family Computer, but had a few advantages over the real one. First one was the controllers - they actually thought about making them able to unplug from console, in case one breaks, plus the cords were longer. No more sitting right next to your TV. The connector they used shouldnt surprise - in most cases they went for the 9 pin connector, that was everywhere for its time. Of course those do output different signal, so they only work with the Famicom based consoles - known right now as Famiclones. And mind you, even the controllers produced today do work with the oldest systems ! Some did use the 15 pin one, however you could re-wire them easily. Its also worth mentioning, that almost every Famiclone controller had the additional turbo A and B buttons. The next advantage would be the lightgun - or the so known zapper. While in the USA and western EU this was an addon you had to buy seperately, almost every system came with the gun included for free ! Last advantage I can think of would be the connection - you could still use RF, but you had also the composite video and audio now. The 9V PSU has the reversed polarity, just like the original one. I believe Sega also did this, and you can use Sega Genesis PSU for most of the Famiclones, except the fact some of the modern ones do run on the 5V. As the time flew by, the new systems were actually a thing, but that wasnt a problem for the Famiclone manufacturers. They started to redesign the consoles so they would look in a similiar way to the next generation systems, such as japanese SNES or Sega Genesis. I do own one clone that was a Genesis model 2 styled, and it really is almost identical - it even has expansion port cover ! The Sega-lookalike controllers having 6 buttons also do serve the purpose, as the C button serves as A+B pressed in the same time, and Z as the turbo version of it. Talk about being creative lol. While the next generation came in, the Famiclones lived as a cheap alternative for gaming, and were styled as PSX, N64 even Dreamcast or PS2. While in the west you had the big cartridges, here we always had the neat small Famicom style ones. And the games were all you can imagine. Not only the Japanese exclusives, you also had the American exclusives flashed into the 60 pin cartridges, and some of the FDS conversions into the carts. It was also the time they started to make new mappers that led into multicarts, and nowadays they learnt how to use the (I believe) N64 chips that have 32 MB of capacity, which results in hundrets of games being actually on the cartridge. Later in the 90s when the demand for the games was still big, there were some indie game studios such as legendary Hummer Team, who started to port games from Gameboy, SNES, Sega Genesis, re-create them on a custom engines (mostly fighting games) or going totally crazy like they did with FF7. Yes, there is a port of this game at the Famicom, and from what I heard it really is a full story you got on the Playstation. Oh and have I mentioned, that all those games were unlicensed by anyone :P ? But nobody gave a damn back then. Btw the japanese Super Mario 2 you mentioned isnt really in pair with the Lost Levels. Its much more difficult. Try to play through the game, and you will see what I mean. So thats basically how it looked like over here. Nes wasnt a cult console over here, and many people heard about it only recently (a few years back) mostly because of the retro gaming RU-vidrs, and because of the Nintendo Classic Mini console. The famicom based consoles is a different story. Of course there were people here who had the next gen consoles, but its the same deal with Gameboys. Who didnt had the money for a Gameboy (and the games to play later) could always buy a cheap Brick Game. And people who had no money to buy a Playstation in 1996, could always buy a Polystation and still have fun playing some stuff. This however never really satisfied most people as much as PC gaming, and this is mostly why until the official distribution of PS3 and X360 along with the ability to play online, people were mostly PC gamers over here. Not only you had better graphics and gameplay, there were in general more PC titles to choose from, some of them even in a native language. But in terms of gaming consoles - the Famicom would be certainly a winner over here. Ever. Cheers !

It really does! Breathed new life into an old Genesis controller with that trick.

grandolddrummer i recently used it on a master system controller before button 2 was not very responsive the jump animation was not great had to press the button down hard to make it work after cleaning it just lightly tapping it flawless and works every time I’ve watched lots of repair and cleaning channels this is the only one that cleans the conductive pads

the start/select buttons on my super famicom controller was not working at all, but the paper cleaning technique worked.

Refers to the ac adapter which outputs dc power

@@RetroRepairs Thanks. It can really trick you there if you didn't know. Technically it is a correct label though.

Yes, and also had thought about just using longer cords. Part of the whole design of the famicom is the controllers stored on the side, so using a square NES controller kind of defeats that though.

it's an offshoot species of adhesive label, native only to Canada.

"Deckal Deckal Hyde Deckal-Hyde Hyde Deckal! Deckal Deckal Hyde Deckal Hyde!"

The twin famicom also has rear facing controllers, but there's more space at the front to mount controller ports if one were inclined

@@RetroRepairs absolutely would you happen to have a top loader NES and try to get a game genie to work without it's expensive adaptor because this is something I'm very much so interested in, or find away to fabricate an extension pcb for it perhaps a resource that you may know? Greatly appreciated.

Do you get the same issue if you use RF out and the Composite out? My first thought is something in the RF modulator

@@RetroRepairs yes I did

Well, the PPU outputs a color composite signal. If you're inclined, you can open it up and tap directly into the video out pin (can't recall which one off hand) if that's still black and white, then could be a bad ppu. There's also a potentiometer which can be adjusted. Also check for bad capacitors. It'll probably be one of those

@@RetroRepairs where would the potentiometer be located on the board?

@@englishbannana1232 there's a pot near the crystal and the cpu. A very slight adjustment might impact the output. I'd do a little Google search for a second opinion first before you go adjusting the potentiometer

Probably to a degree, but it shouldn't be obnoxiously loud

Sorry to trigger you

You realize the famicom and nes were never meant to compete with each other right? This is regional lock, not backwards compatibility

Way of the road

@@RetroRepairs I don't know if you've noticed Adam, but your rig sleeper doesn't move an inch.

Shhh.. 🤫

RetroRepairs Wow, actually didn’t expect you to reply, cool! For the record, I think you are awesome and quite frankly your channel is underrated. I have a question for you, but I could not find a business email address to contact you with... so I’m relying on the comments section to ask you. Anyway, I have an SNES that might not be working properly. I got it in a lot of broken consoles from eBay, and because I repair consoles I gave it a go... It will not power on. The fuse is fine, I replaced the 7805 voltage regulator, and even replaced the Schottky diode (D1) with a 1n4001 as done on a forum. Nothing. My last resort is buying an actual OEM adaptor (I am currently using a third party one) in case the one I have isn’t delivering proper power. If it still doesn’t work, I am willing to do my final cosmetic refurb on it and send it over to you for free so maybe you can give it a go. If you are interested please don’t hesitate to email me or something!

@@UhrwerkKlockwerx not sure what you've checked, but do you get voltage to the fuse? If yes, what about the voltage regulator? If no, it could be the T1 choke. console5.com/store/common-mode-choke-snes-t1.html When you say it wont power on, do you mean completely dead? No led or anything?

Correct, it came out in 83 i believe, then brought to north America in 85/86.

@@RetroRepairs I'm from Argentina and here arrives both. The original NES and the famicom but it was a copy. Then we had adapters to run NES games in the family.

In some of my earlier videos, i had a gamecube stacked on an xbox 360, with the phone hanging off the edge.

@@RetroRepairs Ha! Smart move there!

I like the look way better. The weirdest part, when they released the Super famicom, they also released an AV version of the famicom. When they released the super Nintendo in north America, they also released the NES toploader... which was RF OK ONLY! What were they thinking?!

@@RetroRepairs I know, I got one of those thinking "ah, I won't have to deal with blinking and replacing cartridge connectors anymore". Only to have to hardware mod the thing to output video.