Arisotura's pile of stuff

Oh yeah, I said in the last post that I wanted to RGB-mod my N64.

Is it January 30th already? Time flies...

So, yeah, the RGB mod.



That's my N64's motherboard in its original state. It's a later revision European console, so it's got the DENC-NUS video encoder IC. A shame it's not the early ones where you can do a RGB mod just by adding a couple wires, but on the other hand, I'm glad DENC-NUS has a wider pitch than the other possible encoder ICs. The pitch is on par with what I've worked on on 68k Mac motherboards (remind me to post about that!), and I feel comfortable working with that.

The mod I got comes with a breakout board that attaches to the encoder IC's pins (there are two, one for DENC-NUS and one for the other encoder types), and a board that generates the actual RGB signals.



The breakout board wasn't hard to install. It's a bit crooked, but it will do the job just fine.

Trouble came later...



The RGB mod fully installed and wired up.

First issue was that I had to attach an extra wire to the motherboard to derive 5V power. One good place to do that is right on the output pin of U13, the 5V regulator. Except I could not get the solder to flow and stick to the damn thing, no matter how hot I ran the soldering iron. It seems that there's a beefy 5V plane in the motherboard wicking away all the heat. In the end, I had to use hot air to get the solder to flow - and pray I wouldn't ruin the nearby capacitor. The solder job isn't pretty, but it makes a good connection, that's what matters.

I need to get a heater plate, it would help a lot in those circumstances. I had similar issues soldering to WiiU gamepad motherboards, and they're also thick multi-layer PCBs with power and ground planes. A heater plate would help a lot. And if I got a jig to hold my hot air gun, that would make a ghetto BGA rework station.

Second issue I had was getting the solder to flow into the vias for the pins connecting the mod's two boards together. Apparently it's just that small that it was finicky to get the solder to attach to the board.

After a quick test to make sure I didn't kill my console, I wired up the RGB output to the A/V port.

In the end, this mod results in pretty decent picture quality. There are minor artifacts, which I attribute to still having a full composite signal coming out of the console. In the instructions for this mod, they remove a resistor in order to get a pure composite sync signal, with no video mixed in. Of course, this suppresses composite video output, so I didn't want to do that.

More importantly, it fixes the issue I was having - NTSC ROMs having weird colors, with oversaturated reds and blues. There's no issue of PAL vs NTSC color encoding when going through RGB, so the colors come out just fine. And with Nadia's patch, the B3313 ROM outputs sound at the correct pitch, so everything is good!

As a bonus:



I love how this Summercart label has rainbow reflections. Here, the light was so strong it overwhelmed my eyes - and apparently maxed out my phone's camera sensor, resulting in this interesting effect.

Colors are just so cool and fascinating! Apparently so much, to my brain, that even numbers have colors. Letters and sounds, too. Synesthesia is an interesting take on reality.

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I've also been caught up in different other things.

On one hand, the new OpenGL renderer in melonDS. I've got to a point where my blackmagic3 branch is mostly good, and I'm letting it cool down and fixing some bugs before going and merging it.

Also taking a bit of a break from coding, I've done a lot in the last months. I guess the fact I've gotten so much energy and motivation says something about my mental health.

On the other hand, I recently heard about Hytale, a new Minecraft-esque game that was recently released. I immediately liked its vibe, so I had to give it a try.

Have to say, haven't been disappointed so far. It's an early access release, so a lot of the stuff is still WIP (literally - you encounter those cute "WIP" signs), but there's still quite some interesting stuff to see and do.



I also think the character design is cute! I quite like this game's graphical style in general.

There's still a bunch of quirks in the world generation, too. It seems that seat got placed the wrong way, so I'm not properly facing the table.

I'm excited to see where this game will go. It's also interesting to note that it has a bit of a shared development history with Vintage Story, another similar block game.

Speaking of Vintage Story, that's another game I want to try someday. It's different in that it has a strong focus on survival, in a realistic sense.

