Super Nintendo, region and 60hz mod

This week I've fixed an old PAL Super Nintendo, the poor thing had soda in the controller and was pretty gunked up. I cleaned it with hot water and soap and began thinking about what else I could do with it, found this page describing mods for both region free and, more importantly, 60 Hz.

In Europe the snes runs in 50Hz, got something to do with the electricity over here, this results in a squished picture, almost like watching an 16:9 movie on a 4:3 TV. Running the snes on 60Hz also makes the games run a bit faster.

The mod itself was a bit tricky as it required me to lift pins on three ICs, I've read somewhere that you can make a tool for this out of a needle and a pen.

Pinlifter

Worked like a charm, I carefully heated the pins with the soldering iron and lifted them up.

Soldered and taped down.

Wiring and switches.

What turned out to be the hardest bit about this mod was mounting the switches as they required square holes, I used a pair of cheap files for this

Cheap cheap files.

As you can see in the pictures its not quite as good as I would've hoped.

Bit crooked.

Good thing its on the bottom and out of sight.

Finished product with the two switches, one for pal 50 Hz / ntsc 60 Hz and another for region, Europe / of.

50 Hz versus 60 Hz

50 Hz, mangled pixels.

60 Hz, perfect picture with square pixels.

Screw placement on the European snes.