Sampo C1JR Famicom

[fcgamer | 4,719]

So this past weekend my good friend invited me to a local cultural market that he would be attending, where he'd be selling some antiques and what not. Last time I went to one of these type places, it was a total waste, well in terms of finding anything gaming related. Since we had a long holiday though, sure, why not, I had nothing better to do.

So I look around and eventually make it over to where my friend has his stand set up. He passed me a bag with a few Famicom games and I bought them, but the whole time another random was sniffing around trying to see what was in the bag, just getting overly handsy with it.

That guy finally leaves and be that time I noticed my friend had a red Sampo television sitting in the back, with a price of about $25 USD on it. Nooo.... could it be? Well yeah, it was. So I told him I wanted it, paid, and negotiated with my friend to drive it over to my place tonight. 

As a bit of a backstory, you may have heard about the Sharp TVs in Japan, which had Famicom machines and cartridge slots built in, basically a Famicom version of the tv sets we received in the states with the NES cartridge slot built in. 

Well in Taiwan, they received essentially the same models as Japan received, only instead of being produced by Sharp, they were produced by Sampo, a Taiwanense appliance company.

Sampo would also publish with Nintendo several of the pulse line Famicom carts in Taiwan, for the short lived stint before the Taiwanense market became plagued with bootlegs and piracy.

So as one can imagine, $25 for this is a steal. 

Such happiness quickly turned to fear though, when I saw a local reseller sniffing his head around the place. @OptOut met the guy before too, a real shark. Who knows how many other sharks might have been in the waters too, would the television even make it to the end of the night? What price point would be too much for my friend to resist?

In reality, my friend is an extremely honest guy, one of those rare folks that you'd consider a true friend. I've no idea if he received any larger offers on the TV, but he drove over tonight to drop it off, and I gave him (well more likely his daughter, as my friend and his wife are very traditional Taiwanense, foodwise) a plate of my homemade dinner as a thanks for his trouble.

Just like with that Sachen box I got earlier, the excitement turned to horror as I can't seem to get the thing running. There's tons of switches and what not, I'm hoping maybe someone here might know something about this so that I can get gaming on mine too.

[fcgamer | 4,719]

[fcgamer | 4,719]

@Boosted52405 : I saw you are selling a NES Sharp television. Do those also have a lot of switches and settings to determine before it operates properly?

[Boosted52405 | 178]

4 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

@Boosted52405 : I saw you are selling a NES Sharp television. Do those also have a lot of switches and settings to determine before it operates properly?

Wow, $25 is a steal I imagine, I've never seen one of those, I dig the red!  I just looked at the Sharp NES TV, and it doesn't seems to have as many switches and settings, but it does have standard tube TV buttons like constrast, tint, etc. 

[Jono1874 | 144]

That thing is absolutely gorgeous.  Do you know what that TRS jack labeled "Record" does? Is it an input for the Player 2 mic? If it is, it just gave me an idea.

[Shawn | 31]

Nice.

[DarkTone | 984]

Well done. 

[Tanooki | 4,929]

On 10/5/2020 at 11:23 AM, fcgamer said:

@Boosted52405 : I saw you are selling a NES Sharp television. Do those also have a lot of switches and settings to determine before it operates properly?

I had a Sharp NES TV up until maybe 5 years ago.  It does not, inside or out.  There are the usual factory service type pot/wheels inside behind the CRT tube, usually on the flyback or in a module off the motherboard for it elsewhere in the rear.  The Sharp up front had all the user needed knobs but really one, it was hiding in a hole in the front and a simple little tool could get in there to spin that fine correction as well.  Your 6 knobs there behind the door look quite similar just arrayed entirely differently and the sharp didn't have those 2 switches either.