It reminds me of when I tried the Alaskan Wilderness modpack for Minecraft, back in May 2025. There is a similar survival aspect to it - in addition to the hunger mechanic, you also get thirst, temperature, seasons, and so on. It also makes the first days more difficult, in a realistic way - you can't just punch trees to craft your first tools, so you have to find sticks and flint. All in all, it was an interesting, refreshing take on Minecraft. However, it suffers from modpack syndrome: it's basically a pile of many different mods, some of which add redundant items, some of which are incompatible and cause problems (for example, No Tree Punching conflicts with another mod in a way which breaks farming, so you eventually have to disable that).

I guess Vintage Story would provide something very similar to that experience, but in a more polished, consistent fashion.

Something I also kind of want to give a try, is the modern progression in Minecraft. I guess I haven't really tried it proper, because I have a different idea of the game, from the old days. I've followed Minecraft from the early Classic days, when hanging out in creative servers and building shit was the fun. I was eventually introduced to Alpha and its early survival mechanics. It was a lot of the same, though - you had to gather resources instead of having an infinite supply, and you had to survive hostile mobs and other threats, but it was still very sandbox-y. There wasn't much actual progression, you would look for diamonds and that was it. For me, part of the fun was hanging out on private servers with friends, figuring out what we could build, or just derping around.

But over the years, a lot of stuff was added to Minecraft. Take the Nether for example, I've seen it on day one and there wasn't much at all to it, beyond collecting glowstone and maybe netherrack for a fireplace. By comparison, the modern Nether feels a lot more fleshed out, with its own biomes, inhabitants, structures, and so on. And you have an incentive to go there if you're following the progression.

It probably didn't help that a lot of the stuff came out at a time where I didn't have much interest in Minecraft, or anything really - largely due to being depressed, having to focus on more important stuff, and so on. I had little interest in gaming in general.

I guess my mental health is improving, so that's great!

I finally received the appropriate vacuum tubes for the vintage radio!

I was so excited that I went to the hackerspace the same day, to try them out. I went with a friend who was also quite interested in the radio.

Once I was there, I quickly swapped in my new tubes. I also checked the coil that is connected to the resistor that was burnt, I was concerned that it might have been damaged, but it measured fine.

(EDIT- I realized I've never brought up that resistor, so, here it is)



This is R10 on the schematic. I noticed it while replacing the capacitors. I don't know how I missed it before, because it wasn't caused by my testing, it was already burnt when I got the radio.

R10 should be 2.2 kiloohm, but this one measured in the megaohm range. I of course replaced it, but I was concerned that whatever caused it to fail could have damaged surrounding components, especially L24.

(EDIT end)

Then I turned on the radio. This time, the receiver came to life! It was a bunch of noise at first, but eventually, we received actual radio signals.



We figured out a bit more about how this radio works.

The visual indicator tube isn't very visible, because it isn't aligned properly. However, it works quite well. It indicates whether the radio is picking up a signal, and how strong that signal is. Nifty!

The Selektiv/Lokal switch seems to change the tuning mode, depending on whether you're looking for a radio station or whether you're already tuned in, it seems to change how sensitive the receiver is. I'm not exactly sure how to describe it, but that's the idea...

The AM bands use the "ferroceptor" antenna. There isn't much on those bands, but I was able to receive a foreign station... not bad, considering the hackerspace is in a basement.

The FM band uses the external antenna. We were able to receive several FM stations quite well.

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There is still room for improvement with the radio.

For example, fixing that missing button.

There's also a little issue with FM tuning. Pressing the UKW switch moves a mechanism that lets the tuning knob control the FM tuner instead of the AM tuner, but it's not completely disengaging from the AM mechanism, so it kind of tries to control both. I need to figure out a way to fix this.

The FM needle is also not very visible. I should figure out if I can improve it...

I also damaged some of the art on the front panel when I cleaned it, back in July. It's minor, but I feel bad about it...

