Wavy Lines for NES?

Miscellaneous
1

Ok so this is totally off-topic (hence why I put it in the off-topic section :), but since many of us are hardware freaks, given our MidiBox projections, I figured someone might have run into this before. My NES works great - it probably needs the cartridge connector to be revamped/replaced, but it still plays ok - except for one problem. Wavy lines. I’ve tried quite a few TVs, some HD, some not, but all seems to display ugly, and somewhat large, wavy lines. The picture itself isn’t distorted as much is the color simply disturbed. From what I know of arcade monitors, that sounds to me like bad caps. But I can’t find any mention of NES cap-kits which makes me wonder if that’s not the case?

Anyone have this problem? I suppose I can try to re-rail this off-topic train if I said I wanted to use it for the MIDI NES cartridge :slight_smile: But otherwise as there is no MidiBox-NES project, that’s as far as I can go :slight_smile:

Tim

2

  1. are you using the RF modulator or the RCA outs?

  2. trace the video line from the RCA to the video encoder IC (usually the first one you come to from the video out or the RF modulator) and replace the caps along that trace.  there’s generally only one or two there any how, so no big deal.

if you are using the RF modulator, you may need to open that up and fix it BUT the RF modulator (no matter how great the caps) is gonna have the poorest video quality any way so no use.

as far as knowing what caps, learn to identify them.

3

I am using the RCA outs. The RF modulator indeed makes things look terrible and, in fact, it’s more difficult for me to use that then to just use the RCA outs. Either way, thanks for confirming my suspicion!

And thanks a ton for that link! I’ve been trying to find one like that to use as a reference for my MidiBox stuff. That’s awesome!