Video Noise, Composite Video and Flash Carts

Discuss hardware-related topics, such as development cartridges, CopyNES, PowerPak, EPROMs, or whatever.

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Great Hierophant
Posts: 780
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2004 9:35 pm

Video Noise, Composite Video and Flash Carts

Post by Great Hierophant »

I was an early adopter of the PowerPak and probably got one of the first carts bunnyboy made in 2007. It is a revision C with a date of 01/31/07. I had to send it back for a resistor mod and BIOS update. Even so, it has worked for eight years of fairly regular usage, there is quality for you.

I believe my AV Famicom caps are probably good because I bought it new in box in 2003 or so, making me the sole owner. My front loader is at least ten years older and I am not the original owner. I just happened to get lucky to find one with a good original 72-pin connector and an untouched lockout chip. The NES probably could do with a recap and regulator replacement. I wish I had a ESR meter and a real desoldering tool like a Hakko 808. Solder suckers and solder wick get messy. Replacing front loader caps is a pain in the ass because you have to desolder the RF unit.

The only mods I have had done is a 47K resistor between pins 3 and 9 of the NES expansion port and the two-wire mod for Controller 2 peripherals for the AV Famicom. My AV Famicom is an CPU-HVCN-02 and my NES is a NES-CPU-10

Jailbars are best seen with solid colors, regardless of system. Even in the AV Famicom, you can see noise in some solid greens at times. Dark greens are especially good for showing noise, and the PowerPak is the noisiest of the bunch. The Table in Lunar Pool looks very stripey on the PowerPak, but the EverDrive is not immune from this either. However, I can see something approaching jailbars in the bluish background of SMB. In this case, PowerPak -> EverDrive -> Real Cartridge, with the latter imperceptible and the EverDrive just barely if you are looking for it.

I think that what is on the cartridge may enhance noise. Consider Akumajou Densetsu vs. Castlevania III. On my AV Famicom, I can see jailbars in the solid green of the trees in Stage 3 in AD, but not in CV3. This may be because AD is generating audio and CV3 is not. It is not a major issue, but it is visible in this instance. Or maybe Nintendo built better quality cartridges than Konami did.

But the plot thickens even more. I have a NES Open Tournament Golf cartridge. On the real cartridge, the noise in the dark greens appears more noticeable on my AV Famicom than the EverDrive. I may have to buy a Lunar Pool cart to confirm this, because that uses dark green alot more.

The NES' AC Adapter is rated for 9VAC/1.3A. The Sega Master System/Genesis adapter which I typically use is 9VDC/1.2A. The Famicom and SFC/SNES use a 10VDC/.85A adapter. Assuming no power loss in the AC to DC conversion, the NES adapter can provide 11.7W, the SMS/GEN adapter 10.8W and the Famicom/SFC/SNES 8.5W. I use the SMS/GEN adapter in my AV Famicom and either adapter in my front loader. I have not tried an adapter that can provide more power than the NES adpater, I'm not sure I own one with the right barrel plug.
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