nesdev.org

Hello guys, long time lurker

I have a few Famicom units I want to test. Some are Hong Kong models, so they run PAL colours and come with a 50/60Hz switch at the back and an original 220V AC adapter.

I finally managed to buy an old CRT TV, Sharp VT-1428M, specs attached to the post.

So... when I plug the RF cable directly on the TV, and go to channel 4, I see the game turning on and a very faint image, but it's 90% covered in noise. Do I need a PAL NES RF switch to make things look normal?

The Hong Kong Famicom was not sold with any switch... so I'm a bit puzzled. Shouldn't it work properly with direct RF connection? The TV is Hong Kong standard too!

Shouldn't need a PAL-dedicated RF switch, but check if the channel isn't being modulated where you think it is.

90% covered in noise sounds vaguely like what I remember seeing when the TV is set to the wrong channel.

lidnariq wrote:check if the channel isn't being modulated where you think it is

What does that mean?

I don't even know why the only channel that's picking up something is channel 4...

The RF adapter used shouldn't matter, I believe they'll all do the same thing (unless you have cable TV connected to the other end of it).

Lidnariq was simply saying that it's probably using another channel, not 4.

The unclear signal at 4 is likely some leakage of the signal from its actual channel into channel 4. Keep looking and maybe you'll find the real one. In a recent similar thread I discovered my TV could do more channels than I believed, after finding the "cable scan" in the options and running that, after which I finally got my Famicom to show up on channel 95.

Thanks, I'll try to look into it, will study the remote to check all possible channels and do a manual/auto scan.

What the...?

Bought a CRT TV, no signal except an extremely faint signal on channel 4 in B&W.

Tonight came back with a PAL/SECAM/NTSC VCR, no signal anywhere, went from channel 1 to 99.

Am I doing something wrong? Why did Nintendo release an RF-only console in 1991? Great idea, especially 2 years after the NES was released in Hong Kong, it's like going back to the past for the worse

Sounds like something's wrong with the RF modulator then. Do you have any diagnostic tools available?

Either I'm doing something wrong or all my units are faulty, because I tested more than one with the same result

Hm. Randomly asking a search engine, it seems that HK PAL TV is all in the UHF band, nothing in the VHF band.

470-806 MHz
(a) Television Broadcasting
except 678-686 MHz [ed: which is for Mobile TV Services]
Tranmission standard: PAL-I (analogue format) and
National Standard GB20600-2006 (digital format)
8 MHz channel spacing

Wikipedia: CCIR System I implies they're using the except same channels as UK TVs do, but only the UHF ones (starting at channel 21 = 470MHz). wikipedia:List of television stations in Hong Kong insinuates the same.

Is there a switch to change modulation frequency on the back? Or is there only the one switch that changes between PAL60 and PAL-I ?

There was an old thread on the forum here - https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=5358 - but its links and pictures have bitrotted, so it's not very useful anymore.

So ... I guess try telling your TV "system i" and look at channels 21-62? As far as I can tell, the RF switch shouldn't be be particularly sensitive to modulation frequency. If you can't get it to work, you could try connecting the RF output via a DC blocker to your TV without the switch.

Thanks I'll give it a try, but I've already tried scanning all VHF/UHF frequencies through the VCR, while the Famicom was on. Didn't find anything. I tried scanning with both PAL option the VCR had (Western Europe and UK/Hong Kong). Actually it did pick up some TV signal on some channels, but it wasn't the Famicom game for sure.

I did find something interesting while opening my units, I'll show this in a separate thread.

Thanks for your help

Well, "DC blocker" means "capacitor", so if you have the relevant parts, you could just connect
Famicom RF outside - TV RF outside
Famicom RF inside - capacitor - TV RF inside

"capacitor" can be almost any size.

Tyree_Cooper wrote:What the...?
Why did Nintendo release an RF-only console in 1991? Great idea, especially 2 years after the NES was released in Hong Kong, it's like going back to the past for the worse

Because the NES was a total failure (AFAIK its sales was even worse than the SMS) here and Nintendo probably pretended it never happened. Not being able to use the FDS (directly) made it worse too.

