Technical and Repair Assistance

[pinge80]

Hello All,

Recently I bought a black Sharp Twin Famicom System off of Ebay. It came with 4 games including All Night Super Mario Bros with original casing for just over $150.00. The system works great. I just got into collecting for this system and I was able to pick up a lot of 61 disk games with casings. More problem with  the system is I get the "Set Disk B" screen for any game that is dual sided  and when I flip the disk nothing happens. I figure if I wait a little maybe it will load in but still nothing happens. Can anyone help on this? Am I supposed to press some buttons or what. Could it be a problem with the belt? Also not all the games in the lot worked I kept getting Error 22 for most of them. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi, I recently bought a rwin famicom myself drom ebay..... It took a few days to figure out how to tune it in properly.... and then I got a few disks aswell... and only 4 of 7 worked.... (I sent the rest to a friend and he tested them aswell)... You better realize that many of those 20 year old disks are corrupt due to demagnetising (is that the correct word in English??).... as soon as you get a good few of your games working..... then It should read all that are working....

And it´s possible for only the B-side to be corrupt....

But I have to say its a wonderful system...... I love it... good luck

[chimyfolkbutter]

Hello All,

Recently I bought a black Sharp Twin Famicom System off of Ebay. It came with 4 games including All Night Super Mario Bros with original casing for just over $150.00. The system works great. I just got into collecting for this system and I was able to pick up a lot of 61 disk games with casings. More problem with  the system is I get the "Set Disk B" screen for any game that is dual sided  and when I flip the disk nothing happens. I figure if I wait a little maybe it will load in but still nothing happens. Can anyone help on this? Am I supposed to press some buttons or what. Could it be a problem with the belt? Also not all the games in the lot worked I kept getting Error 22 for most of them. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Your problem is not uncommon.  The magnetic information on the disks degrade over time.  If you can read the A side then that tells me that your disk system is working fine.  You mentioned that you received 61 disks.  You may have bought Game Doctor disks which are pirate disks.  These disks require a Game Doctor and are worthless if you don't have one.  ABout the only way to determine if that is the case is when you boot up the A side of the disk, you should get the Official Nintendo verbage in the beginning.  If it doesn't read then you proabably have a pirate disk or a bad disk.

[MattyD]

Further to my other post on the Famicom I just bought: I understand the Famicom doesn't have the region lock-out like the NES did, and that you can play US games. What about PAL games? I have quite a few of those, some of which would be comparatively expensive to replace with Japanese versions (River City Ransom for example). If I understand what I've read correctly then I'll be able to play them through a 72 pin adaptor, and they'll output in NTSC at 60hz - could someone please confirm one way or the other?

[NintendoKing]

Further to my other post on the Famicom I just bought: I understand the Famicom doesn't have the region lock-out like the NES did, and that you can play US games. What about PAL games? I have quite a few of those, some of which would be comparatively expensive to replace with Japanese versions (River City Ransom for example). If I understand what I've read correctly then I'll be able to play them through a 72 pin adaptor, and they'll output in NTSC at 60hz - could someone please confirm one way or the other?

Correct, it would work; I know because I have tried.

[UglyJoe]

Further to my other post on the Famicom I just bought: I understand the Famicom doesn't have the region lock-out like the NES did, and that you can play US games. What about PAL games? I have quite a few of those, some of which would be comparatively expensive to replace with Japanese versions (River City Ransom for example). If I understand what I've read correctly then I'll be able to play them through a 72 pin adaptor, and they'll output in NTSC at 60hz - could someone please confirm one way or the other?

I figured it wouldn't work, but if others say otherwise, who knows.  If it does work, the PAL games will run faster than normal since you're running at a faster rate than intended.

[fflegend05]

Thanks for the help with the posts I made earlier. After running through the disks I received with my Twin Famicom Unit I noticed that there were some unofficial disks.  Also I read that when you turn on the disk unit without a disk in it you are supposed to get a screen with Mario and Luigi on it letting you know to put in a disk. Mine unit doesn't do this I get a disk error automatically. Could there be something wrong with the drive? Also I tried an official disk and I had the same problem the system won't load side B. Any ideas?

[133MHz]

Maybe one of the disk sensors is stuck on, so it detects a disk when it's not there, also preventing it from detecting the side change.

[fflegend05]

Thanks for that. Any idea how I might be able to fix that. I just booted up my system up and I get Error 22 everytime I do this with no disk in there. Any idea how I might be able to fix that?

[MattyD]

I figured it wouldn't work, but if others say otherwise, who knows.  If it does work, the PAL games will run faster than normal since you're running at a faster rate than intended.

Actually they'll run at the intended speed, since games developers / publishers didn't care enough about the PAL gamers to optimise their games for 50hz in those days. They'd just let the machines run them in 50hz instead, meaning PAL games ran nearly 20% slower than they were suppposed to The only NES games I can think of that was speed corrected was Super Mario Bros and even that was a hack job.

[MattyD]

Me again... My Famicom arrived today and although it seems in good condition I'm not sure it works since it turns out my TV won't be able to accept the signal (only goes up to 80 channels). Does anyone have any ideas of how to test the machine actually works *without* a TV before I begin possibly wasting my time and money on performing the AV mod? I thought about trying a multimeter on the RF output socket to test for output current but I'm not even sure what I should set the meter to look for or what I should expect from a working system.

[133MHz]

Just tap temporarily on the point used on the AV mod for video output with no circuit at all, you should get a dark picture. That should be enough to prove the system is working.

[Paul-FC]

hey i was playing my av mod famicom and i noticed some colors where missing

heres some pics

Av Mod Famicom


NES


WTF can any one tell me how to fix this?

[FamicomFreak]

MARIO 8 YEAHHHH!!! Anyways, wait for 133mhz to see this thread maybe he has an idea about how to fix it.

[NintendoKing]

hey i was playing my av mod famicom and i noticed some colors where missing

heres some pics

Av Mod Famicom


NES


WTF can any one tell me how to fix this?

Whoa, thats awful; it appears that the conversion was done wrong. It could be simply bad soldering, or even worse a bad famicom.

[133MHz]

Whoa that's strange. Seems like the PPU isn't rendering some of the colors. Try giving the cart connector a good cleaning even if it seems unrelated. Otherwise I'd bet that the PPU is shot.