Modifying N64

[Frodrik]

Hi

I've got a European Nintendo 64, and I'm wondering if there is a way to modify it to play American and Japanese games. I've seen the guide here on gamesx (the one about cutting the plastic tabs), but it said nothing about wether it was for an American or a European N64 or anything.

[Yod@]

The plastic tabs mod is just to run US carts on a JP machine (or vice versa, I can't remember offhand).

There's a diagram here for a mod to enable you to choose between either an NTSC or PAL territory lockout chip - it basically involves removing the territory chips from both an NTSC and a PAL N64 and then wiring them up to one of the N64 boards with some switches in order to toggle between the chips:



Bad news is that it requires both a PAL and NTSC territory lockout chip, so it means cannibalising an N64 to get a chip. It also means using a whole bunch of switches unless you're willing to spend a lot of extra time and effort making up a switching circuit for it.

The two chips at the top are the territory lockout chips, and the lower one shows the place on the PCB where the native lockout chip was originally located before it was removed.

[kendrick]

Yuck. This has the same flavor as the Sega CD territory lockout, in that it's not just a binary flag but a whole PROM-worth of code. The way you made the Sega CD territory free was to use the backward-engineered ROM in place of any OEM part. So in that spirit, has anybody thought to code a new territory-agnostic ROM that could be easily written to a new chip and dropped into an N64?

-KKC, owner of a big blue N64 that looks like it was made out of frozen daquiri mix. Or toilet bowl cleaner or something...

[TJ_Kat]

just a little note, you can get 5 pole (or more) switches, so you can hook all that up to one switch.

[dj898]

if you need to get the chips off PAL and NTSC unist wouldn't be easier just to use both consoles..

i know the space issue and convenience having single unit does both...


...back to the drawing board...

[Aidan]

What do the lockout chips actually do to stop the console working?  

[Cyber Axe]

will that mod work on a US n64? as in to play PAL games on a US n64?

cos i want to get a US n64 so i can output in rgb but i dont want to get a converter cart or anytihng plus my pal n64 is broken anyway since i foolishly tried to rgb mod it a while back

[StarWolf]

Hello everyone.

I'm very interested in performing this mod. Just a couple of questions about the output, if I may.

How do you switch between 50/60Hz output? Is the speed of the game down to whether you're using a PAL/NTSC cart/console? So would a PAL game run at 60Hz, if I was using the NTSC machine as the 'host' console with PAL 'donor' security chip (and therefore would NTSC games run at 50Hz on a PAL host N64)?

Cheers guys.

[Guest]

Hello everyone.

I'm very interested in performing this mod. Just a couple of questions about the output, if I may.

How do you switch between 50/60Hz output? Is the speed of the game down to whether you're using a PAL/NTSC cart/console? So would a PAL game run at 60Hz, if I was using the NTSC machine as the 'host' console with PAL 'donor' security chip (and therefore would NTSC games run at 50Hz on a PAL host N64)?

Cheers guys.

N64 system has a software switch, that is if you manage to fool the "region lock" chip. the system will play any game at the its framerate.  

[ALeXiS]

Hey Guys!
I wanna do this mod but also hava a few questions about it.
I totally don't understand the functions of the 5 Switches. At the end there aren't really 5 Swtiches I have to use?

The author of this mod wrote the following:

the other pins running from pif-nus and pif(P)-nus are connected to the pcb via a relais and a 2 way switch(or a jk flip flop + button if ur cool dude

to switch all lines at once (theres no relais in the diagram coz i was too lazy,but u know how to wire them lines up

Well, what is a relais exactly, and can I buy this readymade anywhere? Nice, he was too lazy, but I should know how to wire them up.. NO I DON'T  :angry:

Here are my progressed so far. I wanna wire the PAL Chip over the NTSC Chip without soldering the NTSC Chipnout, that's why I soldered the wires on the Chip.