That said, most people just used the original Japanese Famicom, either modded to emit PAL RF signal (from what I've heard it's poorly modded, with slower PAL timing and could eventually harm both the console and the TV set in the long run) or for serious gamers, just modded them to have AV output and used either an NTSC monitor (very common BITD because of the popularity of Apple ][ _clones) or TV sets that worked with both PAL and NTSC AV signals (starting to get common in early 90's mostly because of LD players).

So, Nintendo's intention in releasing a local version of Famicom was understandable, but not having AV output made it just another piece of obscure junk.

I think they later also released a local version of the AV Famicom, but while better received, it was in the late years of the console and wasn't that popular either.

I understand the Famicom was RF only, so they released whatever they had and tried to make it fully compatible with PAL and 50Hz. It's just frustrating to think that someone thought it was OK to release RF only hardware two-three years after the same territory had a nice RF+AV console from the same company. Reminds me of the NES-101.

I'm not aware of an official AV Famicom for Hong Kong.

Is there a problem using the FDS with the Japanese or Hong Kong Famicom? I thought it worked fine, that's why the FDS was released as-is in Hong Kong.

Edit: To be fair and from my experience looking at serial numbers on HK Famicom and NES units, I'm not sure the NES did so bad, in terms of quantities produced. It has at least 2 hardware revisions too. Is there any source for all those claims that the HK NES was a total failure? If so, I wonder why they insisted so much and came back two-three years later with the Famicom and the FDS (but no games this time ). In 1990, the local market was already flooded with Japanese Famicoms, FDS, carts and floppies, all over the place, not to mention game copiers.

Tyree_Cooper wrote: I'm not aware of an official AV Famicom for Hong Kong.

I'm not sure about this one, but my cousin got an official local version of Famicom VERY late in its life, so I thought it was the AV revision(maybe it's just the RF version), and I gave him my collection of Famicom carts(which was a very small collection as most people here just played cart games on disks with copiers FDS games).

Is there a problem using the FDS with the Japanese or Hong Kong Famicom? I thought it worked fine, that's why the FDS was released as-is in Hong Kong.

Don't know about this one, as my cousin never hooked it up to one, but I assume it does work.

Edit: To be fair and from my experience looking at serial numbers on HK Famicom and NES units, I'm not sure the NES did so bad, in terms of quantities produced. It has at least 2 hardware revisions too. Is there any source for all those claims that the HK NES was a total failure? If so, I wonder why they insisted so much and came back two-three years later with the Famicom and the FDS (but no games this time ). In 1990, the local market was already flooded with Japanese Famicoms, FDS, carts and floppies, all over the place, not to mention game copiers.

The Famicom was massively popular, just not the NES. The localised NES was released relatively late here, when most people already owned the Famicom. The NES was ugly, bulky, couldn't play Japanese carts (directly), could not use the FDS (directly), could not use game copiers directly and did not support expansion audio from carts, and, it's PAL (right...). And (I thought) its retail price was even higher than a modded Famicom. It's something no one wanted and no one asked for.
There was a strange thing here that because of its very free market people could import stuff cheaply from all over the world, and that even the broadcast system was in PAL there wasn't much problem to playing computer/console systems in NTSC (in fact NTSC systems were preferred because of the 60Hz speed and the Japanese games).

Yeah, what I meant is based on official releases, since the NES was released first (~1986/7) and the Famicom later (~1990). I'm sure by 1987 many people had a Japanese Famicom already, and by 1990 everybody and their dog did , so yeah Nintendo in Hong Kong pretty much messed everything up, but thanks to Japanese imports was number one anyway .

It's like they tried hard to fail, but grey/parallel imports actually saved them. Had they only relied on the HK NES and HK Famicom to steal people's hearts and the local market, like you said, they would have remained "pieces of obscure junk" only collectors would be interested in, many years later. Let's not even mention the HK FDS, whose release defies the laws of physics. Came into the scene around 1991, and only a few months later Nintendo pulled the plug on the FDS altogether.

Some people wonder if the HK FDS was one of the reasons why Nintendo stopped the FDS. I don't think so, since the market was flooded with pirate disks much earlier.