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).
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??
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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).
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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.
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
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 !
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.
MasonSushi wrote:
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.
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.
Bregalad wrote:
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.
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.
besides the external audio mod on the nes2,i wonder if it is also possible to do a stereo mod on the nes2 toploader.
johannesmutlu wrote:
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.
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).
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.
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!
Anyone know how to get this to work using an AV famicom and the powerpak? I already added the wire on the powerpak and it works great for my US top loader.
I have a 72 pin to 60 pin converter and not sure what to wire up to get this to work so the powerpak has expansion audio when using my AV famicom. The instructions for the 60->72 pin do not work obviously
.
Well I was going to ask the same thing.
I have a NES->Fami converter that I got from V666, and what happens with the powerpak is really weird. When I use a game or NSF which have external audio, the external audio works, but all the 2A03 channels are silenced ! Or at least they're so quiet it's hardly audible anymore. It's really strange.
Assuming an original famicom and not the AV (where I don't know), the powerpak is probably biasing the 2A03 audio output too far from normal.
If you look at the audio portion of the schematic (
http://nesdev.com/Ntd_8bit.jpg, top right corner), the 100kΩ resistor self-biases the inverter to be an amplifier. If the powerpak pulls the voltage too high or low, it'll get quiet. If this is what's wrong, I think the fix should be putting a large capacitor in series with the PowerPak's "audio from 2a03" pin.
lidnariq wrote:
Assuming an original famicom and not the AV (where I don't know), the powerpak is probably biasing the 2A03 audio output too far from normal.
If you look at the audio portion of the schematic (
http://nesdev.com/Ntd_8bit.jpg, top right corner), the 100kΩ resistor self-biases the inverter to be an amplifier. If the powerpak pulls the voltage too high or low, it'll get quiet. If this is what's wrong, I think the fix should be putting a large capacitor in series with the PowerPak's "audio from 2a03" pin.
By saying "2a03" pin do you mean cartridge pin 45?
Bregalad wrote:
Well I was going to ask the same thing.
I have a NES->Fami converter that I got from V666, and what happens with the powerpak is really weird. When I use a game or NSF which have external audio, the external audio works, but all the 2A03 channels are silenced ! Or at least they're so quiet it's hardly audible anymore. It's really strange.
Did you do anything to the converter to get it to work with the powerpak to get expansion audio to begin with? I did the bridge on the powerpak in the first post of this thread and that's all and don't recall getting any sort of expansion audio.
Drakon wrote:
By saying "2a03" pin do you mean cartridge pin 45?
If you bothered to look at the schematic, you'd see that pin 45 runs back through a 100K ohm resistor to the 2A03.....so yes.
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Did you do anything to the converter to get it to work with the powerpak to get expansion audio to begin with? I did the bridge on the powerpak in the first post of this thread and that's all and don't recall getting any sort of expansion audio.
No, I simply did the bridge too. I'm not sure if the audio comes from the original audio pin or from the unused pin on which I soldered the bridge, but I'd bet the former, because it was apparently the "standard" expansion pin to bring audio from the NES, as used in Nintendo's MMC5 carts.
Alright, well hopefully that is one less thing for me to do as well. Not sure exactly what would be considered 'large' for the capacitor for this job though, the largest I have on hand is a 470uF.
Pasky wrote:
largest I have on hand is a 470uF.
Uh, I think you'll want at least 40µF? But you won't go wrong using a larger one. (The capacitor is a high-pass filter, and the larger the capacitance, the better lower frequencies are passed). If using the 470µF isn't too onerous (cost, size), I'd use it.
I may give this a try soon then, I need to double check whether I'm even getting expansion audio at all with my av famicom with the powerpak first.
Ya, I'm not getting expansion audio, I can hear the regular 2A03 audio just fine. Any ideas how to enable it using a 72->60 pin converter with the av famicom?
I wrote a message to say that such a huge capacitor was probably not going to work, but apparently there was some problem that prevented it to show up.
So I'll say it : Such large capactitors are NOT made for this kind of applications. They have huge parasitic resistors/capacitors/inductors in addition to the large capacitor you'd expect.
Don't use those polarised caps.
Also I think a resistor will work, but you'll have to try. As for me I'll have to cut a trace and replace it by a resistor.
My guess is that YOUR converter has the sound pin open while MY converter has it short with the famicom sound out pin. So I get expantion sound only, and you get 2A03 only. This is just a guess but I think it sums things up.
In both cases adding a resistor will make it work BUT the value of the resistor will tell how much loud the external sound is in regard to 2A03. Only trial and error can determine which value of resistor, really.
Ya, I'm gonna grab a pot and unbridge pins 45-46 on my converter.
Ok fixed and got expansion audio with my av famicom with the top loader now. Thank's to rane's advice in #nesdev. Cut the bridge between 45-46 on the converter famicom side and wired in a 10K pot on pin 45,46 on the converter and 51 on the 72 side. Works great now.
Is there any harm in bridging the two pins on the Powerpak if using a front loader NES? I've got both top and front and would like to get expansion audio from both.
Thanks
Of course not. Both pins are not even connected inside your NES (both leads to expansion port only).
Thanks for posting; works great!
As a side note, even though the Everdrive N8 supports expansion audio, you still need to bridge pins 51 and 54 on the flash cart for it to work on the toploader. Sounds great though!
