White PC Engine with sound issues

[dougal]

Hi guys this is my first post. It took my ages to join because I could not find the answer to the Halo question. I have always HATED Halo. Sorry to any Halo fans.

Anyways, I have a sound issue with my white NEC PC Engine which I received about a month ago.

To start with everything was fine. I was using a home made AV cable which taps the L+R+GR+Composite Video pins on the expansion connector at the back and it worked ok (aside that my TV does not support composite Japanese NTSC hence I had a B&W picture).

After a couple of days I noticed that almost no sound at all was working from the LEFT side. I don't know if it was like that when I bought it but I am pretty sure it was not. I tried a different cable, different TV's and made sure the cable is connected properly to the pin but nothing.

I now have one of those French guy's RGB box for my PC Engine which gives me a lovely RGB color picture but the sound issue remains.

Right Side is perfect (a little low but apparently most PCE's are like that) but the Left side has a very faint and "tinny" sound.

I opened it up and with my very limited expertise cannot see anything wrong. On another forum someone mentioned that I could tap one of the pins on the sound chip to see if any sound comes out but to be honest i'm scared to do that, dont wanna risk shorting something out.

It's a really annoying problem because although most games work in MONO some don't (like SF II CE) and anyway I want the Stereo audio back.

Can anyone HeLP Me Pleaseeeee ?

[-^Cro§Bow^-]

You likely need to replace the capacitors in your PCE. Most of our wonderful and glorious consoles we love from the retro era are over 20yrs old now and some nearing 30! Point is, the caps are a known issue in PC Engine and TG-16 units to go bad. The audio is the first indicator of this as what you are describing is classic of this issue.

As for tapping the audio elsewhere, that is easy enough to do. I have a Japanese Turbo Duo that I recently replaced all the capacitors in and while I had it open, I added standard RCA composite and L+R audio jacks to the back of it. Great picture (for Composite), and the audio has never sounded better!

I'm sure there are many here who offer services to look into this for you, but if you want to attempt some of the work yourself I wholeheartedly recommend Console5.com for the parts!



Hi guys this is my first post. It took my ages to join because I could not find the answer to the Halo question. I have always HATED Halo. Sorry to any Halo fans.

Anyways, I have a sound issue with my white NEC PC Engine which I received about a month ago.

To start with everything was fine. I was using a home made AV cable which taps the L+R+GR+Composite Video pins on the expansion connector at the back and it worked ok (aside that my TV does not support composite Japanese NTSC hence I had a B&W picture).

After a couple of days I noticed that almost no sound at all was working from the LEFT side. I don't know if it was like that when I bought it but I am pretty sure it was not. I tried a different cable, different TV's and made sure the cable is connected properly to the pin but nothing.

I now have one of those French guy's RGB box for my PC Engine which gives me a lovely RGB color picture but the sound issue remains.

Right Side is perfect (a little low but apparently most PCE's are like that) but the Left side has a very faint and "tinny" sound.

I opened it up and with my very limited expertise cannot see anything wrong. On another forum someone mentioned that I could tap one of the pins on the sound chip to see if any sound comes out but to be honest i'm scared to do that, dont wanna risk shorting something out.

It's a really annoying problem because although most games work in MONO some don't (like SF II CE) and anyway I want the Stereo audio back.

Can anyone HeLP Me Pleaseeeee ?