External audio on Toploader NES with PowerPak mod

[Bregalad]

I've successfully done this mod :
What you need is :

- Add a wire in your Power Pak between pin 51 (EXP9) and 54 (EXP6). The reason pin 51 (EXP9) was chosen was because this is the only pin which is unused in the Power Pak, and that pin exists in the toploader (pin 54 simply doesn't exist).

- Add a 1.2 kOhm resistor between pin 51 (EXP9) and audio out. The audio out pin is right next to pin 51 so it's really easy to solder the resistor here.

- If you want audio with actual FC games, you'd have to add a wire in the 60 -> 72 pin converter, between pin 46 (60-pins FC side) and pin 51 (72-pins NES side).

On a side note, I noticed the audio in the toploader is not amplified at all, it just comes straight out from the 2A03, through a set of resistors and capacitors. That's why I have to make the volume louder to compensate for that (as opposed to, for example, the SNES or toploader NES).

[MasonSushi]

so there is no reason to do an audio circuit?? I was wanting to do a conversion on a fami to NES adapter and not have some cable coming out into my toploader.

Also, with this mod, it would allow my powerpak and a modded converter to use the NES 2 with extended audio channels?? Just want to make sure.

Also I have seen some converter mods that add resistors to them. Do you think I would need them??

[Bregalad]

so there is no reason to do an audio circuit?? I was wanting to do a conversion on a fami to NES adapter and not have some cable coming out into my toploader.

I'm not sure what you mean but no, the NES2 works without any kind of audio amplification going on. In fact it just make the volume quieter and that's it - other than that you can't tell the difference. (at least I can't).

Also, with this mod, it would allow my powerpak and a modded converter to use the NES 2 with extended audio channels?? Just want to make sure.

Yes, you just need to add a wire on the PowerPak, and a wire in your 72->60 adapter. You'd have to add this wire anyways even with a front loading console, because those adapters were designed without expanded audio in mind and leave the audio pin disconnected on the Famicom side.

The only difference is that audio is passed through pin 51 instead of the more common pin 54, because this pin does not exist in the NES2.

[MasonSushi]

but you only have to solder one resitor on the NES 2 board then to make it work??

and when you say wire a resister to pin 51 and "audio out" what part/pin are you referring to anyway??

Thanks for all the help

[Bregalad]

Yes you just have to add a resistor. In the frontloader mod you also just had to add a resistor so I just inspired myself from that.
The only difference is that the audio is not amplified so you need a different (smaller) value for the resistor. I tried different values unless I figured out that 1.2k was the one who sounded the most right with my powerpak. A lower value would make external audio louder and a higher value would make it quieter.

There is 3 pins going to the RF box (that I removed because I modded my console to support AV). GND, video and audio. You should solder the resistor directly to the audio pin. I know the quality of my pic is terrible (done with my cellphone...), but the audio pin is the closest to pin 51, to the right on the bottom of the board if you place it like on the pic.

I hope you'll be able to mod your toloader, as I really like it better than frontloader personally, I imported one all the way from america and modified it to AV so I can play it on european TV just for that !

[MasonSushi]

this is great stuff. If you get time, I would love to see a bigger pic of the solder points. I tried zooming in and the image isn't large enough. it just pixalates.

I wish there was a way not to have to mod the powerpak. like adding our our pin that we would re-route.

That or you have ask Bunnyboy at Retrozone to add the audio to both pin 54 and a jumper trace to pin 51 for the next revision on the Powerpak board. That way both the toaster and the toploader can get the extra audio channels.

[thefox]

I wish there was a way not to have to mod the powerpak. like adding our our pin that we would re-route.

"Easiest" way to get audio on pin 51 is to ask loopy to compile new versions of his mappers (or recompile it yourself, link to sources is somewhere in these boards), and make them output to pin 51 instead of 54.

[Bregalad]

No, pin 51 is actually not connected to anything in the power pak.
However, pins 16, 52 and 20 could be used, as they exists on the toploader AND are connected to the powerpak, however when I wrote to loopy I never got any answer, so I wrote to Bunnyboy and he told me about pin 51 that was unused and that I should add a wire in the powerpak.

[thefox]

No, pin 51 is actually not connected to anything in the power pak.
However, pins 16, 52 and 20 could be used, as they exists on the toploader AND are connected to the powerpak, however when I wrote to loopy I never got any answer, so I wrote to Bunnyboy and he told me about pin 51 that was unused and that I should add a wire in the powerpak.

Ah, OK, I thought it connected all of the expansion pins.

[Bregalad]

I just dig this to confirm that this mod works not only with the Power Pak but also with Famicom Games through an adapter (I used a Gyromite adapter I just bought off ebay), if you add a wire in the adapter as I state in my first post.

[johannesmutlu]

besides the external audio mod on the nes2,i wonder if it is also possible to do a stereo mod on the nes2 toploader.

[3gengames]

besides the external audio mod on the nes2,i wonder if it is also possible to do a stereo mod on the nes2 toploader.

NES DOES NOT OUTPUT STEREO NONE OF THEM.

[Gilbert]

Not sure about NES, but "stereo" mod was possible on the Famicom.
As mostly all Famicoms here were modded to output composite signals using AV. I remembered playing Topgun in my friend's home and the drums and the melody line of the music were played on different sides of the headphone. I'm not sure how that's done though as it seemed to me that the system was hacked to have different sound channels played on different sides, but now, on second thought it might be just modded so that the external audio came from one side and the internal audio came from the other(I think Topgun used external audio).

[Shiru]

No external audio in Top Gun. 2A03 has two separate audio outputs, one for pulse channels and other for triangle, noise, and DMC, so stereo mod is a trivial thing.

[bootyhuntah]

I soldered cart connector pins 51 and 54 together on the NES PowerPak with a small piece (3/4") 30 awg kynar wire. I also added a 2k one turn potentiometer between exp. pin 9 and audio out, so I can control the expansion audio volume by simply adjusting the dial on the potentiometer. It works great!