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I blew his spot up aggressively on one of his tweets, that got his attention pretty quick to the chagrin if some of his followers
Voultar MIA?
- Thread starter ggallegos1
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Did you request the audio wiring explicitly as part of the Service? The audio problems and fixes weren't widely known or requested until relatively recently. It wasn't typically part of an RGB mod.
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Since Voultar comes across as an expert he should know. His installation wasn't cheap either. Besides that he never even responded to me both on twitter and in email.Since Voultar likes to come across as mr professionalism and call out others on not answering shit in a timely matter I find it ironic.
Not sure what to do to remedy this. I posted on shmups and didn't get any concrete ways to wire it up.
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You sentence by sentence sound like you’re flapping your sperg ass wings off. Why dont you calm down and fix the shit yourself, man child?
Also no defense for voultar here, fuck that fag too.
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Settle down beavis
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Honestly, i think if i wanted Voultar’s attention i would wait until he did one of his live modding vids and just shit all over his youtube chat. Probably wouldn’t work, but i would give it a shot, especially if you could round up multiple people that he owes work to and about 5 of you could all post in the chat asking when the hell he is going to communicate with you about your orders.
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This reminds me of a modder on Atari Age. Guy does great mods for the Colecovision but he's such a hassle that I won't use him again or recommend him without warning people.
If he would say he'll have it for about 2 months that would fine. Instead, one week after he receives it, he'll tell you he's finished and will ship it tomorrow. After a couple weeks, he'll say he forgot to do it and will ship tomorrow. A couple weeks later he'll say it was forgotten in his wife's car. A couple weeks later it arrives. He has used the same scenario many times to people who find my comment and contacted me. He hasn't screwed anyone but would I be surprised he did, no.
If he would say he'll have it for about 2 months that would fine. Instead, one week after he receives it, he'll tell you he's finished and will ship it tomorrow. After a couple weeks, he'll say he forgot to do it and will ship tomorrow. A couple weeks later he'll say it was forgotten in his wife's car. A couple weeks later it arrives. He has used the same scenario many times to people who find my comment and contacted me. He hasn't screwed anyone but would I be surprised he did, no.
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Here's a link to the mod. I followed an earlier forum post for mine that I believe was less involved than this:
AV Famicom HVC-101 - Audio Balance Restoration Mod
This is a guest post from fluxcore that details how to improve audio from your NES/Famicom and make them sound closer to the proper audio the original Famicom outputs... Obtaining decent audio output from the Famicom and NES systems has always been an issue - the original, 'reference' console,
www.retrorgb.com
Honestly, your argument here is that he should have assumed you would want the mod. I don't think it's a strong argument. Many don't want/use expansion audio, and the resistor values are different depending on if you're using original carts or flash carts. And as you can see from the link, it's not a trivial amount of work.
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From what I see in that fat bob article that is a balance mod. A little bit more involved then simply making sure expansion audio just works, even if misbalanced. I might get that done sometime.
On shmups what I got suggested was to bypass the nesrgb audio and wire it the nintendo multi out or wire. The other option is soldering from the expansion pin on the cartridge slot to the nesrgb where expansion audio is meant to be mixed.
On shmups what I got suggested was to bypass the nesrgb audio and wire it the nintendo multi out or wire. The other option is soldering from the expansion pin on the cartridge slot to the nesrgb where expansion audio is meant to be mixed.
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Wait, what? The AV Famicom has expansion audio from the multi out from the factory. The purpose of the mod is to fix the balance. Are you saying Voultar hooked up NESRGB audio on yours without wiring for expansion audio? Have you tested it?
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This. Learning how to mod and fix your own shit can come in quite handy. Start with the little things and level up from there. A lot of this stuff is much easier to do than what people think. Youtube superstars make you feel like they're superhumans or some shit. Remember, it's a business. It's in their interests to make it sound overcomplicated so you feel discouraged and just send them the cash for them to do it for you.
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Also they make people like me feel bad just because our modding is functional but not pretty inside.
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Yes.
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The first consoles I modded, mind you this was like 20+ years ago, were pretty ugly inside. But they worked for years and I passed them on eventually. The friends who kept them also reported back intermittently things like that "that Saturn still freaking works."
