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it's retro time and this is an NES a

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North American Nintendo if you will the Nintendo Entertainment System this is

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rather large for what you might consider to be a rather old and not very powerful

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piece of Hardware but this was expandable that was the big thing like

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you could use custom chips to make sure that your games would run whatever you

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wanted them to run basically it kind of reinvigorated the video game Market in

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the west so much so that if Atari hadn't died they would have licensed to this as

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the AVS but Nintendo came back and they gave us this today this is well I mean

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you can you can tell the shell that has yellowed quite a bit

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like that's that's real Hollow right and it's it's kind of

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pointless so um there's this project called

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tininess and what that does is it just kind of condenses everything you know

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makes it more I mean compact like the box for this is actually smaller

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physically than the NES itself so let's

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put this to the side here and have a look at this we've got kind of a preview

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on the box here as to how big the actual console is it's not the size of the Box

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on the side here we've got kind of sort of public domain it's not quite this is

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a fairly permissive license you can I think build this yourself it's not open

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source though made by tall Dog Electronics which I think is that a main

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wolf don't know a tinyness tinyness

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genuine okay this is where we need to talk about what the tininess is the

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tininess isn't a modern Recreation of

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the console it's literally the guts

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from this shrunk down into this the way

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they're able to do that is by harvesting chips out of those old consoles or in

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the case of the non-genuine version there are actually clone chips you can

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get that are completely I think they still make them or at least they're

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still available they're not great in terms of compatibility I think and some

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graphical glitches can happen but you can still build one of these completely

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from scratch without any official Nintendo components which is just great

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and on the back here we get another preview of what it looks like this time in 3D

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instruction manual of some kind so it's powered by a 5 volt DC which enters the

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USBC Jack on the rear of the console okay so I will need a USBC power supply

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okay yep they have a provided USBC power adapter and black and gold usb-c cable

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you know what I'm just going to not read this any further because it seems like

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something I could just find out by unboxing it and that's a lot more interesting isn't it let's just pull

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this out of here and is this an actually just an apple USBC

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adapter it's got an apple model number on it either that or it's a clone it

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doesn't feel like it's lightweight or anything so it's probably legit or legit

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enough for our purposes anyway that's pretty adorable so I guess this

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uses a trrs connector here to split off

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into the RCA outputs yeah this doesn't have HDMI or anything fancy like that

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it's just the original type of outputs that you would have gotten on the NES

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itself unless you were like me back in the day and you used this which is even

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worse let's see we've got a tall dog sticker and an allen wrench I guess they

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intend you to open it up which is great because I'm going to do that and here is

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the console itself that actually looks really sharp and it's so tiny like okay

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it's a little bit shorter in this

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Dimension than an NES cartridge okay a little bit wider and

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yeah a little bit thicker as well games I suppose just go in like

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that with the label facing that way oh

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that's interesting there's actually already RCA jacks on the back of this so

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apparently the this connector here that goes in here

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splits out all of the individual audio channels so if you've got expansion

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audio in your Japanese famicom game

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then you can get that and mix it

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separately from the built-in audio so I guess if your game is too loud on the

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expansion audio which is the thing that can happen you can kind of mix it separately or you can just mix it the

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way you want to interesting I'm not sure why also apparently this can be

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configured for RGB output and I'm not sure how you would do that exactly

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remember what I said the license for this thing was pretty permissive well

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here is the block diagram of the whole console it's just right there find all

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the components and you can put them together in the same way that the console is put together which is pretty

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sick they even have the bill of materials here and according to this you

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can install an RGB capable picture Processing Unit or PPU the original NES

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didn't actually have RGB output in the traditional sense it's PPU basically

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just spat out more or less composite video which has been an issue for a

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while because if you've ever noticed that like emulators and Wii virtual

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console and everything thing else seems to have different colors that's why what

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colors you were supposed to get out of the NES were not really set in stone

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they varied from console to console basically back to the console itself we