I did this mod on a toploader (even though the pictures in the first post are very very tiny) with NESRGB installed, worked great. There's not much room to solder in the PowerPak unless you want to make room in the plastic rim that passes right over.
Joining 1k2 from NESRGB audio output "O" and 1k2 from cartridge slot pin 51 (after PowerPak was jumpered from 54 to 51) resulted in a balanced audio output from all audio sources.
What if you have channels separated with the "from cpu pins through capacitor" type of mod - where do you add the audio expansion, to one or both channels? If added to both and balanced evenly you'd get a center channel.
I just got a top loader and tried this to see if i can get my gimmick board to work
Using the inl board i bridged 51 and 54 and used a resistor for the top loader. It worked but i had only a 1k resistor and altho i get sound, its kinda low. I also have the AV mod and the resistor and wire are sharing the same spot. Did i solder kinda messy or do i just need a different, smaller resistor?
I ended up using a smaller resistor, and it sounds more leveled. But im also noticing the overall volume of the top loader is lower than the front loader. At least I think it is.
After following this thread, a friend and I are both stumped with the same problem on two different NES-101 top loaders...
While we can successfully source the expansion audio from pin 51, we are noticing that there appears to be two different audio channels mixing on the same output. The expanded music and sound effects both come in off of pin 51, but by default the music is leveled higher than the sounds effects which drowns them out. Switching to a 1k potentiometer offers interesting results where full turns to left or right will switch the volume priority to music or effects, but never really equalizes them.
The question we have is has anyone found a way to equalize expanded music and sfx off of a NES-101 top loader or even split them out to two discrete channels ?
We do not experience the same problem when enabling expansion audio on the original NES toaster so we do have a valid source to compare audio output against in addition to testing on original Famicom hardware.
Thank you in advance.
Can someone post better pictures of a toploader mod?
Are the NES-101 pins marked on this picture the ones to pair with a resistor/a potentiometer?
I have a (Honeybee apparently?) converter that came without a shell. Which are the pins I should connect?
Front
Back
Double checking before doing something wrong.
The information you should need to determine the answer should be
on the wiki
Sutepuru wrote:
Are the NES-101 pins marked on this picture the ones to pair with a resistor/a potentiometer?
No, neither of those are correct.
The top one should be the same one as the audio out. I can see in your pic that there is something already connected to audio out (the rightmost pin of the set of 3, 2 rows above your top red circle). You should have one end of the resistor or the potentiometer output connect to this pin/wire.
The other pin is immediately to the left of the lower red circle. It's the 3rd pin in from the gap. The other end of the resistor goes here or to the input of your potentiometer.
I just did this yesterday with a 2k potentiometer and it worked for me. I took the cart pin to pot in, then pot out to the same wire as audio out, and connected with 1 more wire that to my white RCA jack for mono output. So I have this weird 3 way connection of audio out, pot out, and rca white, but it works.
Hope this helps you! Good luck!
Bregalad wrote:
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).
I always find this line confusing, should it not say: "That's why I have to make the volume louder to compensate for that (as opposed to, for example, the SNES or
FRONTLOADER NES) ???
I´m trying to do this mod on my toploader with a NESRGB board but I keep running on that the resistor value should be 47k and not 1.2k, I´m very confused.
Has anyone with a Toploader NES with the NESRGB mod have tried with the 47k? I read on other places that it should be the correct value for balanced levels...
If you want to do the expansion audio mod on your Top Loader NES modded with NESRGB using an Everdrive N8, you should:
1) Wire and solder Pin 51 to a 47K resistor to the audio mixing hole on the NESRGB. The legs of the resistor should be short to avoid external noise.
2) Bridge Pin 54 to Pin 51 on your Everdrive N8.
3) Make sure you have downloaded the latest Mappers for the Everdrive N8 Expanded Audio supported games (024.RBF for VRC6, 069.RBF for Sunsoft 5B Audio and 085.RBF for Konami VRC7) and that they are on the correct folder EDFC/MAPS in the SD card that goes into your Everdrive N8.
4) In the Everdrive N8 menu options select Audio Mix Vol as "HI".
Tip: By design the expansion audio volume varied from game to game since they were mixed inside the cartridge and not the console, so there is no fixed parameter on the console for the volume levels for expanded audio games. The resistor value you put on your console (47K in this case) might be a little low or high depending on the rom you load. In order to "fix" this, the best thing is to get a 100K potentiometer (with a switch) and put it instead of where the 47K resistor would go. Then mount it to the chassis of your console (yes, you need to drill a hole on it) and this way you can have a knob to turn to select your desired expanded audio volume level on games that support it. I recommend getting a potentiometer with a switch so you can add an off/on switch too, and this way you can turn it off to avoid any extra noise when playing roms that don´t use the expanded audio.
UPDATE: The potentiometer did not work correctly on the Top Loader with the NESRGB mod. I tried a normal one and in both cases, when being close to the beginning of the dial (meaning at 100K) a loud buzzing sound would appear. I got rid of it by installing an aditional 10K resistor on the mixing hole. Now it seems to be working ok.
Isn't the pot idea kind of dangerous? I mean, I'm not a hardware guy so I'm not sure if I'm talking nonsense, but something that can be adjusted to a value of near-zero resistance doesn't seem to be a nice alternative to a resistor. Maybe a just-in-case 25000 Ohm (or higher) resistor in series with one of the pot's legs would be good for protection?