this is an original Famicom if you
import this little guy to America and
want to hook it up to a television
you're immediately faced with the
following realization it only has RF
output in addition you need to tune your
television to cable channel 95 or 96 in
order to use it depending on the display
you are using you may not have that
option available there are certainly
some alternatives you could modify your
Famicom for either composite video or
RGB among other things this may or may
not involve drilling holes in your
Famicom depending on you or your
installers approach this is an
acceptable solution for many but is not
for everyone another possibility would
be to use a VCR to receive channel 95 or
96 and then output to channel 3 or 4 or
composite video of course this adds a
lot of bulk to your gaming solution
especially if you want a dedicated setup
consisting of only a Famicom with a
period appropriate CRT there is another
option that most people do not seem to
take and we will get to that shortly
I've seen some react incredulously when
being told they need to tune a
television to channel 95 in order to use
a Famicom that makes no sense they say
why would you use channel 95 or 96 the
short answer is channels are different
in Japan but if you are like me you like
explanations so let's do it our F stands
for radio frequency just as you can tune
a radio to your desired station by
selecting a frequency so also can you
tune an over-the-air broadcast on your
television in the case of this
television it received analogue
transmissions in the VHF and UHF fans
during its day however unlike the radio
which demands that you select an actual
frequency in megahertz in the case of FM
broadcasts the television has channels
channels are basically six megahertz
spans of frequencies so channel two
spans 54 to 60 megahertz Channel three
spans from 60 to 66 each time you select
a new channel youmu
you're six megahertz fans location
channel numbers are 100% subjective the
numbers mean nothing
they are simply names assigned to
various frequency ranges just because
the channel numbers here are consecutive
doesn't mean that the frequencies
associated with them are as well you can
see a notable jump in the frequencies
for channel 7 versus channel 6 for
example channel numbers are consecutive
but the frequencies behind the scenes
are a different story
this disconnect between channels and
frequencies meant that analog cable
could use their own frequencies for
their channel numbers this was much more
obvious in the days when you bought a
television and had to know if your
purchase was cable ready or not in the
case of cable television here are the
frequencies for channels 95 and 96 these
are of course the channels we use for
the Famicom in Japan these frequencies
are associated with channels 1 & 2 you
may have also noticed that the audio
carriers overlap the radio frequencies
of the FM band since the audio and RF
channels for television is FM modulated
you can toot Famicom audio using your
radio
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with access to the tuning controls
inside the Famicom as well as an
understanding of channels versus
frequencies let's turn our attention to
manually altering the frequencies at the
source the Famicom itself
note that your family comm model may not
look like mine this is the only family
com I have so this is the only one I can
tune there are a few trimmer
potentiometers inside these RF
modulators that allow you to make
adjustments I have removed this Famicom
from its shell so I can access the
tuning controls while the system is
powered up let's take a look at the
current state of this machine it is
hooked up to a Toshiba black stripe TV
from 1987 the Famicom itself does not
seem to be in the best state regardless
of if we use channel 96 or channel 95
I'm using a pretty decent cable here to
connect it to the television but there
is one thing to note this Famicom has a
pretty bad filter cap at the power input
so I ordered some replacement capacitors
recap to the Famicom and also switch to
the best cable I have in order to
improve the signal it looks a lot better
now both on channels 95 and 96 to make
adjustments to the trimmers I'm going to
use some of my anti-static alignment
tools I'll provide a link to them in the
video description for the sake of an
accurate demonstration I'm going to let
this video run in real time you can see
what happens to the picture on the TV
whenever I drift the frequency either
direction out of channel 95 s bracket
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so now we move to the destination
channel channel 6 and start rotating the
trimmer to lower the frequency bracket
we know the frequency range sits just
below channel 95 so we should start to
see Super Mario Brothers 3 and there it
is
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after a few more turns we have the
Famicom dialed into us channel 6 not bad
for a console and a television that are
both over 30 years old and connected via
RF with the obvious exception that the
Famicom has new capacitors the system is
unmod and can easily be restored to
channel 95 should the need arise for
those of you that enjoy hooking up old
consoles to old displays
I hope this provides you with another
option if you didn't know about it
already thanks for watching
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[Laughter]
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