I wish that youtube tutorials for soldering could be filtered by some engineers or something. I have watched a lot of techniques only to find that like 1 of them in the video is acceptable, and the person is using a dirty iron the whole time.
A short time with the PACE instructional soldering videos and some practice kits from amazon, you can learn to do pretty good work. The hardest part of soldering is patience. Knowing that you do need to trim that 3mm exposed lead to 1.5 or 2.0mm before soldering it, and taking the time to do so.
There is no way I could charge what I need to charge to support myself doing console mods, so I don't. The only way I would even consider doing it is the model of sell what I have in hand, and perhaps offer "core exchange" like car parts stores did back in the day. For people not glued to their specific childhood NES serial number, that could potentially work. I just don't like working on stuff that's irreplaceable to others, it's not as bad if I accidentally my own PCB (which I definitely, definitely have).
I learned to do my own rework entirely when a guy I worked with offered to desolder a DIP PROM for me. He torched probably 15 of the 40 pads and I spent an afternoon repairing that poor fucking MVS cart. I bought a good vacuum desoldering iron and never looked back after that.
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@ChuChu Flamingo I found the old guide from Tim Worthington I used to fix mine. Obviously follow the circuit diagram for the AV Famicom. I didn't include a switch for mine -- mine is just wired for original carts.
I can open up mine and take some photos if you're going to do it and it's still unclear.
I can open up mine and take some photos if you're going to do it and it's still unclear.
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The real problem in my opinion is how people new to soldering don't start with the right tools, of course you're going to have a shit time soldering stuff if you bought a walmart 40 watt 'portable' iron and solder and that's it. Much like woodworking you need to know when to STOP and not insist on something if you don't have the right tools. For example desoldering any through-hole components with more than two legs is a NO FUCKING GO for me because I know I'm just going to rip a pad off without better equipment, however I can solder SMD and through-hole just fine because that's what my equipment is suited to.
Aside from this glaring beginner's trap, really the other big issue is not having a proper mental model of how solder interacts with metal, and how surprisingly difficult it is for two pieces of metal in contact to actually transfer heat. Also how oxidization is the #1 enemy of actually managing to make the solder "stick" to where its supposed to. Good soldering has such a strong mechanical strength that usually is the wires/legs that give first if you pull on it strongly (remember Drakon? he probably did not understand this or his soldering/wire quality was craptastic).
I swear I haven't seen a video as good as this old ass archived instructional on how soldering actually works. 4:10 to 8:30 is gold.
Aside from this glaring beginner's trap, really the other big issue is not having a proper mental model of how solder interacts with metal, and how surprisingly difficult it is for two pieces of metal in contact to actually transfer heat. Also how oxidization is the #1 enemy of actually managing to make the solder "stick" to where its supposed to. Good soldering has such a strong mechanical strength that usually is the wires/legs that give first if you pull on it strongly (remember Drakon? he probably did not understand this or his soldering/wire quality was craptastic).
I swear I haven't seen a video as good as this old ass archived instructional on how soldering actually works. 4:10 to 8:30 is gold.
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Good points. There's a reason I mention the PACE videos, they quickly and practically cover things like oxidizaton, Flux chemistry, thermal transfer and mass, etc. This 1 video did more for my soldering than anything else:
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Come for the music and classroom film projector vibes. Stay for the soldering.
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@ChuChu Flamingo
I had my AV Famicom open to do the Zapper mod, so I took some photos of my expansion audio wiring in case you're still interested in doing it yourself.
drive.google.com
drive.google.com
That's a 50k resistor between cart pin 46 and the NESRGB audio mixer.
There's also a 10u cap on cart pin 45. Can't remember what it does.
The tracks to cart pins 45 and 46 were also cut.
I had my AV Famicom open to do the Zapper mod, so I took some photos of my expansion audio wiring in case you're still interested in doing it yourself.
20230212_151012.jpg
drive.google.com
20230212_150959.jpg
drive.google.com
That's a 50k resistor between cart pin 46 and the NESRGB audio mixer.
There's also a 10u cap on cart pin 45. Can't remember what it does.
The tracks to cart pins 45 and 46 were also cut.