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do have our video we've got the reset button back here which is kind of an

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interesting place to put it because some games kind of relied on the reset button

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on and off switch back here that works it's kind of sharp I would have

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preferred maybe a larger switch but it is powered with type c on the front

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we've got traditional NES controller ports so I can plug in my traditional

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controller my NES advantage or if I had

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a CRT to plug this into my zapper I don't have one of those here today

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though and on the other side there's nothing oh right there is one more thing and that's this little dial down here

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it's a potentiometer that is what you would use to adjust the levels of the

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balance of the the internal audio and the expansion audio like I was

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explaining earlier in case you're only using the onboard output and that's

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basically it this thing is super basic aside from that we've got some I guess

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nice looking but basic cables for uh audio video that's literally all you get

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if you got your your mono channel for audio and you've got your video

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and we've got this nice uh USB type-c cable they're all braided which is nice

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I'll get these out of here and we'll power it on but first i'm going to talk

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ShortCircuit now before we get into this

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I got a Game Genie here yep okay

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sure that's that's not weird

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oh oh oh oh oh that's a tight fit oh

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okay so one thing you might have noticed

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is that took quite a bit of effort to get in and out in contrast

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the original NES

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a lot easier all right let's power this thing up uh you got me a monitor I was

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just setting up to well set this up when I realized that we have some more boxes

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here we have a cartridge latch not sure what that's

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about maybe that would have helped with this and a famicom adapter which will

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let us use this in this as well so if you're not

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familiar famicom and NES slots differ

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fairly considerably famicom is significantly shorter the cartridge

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itself inside of this is actually probably the same size as the famicom

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version they just made them this big so that they could slide in and out of this much more easily let's take a look at

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the famicom adapter and see how that works because as it stands

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foreign that's

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fairly robust okay is this 3D printed

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it's a pretty high quality print if so so I guess this would go something like

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this and then we would slot uh

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the other way huh okay the other way so I got it wrong

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the first time around

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it instead slots in like that this will work on the uh

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actual NES as well but this particular

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adapter is not really suitable for that because it won't

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give you the ability to kind of reach in and kind of get it it'd be useful for a

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top loader which is what this is cartridge latch I have no idea what this

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what this would be what is what I think I see you ready for this

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that makes a lot easier to get your game out rather than just like like you can't

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can't just do this anyway how about we finally plug

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it in and turn it on power it on see what comes up is it going to be

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stretched is it going to be weird no it's Super Mario Brothers 3. what you

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are seeing right now is actually a

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fairly good quality output composite

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video isn't known for its sharpness but this isn't terrible I kind of expected

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worse oh the Koopas there are not doing

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so hot that's kind of what I was expecting but that means that the

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circuitry in this is actually fairly robust in terms of cleaning and

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filtering the output signal making sure there's no interference that kind of

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thing okay let's play

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okay input lag is well I mean it's it's original Hardware

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input lag should be nothing I pre-compensated there for a jump that I

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thought was going to take a little bit longer for to register

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but it's instantaneous the d-pad feels a little bit slippery

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8-bit token yeah maybe I'll switch out to the 8-Bit doe controller see if the

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controller port in the front here has enough power to handle a Bluetooth

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transmitter all right let's switch the controller out it's not quite original

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style it's fairly close actually it looks like it's pre-yellowed

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it's like the same color as the other one

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oh right I think this is a thing that can

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happen on real Hardware too well if I say real Hardware the original Hardware

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if you plug in something that's power Hungry Like the Bluetooth dongle here

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it'll reset the console uh the 8-Bit drill controller this feels a lot

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stiffer yeah this feels really tight this d-pad's a lot better well it's a

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lot firmer if it's more defined the

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other controller is d-pad was worn in let's just put it that way after getting

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past or I guess through the first level the audio sounds pretty good I can't

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turn it up unfortunately this monitor doesn't have a volume control for some

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reason but it sounds pretty good I don't hear any like buzzing or anything like

