UK power / TV / general help!

[Col]

Hi all,

I've been trying to do a bit of digging around here (and other places today) and I'm getting quite confused, so I though I would post a quick query...

I recently went on holiday to Japan and decided to pick up a famicom whilst I was over there.  Having originally purchased it with the intention as a display item / cool piece of history (I've got my NES that still works fine) I of course got carried away, bought a couple of other games a few days later and have now decided it would be cool to see if I could get it working (macross in particular).  But, as seems to be the case with many, there are a lot of stumbling blocks!  If I can't get it working then I'll look into a pin converter for the NES to try and play the games instead, although these seem expensive / require doing yourself with an old game.  DIY isn't my strong point!

So, the information on what I've got / done:

So firstly, I've not plugged in the UK NES ac plug with the Famicom, as reading around this is clearly a no no.

The Famicom itself has HVC-001 on the bottom, along with a sticker with some Japanese text and 4W on it, so I think it's an original one, certainly not a famiclone.  On the back it has the RF switch, and then two switched - TV - Game and CH1 - CH2, and the AC adapter plug.

Having done some looking around I thought I'd found a plug from the games collection that should work with it, for a Sega Game Gear, model number 3084 - the details for which are as follows:

3084 - 240v 50Hz, 9V DC 850mA,  (+)------------(o------------(-), info I found online states it is a Center Negative / Plug OD 5.5mm, ID 2.1mm

I tried turning it on, noting immediately seemed to go wrong / burn / make a noise, but not sure if trying this will have done more harm than good...

I tried originally tuning it in on the old TV I have that I use for the NES and SNES, which dates back to 1996, but realised that it might also be a problem with the NTSC / PAL thing, so I tried it on my newer TV, which is a SONY KDL-32W5500, the info on the cony website seems to suggest it is OK with NTSC:

  Colour System
NTSC 3.58/4.43 (Video In)   YES
PAL                                            YES
Secam                                      YES

I'm using it with the RF lead I have for my NES (the famicom didn't come with any leads)

Anyway, essentially nothing seems to work, and without the nice red light that comes on with the NES I've no idea whether the Famicom is broken (it's possible, seeing as the original idea was for a display only item I wen for the one that cost me £25 rather than £50!), or its the stuff I'm using to try and get it working.

If anyone has any ideas it would be much appreciated.  I'm sure you get these types of queries all the time, so sorry for going over old ground!  I did have a search, but managed to get more confused than anything!

Final question, if I can't get the famicom to work, are there any problems with trying the old game route that had the pin converters in them if I have a stab at DIY (i.e. NTSC to PAL NES?)

Thanks all!

Col

[L___E___T]

I would grab a 240 > 110V converter.  Nothing else power wise would work and if you used a 240v plug from a Megadrive before that, you may have fried it...

[MarioMania]

There's your answer

http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=9179.0

[Col]

Great, thanks all for some feedback, much appreciated.

So it sounds like the power supply should work, rather than blowing the thing up, so it sounds like it's either a TV issue or the thing is dead...  Although the link posted mentions an AV famicom, rather than original Famicom, so still not entirely sure...  I'd thought I would only need a step down converter if trying to use the original power supply as well, rather than one designed for the UK voltage and giving dc output...  But I would imagine I'm wrong.

Assuming the power supply is OK, just to check, having never seen a Famicom work, I read somewhere that there is a speaker in the controller, if a game is inserted and the machine is switched on, should it make some sort of noise, or is it only for certain games this works?  Trying to decipher whether the machine is broken, or it's a TV thing!

Thanks all for the help, I appreciate this is probably covered all the time but I'm a complete novice and Google only helps so far!

[MarioMania]

a UK Mega Drive PSU is ok with the Famicom

The Famicom is NTSC so it won't work on your TV

[Col]

Great, thanks for confirming.  I found a shop locally that specialises in retro games who said I could take the console in to test there, so at least I'll find out if its in working order.  Thanks for all the help

[Rosser]

a UK Mega Drive PSU is ok with the Famicom

The Famicom is NTSC so it won't work on your TV

Quality pal tv's have PAL 60 mode so its not always the case if they don't have the TV manual check online so see if its a feature

[P]

Most PAL TVs that claim to have NTSC and PAL 60 support usually doesn't support NTSC through the RF outlet. I know some people that play Famicom on their PAL TVs, but they were just lucky to have one that works.

But did you tune around and not even got a very very bad picture without sound? If not it's very hard to tell if it's the TV or the Famicom (or both).

I'm sorry to say but the best bet for most people in Europe is to AV mod the Famicom.

[Lum]

Famicom uses somewhat different Japanese RF.
Even if a TV accepts American RF, it still may not work.

US Mega Drive PSU is alright too. But not US Game Gear (Sega changed it to center positive).