And last but not least, we need to figure out a way to mount the indicator tube properly, so it's aligned to the window in the front panel.

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All in all, this is pretty cool. This radio is 67 years old, it was a wreck... and it's working pretty well. Just with new capacitors, and the adequate tubes. That's great!

I'm also not a professional. I have some knowledge of electronics, but this is my first time working with something like this - point-to-point wiring, vacuum tubes, ...

This leaves me wondering what happened to the tubes. It's like someone stole the EF89 tubes from this radio, and someone else tried to replace them. Maybe the ECH81 was moved to the wrong socket, which would explain why there was two of them... weird.

The GT12AY7 was recent, so it's like someone else tried to revive this radio at some point. Probably the same person who added the 3.5mm cable for audio input.

I should have paid more attention to those tubes. Since the other tubes were correct, I trusted them, but I can imagine how such a situation (having completely incompatible tubes in) could cause problems.

I will likely post more about this radio, but this is pretty good for now!

So I almost finished fixing up the tuning strings...

Put the radio back together, as it was time to take it to the hackerspace.

Today, I went there to finish what I had started. Basically, the "ferroceptor" antenna (a ferrite rod with coils, mounted on a swiveling base) is actuated by two thin steel cables, but here that antenna was completely seized. I used WD-40 and got it moving somewhat... then one of those cables snapped, because it was rusted. I needed to get my hands on thin steel cable to repair that... What you find in hardware stores is way too thick. The original cable was 0.3mm or so in diameter.

In the end, I was able to get 0.6mm steel cable for fishing lines. It's thicker than the original, but still does the job just fine. A bit finicky to install, but I got it in place.

Then, while I was at it, I figured I would give the radio a test run.

I hacked together what they call a dim-bulb tester. Basically, connecting the radio in series with an incandescent lightbulb. This way, if the radio has a short-circuit, the lightbulb takes all the energy, in a way -- and nothing blows up.

Combing through the hackerspace's mess, I found a 60W bulb, which was a good match for the radio's 68VA rating. This is important because the bulb also doubles as a visual indication: if there's a short in the radio, the bulb will glow bright, but otherwise it will glow dim. This is also why modern LED bulbs aren't appropriate for this.

For the first test, I removed the radio's tubes and lightbulbs. The idea was to test the transformer alone.

Testing something electrical is always scary for me (and even moreso when said thing is more than 60 years old). I always have some fear that things will blow up. I don't know why, but it seems deep rooted. Most of my nightmares involve something electrical blowing up or malfunctioning in some egregious way.

I plugged the radio in the dim-bulb tester and pressed one of the buttons. Nothing blew up. In fact, the bulb was dim, so it wasn't a bad start. I measured the voltages at the transformer outputs and they seemed reasonable.

So for the next test, I put back all the tubes and lightbulbs.



Again, it was going smoothly, the tubes started to glow...

So far, all seemed fine. I figured there would be issues, but there was nothing egregious. So I went and plugged the radio directly to mains.

I played with the controls, but couldn't seem to receive any radio stations. However, when I tried the audio input, I was able to make the radio play music. It was very quiet at first, but it was something. Messing with the controls eventually got it to a point where it was audible.

We were amused by this outcome. This thing had been left to rot in a basement for who knows how long, then tossed away in the street... not to mention just how old it is. And somehow, it works, to some extent.

Obviously, it's far from perfect. The sound is still quiet, even with the volume turned to the maximum. The controls behave weirdly. I can raise the volume on my laptop, but going too high causes distortion on the radio.

And there's the obvious issue -- nothing came out of the radio receiver part on any of the possible frequency bands. It's a bit of a bummer for a radio.

But atleast we know the audio amplifier part is working. To an extent.



I guess the next task will be to replace a bunch of capacitors. They say paper capacitors are unreliable, and there's a bunch of them in there. There's also a couple electrolytics, which are also likely to be bad. The other capacitors should be reliable.