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that no there's not even any levels coming through right now on this pause

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screen which is something that would never be the case on my RF NES now

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composite video on its own it's going to have some problems this is probably the

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best case scenario for like upscaling it with the Retro tank 5x Pro here which

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itself could probably do for another review because this thing has been

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updated significantly honestly this is a

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really clean composite output If This Were plugged into a CRT I don't think

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you would really notice any composite artifacts at all like the floor there

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not quite where the status area is that glitching is

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actually normal but you can see there's a little bit of like fuzz going on down

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there but it's not as bad as I would expect you know what was bad though back

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in the day to my recollection was Mega Man so let's throw that on and see what

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sound oh well that just comes right on so yeah

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you can see the the kind of fringing between the the white and the red on the

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three there and also in the logo up there there's a little bit of like fuzzy

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flickering that flickering is also normal for this game the Robot Masters

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look pretty good here I remember a lot more fringing around the uh the stage

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select um like the borders there yeah I mean it

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looks it sounds great I mean obviously it's original Hardware so it's going to

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uh I don't know if Super Mario USA has expansion audio or not but I'll throw

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that in real quick just to kind of test it and then we'll take it apart

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is it just me or is like the composite artifacts way worse on this I usually

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don't play Mario in this game how about I take it apart they

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thankfully include a nice little allen wrench and I think yeah they have points

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here that tell you how to get it open it's the right size all right cool that

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that's it this right here is the original NES picture processing unit

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this right here is the original NES CPU yeah they're both socketed so if I

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wanted to I could pry up the picture processing unit and replace it with an

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RGB one and I think you can also get a replacement rear module here that gives

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you RGB output so if that was a thing you wanted if you didn't want all those

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composite artifacts I was talking about then you can do that and more of that

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white plastic in here I don't know if you can see that but there's little tabs

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in here that are kind of you can push them inside so it kind of grips the cartridges a

190
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little bit better yeah they get pushed out otherwise the cartridge was just

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kind of like plop on there and kind of do that

192
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and yeah on the PCB it's got carte blank side and cart label side what are these

193
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switches for are these overclocking switches yeah ntsc and pal so I could

194
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switch it over to the European Standard for video I think I would need a

195
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different PPU for that though now I mentioned these chips are socketed on an

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original console they probably wouldn't be I don't think they would be at all

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and the reason being they were specific usually to each region or console

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production run but they wouldn't have been interchangeable Because the actual

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board layout would have changed slightly to support that other

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Processing Unit so in this case that's what those switches are for so if I were

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to pop out there we go that there

202
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is a Nintendo CPU well that was a lot easier to take apart than

203
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it was to put back together if you wanted to go with clone Hardware so not

204
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an original NES then you're looking at 209 US Dollars

205
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which is steep for the proper Hardware

206
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you're looking at 229 and that's for the unit you're looking at right here with

207
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that in mind would I recommend it I think as a kit

208
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like a hobbyist kit it might be a lot of fun for somebody who wants to you know

209
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get their hands dirty with you know soldering and socketing chips and that

210
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kind of thing for like intermediate users that might be a uh a value add in

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terms of just playing your games I don't think this is really the best way to do

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it granted it is very small and it's

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very convenient like to put on your shelf compared to uh like any of this

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stuff we didn't have a place to put it the NES is on the floor all the components except for the CPU and PPU if

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at least for the original ones those will be brand new and it's powered with

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USB type c which is super great especially considering the NES uses

217
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nine-fold AC just ridiculous for all but

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the most hardcore like Nintendo retro

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enthusiasts I I don't think I would recommend it for that much money

220
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especially when you can get a Raspberry Pi if you really wanted to or like you

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can get a fairly Baseline Mister setup for that and I guess that's really it

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honestly really nice looking but I don't think I could recommend it

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for any practical purpose but I can recommend ShortCircuit for you we have

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plenty more like this one and unlike it as well so get subscribed