PAL Front Loader RF Modulators

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

PAL Front Loader RF Modulators

Post by Great Hierophant »

As everyone here knows, the NES was released in the PAL countries of Western Europe and Australasia in two incompatible variants. The PAL-A consoles with the 3197 lockout chips were sold in the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. The PAL-B consoles with the 3195 lockout chips were released in the rest of Western Europe.

I have been trying to find all variations of the NES Front Loader, since except for the Australian Top Loader and the Hong Kong Version Famicom, they are the only PAL consoles that were really available for consumers. I have found that all PAL-B consoles, except for the French ones, appear to be the same. There may be different stickers on the bottom from local distributors, but the model is always NESE-001. The French ones have the "RGB OUT" connector instead of a modulator and A/V jacks due to the SECAM standard and the model is NESE-001 (FRA). The PAL-A consoles, given the spread over so vast an area of the globe, appear to be different. They have different models, NESE-001 (GBR), NESE-001 (AUS) and NESE-001 (ITA).

I believe that while the PAL-B consoles share a common RF modulator, the PAL-A consoles don't, hence the differences in the model numbers. Australia, New Zealand and Italy use System B for transmissions, but share only a few common VHF channel assignments. The U.K. uses UHF for color broadcasting and System I for transmission. Most of Western Europe, except for France, uses System B and the same VHF and UHF frequency assignments, so only one Modulator would be needed for many countries. As far as France and its SECAM and its System L, Nintendo just decided to use a PAL to RGB conversion circuit and required TVs have a SCART input.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televisio ... requencies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast ... _standards
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/201 ... 8-bit.html
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