Great Project, Awesome Product
For NESessity v1.6 Replacement PCB for NES Console
I recently ordered the Nesessity 1.5 board and parts kit (I got lucky and they were in stock). Shipping was fast and everything was well packaged. I had done some research before buying on how to assemble, Long Island Retro Gaming has a great video that is linked in the listing here with some great build tips. I found very little about the 1.5 variant out there though. No written instructions were included in the box, everything is linked to in the listing. But I soon found as I started building that everything is so well labeled on the board, step by step instructions were not needed. Read through, and perhaps keep handy, the info sheet from here and you’ll be just fine.
Some tips:
Watch some YT videos from Long Island Retro Gaming and Voultar to get tips on soldering techniques and products to use if you are new or relatively inexperienced (as I am). If you’re like me and can’t see the colored bands on the resistors well enough, have a multimeter (set it to ohms) and check and sort through and label what you have before you start. It definitely helps ensure you won’t have any issues while assembling. The little blue ceramic capacitors in my parts kit were all labeled by the seller (thank goodness as I also could not make out the writing on them). I’d recommend getting the parts kit, if available, from the seller. It’s a bit of a premium on the prices of the parts separately, but everything was there and I didn’t have to wait for various parts to become available now or later from other retailers. And, spoiler alert, everything works great.
My setup:
This is now the new heart of an NESRGB machine. I got the Tim Worthington 4.0 board and a SNES/N64 style NESRGB QSB FFC Kit by Voultar. Yes, I did have to cut a hole in the lower case for this, but I’m telling myself that this is a Nintendo connection port and it’s there on my SNES and N64 as well. It looks fantastic, inside and out. What a nice board! You can tell that the Nesessity 1.5 was refined and setup to work seamlessly with the NESRGB board.
There are easy to solder to points to connect IGR and controller selected palette changes. It makes for a very tidy installation. I even found a spot on the board just to the right of the microphone with 2 small through holes (found by following the traces) to solder a wire to for left and right audio to connect to the QSB feeding the Nintendo multiout connector. I bridged those 2 points to supply the Nesessity’s amplified/mixed audio as a mono feed to that output port, completely bypassing the NESRGB’s audio section. I’m kind of a purist about the original mono audio setup, but I appreciate having the option to use “stereo” if desired (and I love being able to fine tune the audio channel levels).
If you don’t care about having the Nintendo multiout mod (or can’t bring yourself to cut the case), get the parts kit for the Genesis 2 style RGB output on the power-A/V board this comes with. Connections from the NESRGB to that would be very simple as well.
Conclusion:
To my surprise (only because this is my first time assembling/populating a complete circuit board), it worked on the first attempt! The only thing I needed to do was adjust the sound levels a bit higher than my initial setting. Take your time and make sure you are installing the right components in the right places in the right orientation and I’d say anyone so inclined can probably do this successfully as well. Credit to the designer of this board for making it so easy. This was such a fun project to do!
