NTSC Game Cube RGB Cable (continued)
Okay, time to do a bit of work with the digital plug which goes into your console, with a very fine flat screwdriver you need to carefully unclip 6 clips. Look for the side of the plug with the Nintendo logo on it, stick the small screwdriver into each hole in turn, give it a wiggle whilst pulling the other side of the casing, work your way around each clip until you can pull it apart. mmmonkey has included some photo's showing the clips, hopefully it will help you take it apart with breaking the plug and/or clips.
Now removed one half of the metal casing, look at it carefully and it should be obvious which sides to try to un-clip whilst pulling it way.
You should see one large chip inside with 24 legs, we need to lift leg 12 away from the circuit board. There are a couple of ways of doing this, some people hook something around the leg, then heat the leg up and pull the hook to lift the leg. mmmonkey used a very sharp craft knife, pushing it under the leg whilst heating it up with a soldering iron. Notice the small triangle pointing to a solder pad, this is pin 1, which we will be soldering the resistor to. Once lifted, insulate with electrical insulation tape as shown.
Time to prepare the second resistor, the 10K one should be left over. Bend it as shown and melt a small amount of solder onto each end. Add a bit more solder to the point (pin 1) if necessary, and then solder it between the lifted leg and the solder point as shown on the photo.
You may have noticed in the photo's above a small black wire hanging out of the back of the circuit board. Turn the board over and look near where the cable joins it, look for a small black wire soldered to the board, carefully heat the solder and pull the wire to free it.
The black wire needs to be soldered to pin 5, it's not long enough to reach so cut a short piece of very fine wire (mmmonkey used Kynar wire as usual) and extend the black wire by a couple of centimetres and insulate the join. Pin 5 is easy to find, it's the third from the right along the top row of solder contacts as shown in the second photo below. Add some solder to the wire and solder point then join them together.
Soldering is complete, all that's left to do is to insulate the inside of the metal casing that we removed earlier, simply stick some electrical insulation tape to the corner which covers the resistor. Then carefully re-assemble the digital plug and test your cable. Here's my TV's OSD showing it's receiving an RGB image for Mr Driller (Japanese only release running on my JPN Cube).
Notes
This cable will work with all NTSC region Game Cubes which are fitted with
digital ports, Nintendo has changed the design of the GC and removed the digital
port on new consoles. If you live in the USA you can contact
Nintendo and request a console with the port (this may be the same in
Japan?). The part number of Game Cubes with Digital Out ports is DOL-001,
whilst the ones lacking this port is DOL-101.
This cable will also work on PAL consoles which have the digital port, this may be useful to you if you keep both an NTSC and PAL console as you can keep just one set of power and video leads connected up permanently and just swap the console over.
If you have a Panasonic Q (you lucky person), then this guide is still relevant. The Q doesn't use Nintendo analogue port - it has 3 phono ports for analogue A/V, but it does use the digital port for RGB. You simply need to substitute the analogue cable used in this guide for a straight through phono cable with Left/Right/Video (White/Red/Yellow usually). Or if you have a spare cable like the one in this guide, cut the Scart plug off!
mmmonkey first performed this mod using the guide found at rgbcube, however at the time of writing the website has been down for quite some time.
Summary of Components needed
1 x Nintendo Digital Video Cable
(DOL-009)
1 x Nintendo Composite A/V Cable or 3rd Party Nintendo RGB Cable
1 x Scart Plug (you may already have this on your 3rd party RGB cable)
1 x 75 Ohm resistor
1 x 10K Ohm resistor
Short piece of very fine wire - Kynar is the best
