AES PAL to NTSC Conversion

TheMagicianLord

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Recently picked up an AES system I was told was a US version. Asked the seller if he was sure it put out an NTSC signal and he said yes. I hooked it up to my small CRT via composite and I get a B&W picture. Upon examining the system board (revision 1 board), I noticed the CXA1145P chip has pin 7 lifted and grounded to the neighboring clock crystal. From my understanding, this pin should be getting 5V for an NTSC signal. Unfortunately, this is about as much as I understand so far.

From my Google searches, some people have mentioned a PAL jumper, but I think this is something only present on newer board revisions. I can't find any such thing on this one.

So I'm wondering what my options are here. If it's relatively simple, say applying 5V to pin 7, to get an NTSC signal, then I may be comfortable with that. If there's much more to it, such as replacing oscillators, etc., then I'll probably try to find someone to send it to.

Any advice is appreciated.
 

DaisyAge

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Screenshot 2020-11-10 145841.png

Yep, just give it 5v from the board or possibly just put the pin back where it's supposed to go. provided that it's getting 5v from that point.
 
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DaisyAge

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Yeah either unsolder or cut that piece of wire going to the crystal and get 5v to pin 7 for NTSC. Either use the original pin hole or just solder a wire from that leg to any 5v source nearby
 

TheMagicianLord

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Yeah either unsolder or cut that piece of wire going to the crystal and get 5v to pin 7 for NTSC. Either use the original pin hole or just solder a wire from that leg to any 5v source nearby

How about the oscillator? I found the following at neogeodev.org: "A second quartz oscillator is used in the AES for generating the color burst needed by composite video, for the video encoders. The value changes depending on the region of the system, 4.43361875Mhz for PAL systems and 3.579545Mhz for NTSC systems."
 

DaisyAge

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Looks like you might need a new crystal. But before you do that, try just giving doing the above. At worst, the colors are a bit off, at best, you can't tell lol. If putting in a new crystal is too much for you let me know, I repair old consoles all the time and popping in a crystal would be no problem.
 

TheMagicianLord

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Looks like you might need a new crystal. But before you do that, try just giving doing the above. At worst, the colors are a bit off, at best, you can't tell lol. If putting in a new crystal is too much for you let me know, I repair old consoles all the time and popping in a crystal would be no problem.

Alright, thanks. Just wanted to make sure I didn't blow anything up. I'll try 5V on pin7 and see what happens.
 

Atro

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I just had to cut the wire on mine. Never had any issue.
 

neogeostyle90

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About this signal conversion, Units Pal AES work at 50HZ and units NTSC AES work at 60HZ, correct?? Any exceptions??
 

TheMagicianLord

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Well, I finally got around to doing the conversion. I have some soldering experience, but it's been a while and I don't have the best tools. I was mostly worried about the desoldering since I only have solder wick and I've always fumbled with it. It did end up being a little bit of an issue, but long story short, I got the conversion done and it works beautifully.

I was worried my work would look amateurish and make the board look bad, but when I pulled the board from the housing, I noticed some three-fisted llama had worked on the board before. There was some terrible looking solder work, and I couldn't even figure out why as it didn't seem like any mods were done. Maybe connector replacements? Or maybe someone undid something that was previously done? Who knows. In any case, my work looks great compared to that Launchpad McQuack job.

I compared the picture and game play to my other Neo Geo AES, which is a later unit that uses 9V power. Both units look superb. Did not see any flaws in the picture/gameplay.

The dishes are done, man!
 
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