A Simple TurboGrafx-16 RCA Mod

I love my TurboGrafx-16 system but the lack of any built-in output aside from the RF brings it down. Both the Turbo Booster and CD add-on are quite expensive (not that they aren't worth it) so I wanted something cheap that could get the job done for me but didn't want to tear the system apart to do anything internal. Here's a quick mod that just about anyone can do with minimal skill and some salvaged parts.

Go to almost any Goodwill and you can find at least one A/V switchbox like this one:

Just take that baby apart and you'll have the main piece for the mod and it should look something like this:

After that, it's just a matter of soldering hookup wire to the ground pegs and each of the outputs and putting some pin connectors on the ends of the wires. The pin connectors look something like this and can be purchased in a package from Radio Shack:

Just strip some of the end of the wires and crimp these on the ends. Once that is done, you're pretty much set and will have something that resembles this:

All you have to do now is connect the proper wires to the corresponding pins on the expansion port of your TurboGrafx. The pinout looks like this (courtesy of Classic Gaming Quarterly at http://www.cgquarterly.com/articles/images/tg16_cable/tg16_pinout.png):

Your ground wire hooks up to any "G". The Yellow video wire goes to the "V" and the Red and White stereo audio wires go to the "R" and "L" respectively. Now, if you want to get fancy, you can drill holes into the expansion cover and install the piece that way, but I just leave the cover off since I don't move my system at all. Plus it keeps the system in original condition. Hopefully you learned something from this short tutorial as the increase in quality of composite over RF, plus the stereo sound, is a vast improvement.