My twin famicom with every upgrade imaginable.

[famiac]

That's exactly what i did...

[CkRtech]

That's exactly what i did...

There is always Babelfish (been around a long time), but it tends to crash with Japanese.

Sorry I missed your first mention of g translate. The April Foolsness on the forum is really throwing me off.

[famiac]

Oh yeah... Definitely is annoying. But every forum does something for april fools.

[Drakon]

Sorry I stopped posting here because the april fools thing was too annoying.  I've only ever used one proxy company sutocorp.  One of my clients his wife imports things from japan all the time and she said what I pay sutocorp is what it costs with any proxy company.  Yes that website sells modification kits and the av famicom upgrade kit is the best product they have.  I've upgraded a few things on the kits to improve the video quality.  I used good translate and my limited japanese ability to figure out what's what.  Also my gf is fluent in mandarin so she helped me translate the chinese characters.

[CkRtech]

Sorry I stopped posting here because the april fools thing was too annoying.  I've only ever used one proxy company sutocorp.  One of my clients his wife imports things from japan all the time and she said what I pay sutocorp is what it costs with any proxy company.  Yes that website sells modification kits and the av famicom upgrade kit is the best product they have.  I've upgraded a few things on the kits to improve the video quality.  I used good translate and my limited japanese ability to figure out what's what.  Also my gf is fluent in mandarin so she helped me translate the chinese characters.

Excellent. Sutocorp is the same company I used, and they have been quite helpful so far - great communication.

As far as I can tell though, the main thing they offer with this AV upgrade (at least for the video part of the component) is the PCB. Aside from the PPU, it seems like most of the items resistors, capacitors, the LM1881, CXA1645, etc can all be acquired separately. I ordered the one with the audio enhancement, and I am not sure if there are any other hard to find chips (or custom chips) in the circuit. I doubt it.

I am interested to see how they put it together. That PCB makes things easier as it has all the traces, but perhaps building a custom PCB and getting it printed would ultimately save some money?

I am only working on the project for myself (and maybe a few friends if successful), but I wonder if having some PCBs available on this side of the planet would help reduce the cost of this mod?

I know you offer this mod, Drakon. Perhaps a custom PCB would help save you some time and help with supply cost?

But then ...perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

[Drakon]

They mail you the kit pcb with all the parts and you put it together yourself that's what a "kit" is.  Although I've since modified the video circuit to include an upgraded video encoder and a clock signal source that gives a better colour subcarrier signal.  If I were you I wouldn't solder on the cxa1645 chip that comes with the kit solder in a cxa2075 chip it's drop in compatible the only thing that won't work with this swap is composite video.

Reproducing the pcb and sourcing all the parts myself would be a big pain and I'm too busy to be bothered with that.  If you want to reproduce this kit you're welcome to and if you can beat their price then I'll order from you assuming it runs the same.  Hand building the pcb would take an extremely long time and wouldn't look as nice and neat.

[CkRtech]

They mail you the kit pcb with all the parts and you put it together yourself that's what a "kit" is.

Right. But aside from the PCB, I don't think they provided anything you can't get from mouser aside from the video driver and the PPU. Quite an expensive thing to import when all one really needs from them is the board.

But then I haven't received all of the components yet. Looking forward to it.

Good call on the newer CXA2075. Those seem easier to find these days than they did just a few years back.

I'll let you know if I do anything PCB-wise.

[Drakon]

Yeah if you can build an identical kit for cheaper I'll buy from you I get a lot of people buying these consoles I'm working on....*looks*....3 right now.