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NESHD - a 1080p HDMI mod kit!


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Here's update #7 from Kevtris:
This time I totally redo the board layout, and I took a time lapse video of me doing this. You can watch the board "grow" from nothing to completion!

CopyNES USB was added, a 5V buck regulator on-board, and a form-factor re-do so it will properly fit the toploader.



Enjoy!
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  • 4 weeks later...

I think most of the info has been put out there and there's been plenty of game play, but i'm sure more will pop up even if not from Kevin.

I can't say on release date, but i'm hoping in the next month or two he'll have a finished product and be able to start getting them fabbed and assembled, but that process may take time too.

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  • 1 month later...

Latest update from Kevtris:

 

Woot, I finally sent the stuff off so the HiDefNES boards are in production! I have also posted the final "pre production" update. I don't know how long it will be until I get boards in hand but I will probably post another update video when that happens.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Kevin's latest update:

Ooooh yeah. PCBs have arrived!

 

 

It won't be long now!

 

////////////////////////

 

I have already had an email asking if this means it's time to ship their console to me!?!? LOL NO!

I know you all are very excited to get this done, but my request of 'please don't email us and bug us about this until concrete plans are put out there' is still in effect, sorry...

Kevin is close on his end, but he will only have 100 kits and we haven't decided how to sell them just yet. Not to mention they aren't really done yet and I don't have any in my possession yet. Nor do I want a bunch consoles to show up at my house waiting to be modded...

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Ok the first 6 Hi-Def NES modded US top loaders are up for auction on ebay, just search nes hdmi.
They were a bit late as I had a hell of a time uploading them because ebay wouldn't let me upload them and they weren't specific enough about why so I had to try several times. Turns out you can use the word 'mod' in the title, but if you say kit they think it has bundled accessories and if you are listing in the consoles category and don't have the bundled accs option listed then it won't upload. I was doing this from misterlister or whatever that shitty prog is named now. Then they marked them as duplicates even though I used different pics for top and bottom shots on each auction and some different txt in description. I had to add the 3 numbers of the serial number to the title to get them to release all the auctions as not dupes, FK!!!

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Kevin's post from the nesdev thread:

Well, Jason (gametech) came over tonight and we did a bunch of everdrive testing. Turns out his everdrive works fine on my HDMI modified toploader. We ran SMB3, Zelda, Double Dragon, Faxanadu, SMB, SMB2, and a bunch of other games and all of them seem to work fine. Overall I tested NROM, UNROM, MMC1, and MMC3 games.

The only minor issue I had was reset. sometimes I had to mash reset a few times before the menu would come back up. Once (out of 15-20 games run) I had to cycle the power.

This confirms what I said earlier about the ED working back in november. It seemed to work then and still seems to work now.

Turns out his ED is one of the very first made, and as such it has really old firmware on it. Rev 3 firmware.


I also have a "modern" ED that uses the latest firmware. This ED does NOT work on the Hidef nes. The menu sometimes comes up and the graphics are always corrupt- looks like uninitialized VRAM. You can tell the menu is there, but you can't start a game, it just resets. Sometimes it's showing an error screen I think, but you can't read it. I did not get this version to run a game.

So I took the rev 3 firmware off Jason's ED and put it on the "modern" ED, and guess what it worked just as well as his ED did! So whatever change happened between rev 3 and 4 of the ED firmware seems to be the reason. I put the latest version of firmware on Jason's ED and it failed in the same way the "modern" ED failed.

These are good data points on tracking down the problem I think.

I was thinking of making a video showing this happening.

Regarding the HDMI connector fit, I test fitted my toploader with the cable I have here and it worked OK so I thought it was going to be fine. The connector is recessed as far as it is so I could use the same board on the NES and the nt both. I tested so I thought it was OK, but turns out it isn't. Various cables seem to have different "tongue" lengths. I modified one by cutting some of the plastic off with an xacto knife and it only took me about a minute to do this. I was surprised how easy it was actually.

This board would work fine on a front loader I think. the plastic is much thinner on the back so the fit should not be an issue there.

On the next run I will move the connector out on a little PCB "flag" to fix this issue.

Like any other brand new high complexity product, there's going to be some things to fix. There's literally hundreds or even thousands of little things that could go wrong, so it's not unlikely one or two of these things will slip through. I tried to do extremely thorough testing here. This included 20 sets of CPU/PPU's, 4 different NES main boards (front loaders and top loaders), 12 or 13 Hidef NES proto boards I hand stuffed and reflowed, and 10 different monitors. There is also the HDMI Analyzer that I paid quite a lot of money for just specifically so I could debug the HDMI link on this project. Overall I am in fairly deep on this project financially so I hope it will eventually pay off, and that I will make a bit more than minimum wage for the hours I put in and the cash I spent for tools and prototypes. Overall 5 or 6 people were helping me test/debug it (it wasn't just 2 people as someone claimed).

Not a whine or anything, just stating what the facts are. Hope this clears up some of the loose ends people have about the project. I hope to be able to supply as many boards as the modding community can use. There's not going to be any limit. So long as people buy them I will sell them, barring any parts availability issues.

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