Heh.

This is a bit of a different type of project for me...

A while ago, I went out to get a kebab, when I noticed this thing that was being discarded near my place:



It looked atypical enough for me to have a closer look... I had never seen vacuum tubes irl before. The thing looked like a radio, but from another age, and in poor condition. I went to grab my kebab, but thought about it...

When I returned, it was gone. I entered my building, and saw it sitting near my neighbor's door. Oh, cool, I thought.

I did have some fascination for that vintage radio. I'm not really into radio stuff, but I find ancient technology like this fascinating, and part of me wanted to see it work, see what it could do, etc... so I texted my neighbor about it.

In the end, he said he didn't have time for it, so I could have it if I wanted... he was going to throw it out, so I decided to take it.



The front of the radio. It's a Philips Ouverture 59, apparently some Austrian model? From 1958-59. The markings are in German. No idea what its story has been and how it ended up here in France. Not sure how far it was actually sold, but it does have a mains voltage selector...

Someone added an audio cable with a 3.5mm jack to it. Seems that they used it to play music. The mod connects to existing connections on the back, which are labelled "schallplatenwiedergabe" (translates to "record playback").

Obviously, this poor thing has been sitting for ages in a basement or something of that sort. It's in pretty bad shape. And dirty.



The back of the radio. It atleast appears to be complete -- the radio is missing some cosmetic elements, but all the electrical stuff is there. All the vacuum tubes are in, but I don't know if they're good. One of them was supposed to be placed behind the front plate, so you could see its glow through a small window, but it was ripped off its socket pretty roughly, and the pins were all bent, so no idea if that tube will work again.



The electrical system, seen from underneath. The wiring is an absolute mess.

Other than that, it doesn't look too bad. There's some rust, and one of the connection support things is broken, but that doesn't seem too problematic... most concerning is that there's a loose wire, and so far, I haven't been able to find where it should go.

The other unknown is whether those 60 year old components are still good. And good luck figuring out problems arising from bad components, short of checking every single one...

The mechanical elements of this system are another story. They're going to need some WD-40, contact cleaner, you name it. Also, most of the tuner cables are broken, so that will need to be fixed too, somehow.

I haven't tried plugging this thing. I'm not going to try until certain things are taken care of (like that loose wire). I'm always afraid, with electrical things, that they will blow up in some way, and I'm even more afraid with something like this.

Although actually, it wouldn't even do anything if I plugged it right now. The mains power is routed through the bottom switch mechanism -- I can see the contacts through which it would go, but haven't found a way to actuate them as to close the circuit. AKA I don't know how to turn this thing on. Or maybe the switch thing is just broken.

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As I said, I'm not really into radio stuff, but I'm fascinated regardless. I talked about this vintage radio at the local hackerspace, and they're interested in it, too, so the idea is to bring it there and work on it together, and see what we can do. So this isn't going to be a strictly "me" project, but I might post updates about it.

For now, I took the radio apart entirely and cleaned up the parts, because, god, was it filthy.

Now, my idea is to do some basic repairs before we bring it to the hackerspace. For example, the body is largely made of plywood, but it has been delaminating due to moisture. So, through the power of wood glue, I'm attempting to give it some structural integrity.

For example:



The side panels. In this picture, I was done repairing the left panel. The right one is obviously in much better shape, but you can see some delamination going on in the corner. Wood glue and clamps took care of it.

This mostly serves to repair the radio's body so it won't absolutely fall apart. This thing won't look brand new anyway. Not unless we got into professional restoration, applying new veneer, remaking the missing trim pieces, etc...

On one hand, I'm very "function over looks", but on the other hand, it would feel satisfying to pull that off. And I've seen pictures of this radio in pristine condition, and it looks pretty good. But that's another thing...

The next thing will be to do some basic work on the radio system -- repairing the tuner cables, inspecting the circuitry, hopefully fixing that loose wire, ...

So yeah... stay tuned! (heh)