Hooking up 80ies japanese consoles (PAL)

[dondetti]

I was always interested in getting a Famicom system with the floppy drive, also I'm kind of interested in the Epoch Cassette Vision.  The power supply shouldn't be an issue with a converter/adaptor right? I'm really concerned about video output issues though. I've seen that these use a cable with two metal prongs attached to it to fix in with tiny screws (I guess?) which I don't think my 90ies CRT TV got any input for. What should I be looking after for this to work? There is some documentation for US NTSC users but I have found none for european PAL regions. Any help is highly appreciated!

[turom]

I can give my experience since I live in France so I have the same technical environment:

I don't personally own a NTSC-J Famicom system but I own 2 NTSC systems, a US Genesis and a JP Saturn, I use this piece of hardware for the power supply and it works like a charm:



For the video output it seems that the NTSC-J famicom uses RF modulator, I suppose the Disk System doesn't have its own different video output, right? Anyway RF is the worst video output available, making the ugly RCA composite a HD cable in comparison. I never tried it on my TV but i believe you can plug RF on the antenna port and search for its "channel". Quality is awful though..

I would recommend buying a custom cable like this one, I bough many cables on this store and they are top notch quality. Maybe it would be safer to contact them and make sure this cable works with the specific model you're willing to import, I think it's the same signal than the NTSC-US NES but you never know, some consoles differ between JP and US on SCART..

[dondetti]

I can give my experience since I live in France so I have the same technical environment:

I don't personally own a NTSC-J Famicom system but I own 2 NTSC systems, a US Genesis and a JP Saturn, I use this piece of hardware for the power supply and it works like a charm:



For the video output it seems that the NTSC-J famicom uses RF modulator, I suppose the Disk System doesn't have its own different video output, right? Anyway RF is the worst video output available, making the ugly RCA composite a HD cable in comparison. I never tried it on my TV but i believe you can plug RF on the antenna port and search for its "channel". Quality is awful though..

I would recommend buying a custom cable like this one, I bough many cables on this store and they are top notch quality. Maybe it would be safer to contact them and make sure this cable works with the specific model you're willing to import, I think it's the same signal than the NTSC-US NES but you never know, some consoles differ between JP and US on SCART..

Thanks for the input! Yeah I figure that a voltage converter like this should work out alright.

I don't think the Disk System has a separate output because it works as a peripheral for the FC, more or less similar to the C64 floppy drive.

I was always under the impression that you use SECAM in France. What's the difference here compared to PAL/NTSC? I really need to read up on this stuff more.

Those metal prongs are different from an antenna port which I do have input for on my TV. My european NES works with this but the FC does not as far as I know. I wouldn't mind raw quality at all but I don't see how I could possibly hook it up... good call on custom made cables, I know a long time game importer here who does customizations like this or rebuilds region locked consoles into multi-region ones. I'll inquiry them and see what they know about this.

[scarface88fg]

Have you considered getting a Sharp Twin Famicom (Famicom and disk system in one unit)? It has conventional composite outputs instead of just the RF plug.

[badATchaos]

http://www.diffen.com/difference/NTSC_vs_PAL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#PAL_vs._NTSC

The main difference is that PAL is higher resolution but slower refresh rate. I don't live in Europe but from what I understand a lot of modern HD televisions have some compatibility with NTSC. Be sure to check the documentation of your TV. If you're using an old CRT display it won't be able to render the signal.

As far as hooking up goes:
The nice thing about the Famicom is that the NES RF switch is compatible. -At least with the North American one. Another option is finding a Famicom that had a RCA composite mod done to it, or do it yourself if you're able. That way you can have better picture quality and not have to deal with the weird RF connectors. Alternatively you can try to get a Sharp Twin Famicom has suggested above. The only thing is that they're expensive. I think it might actually be cheaper to get the Famicom and Disk System instead.

Germany and most of EU is 230V and Japan is only 100V! Get a power transformer.

[turom]

I was always under the impression that you use SECAM in France. What's the difference here compared to PAL/NTSC? I really need to read up on this stuff more.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/NTSC_vs_PAL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#PAL_vs._NTSC

The main difference is that PAL is higher resolution but slower refresh rate. I don't live in Europe but from what I understand a lot of modern HD televisions have some compatibility with NTSC. Be sure to check the documentation of your TV. If you're using an old CRT display it won't be able to render the signal.

If you can read french I've written a quite lenghty post on the subject

The specific case of SECAM was a thing in our territory during 80's but most of Hi-Fi hardware was already supporting PAL signal at the start of 90's. When third generation gaming consoles released in France PAL was already a standard for video equipment, SECAM became mostly a TV broadcasting only technology, VCRs and such did support SECAM sorely to be able to record TV but everything was PAL video output and RGB encoding.

I've read up a little about the Famicom and the 1st version doesn't have composite video out: Only RF cable, that outputs indeed NTSC signal..



Seems that the original japanese RF switch is a very strange beast where you had to connect the wires DIRECTLY - R.I.P. Iwata-San - to your antenna UHF receiver:



That probably means the cable shown in my previous post won't do for this console.

In theory as badATchaos is suggesting the US NES RF cable works with the japanese model and already has a coaxial output so it may save you the trouble of dealing with this prehistoric cables, or you may buy/mod a cable that converts them to standard coaxial..

Though being a NTSC signal that may not be well supported by a EU CRT TV, even though most of EU color televisions support PAL60 through SCART, allowing them to decode video signal from NTSC consoles, I don't know the results with the antenna input, I never tried this.

I suggest you read up and ask more details there: http://www.famicomworld.com/forum/

Personally if I wanted this specific model of Famicom I would consider the RGB modding and plug this with SCART!

For the power supply I see that the Famicom doesn't have the same characteristics than the NES so I highly recommend using the genuine japanese power supply on your step down transformer, don't use a US one. If your transformer is set to 100V/60Hz and you use the JP power supply it will be fine.

[dondetti]

Thanks a ton for all the input guys . I think my best bet is to look after a modification of the system so I hope those guys I contacted can help me out with that. The power supply should be the easy part, going to grab one of those converters to use with the original FC adaptor.