Last ditch to save a NES
All right, so, I've had a NES that's been with me for as long as I could remember. Many, many, many moons ago I sort of signed it away as a dead system because no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get a single game to even flash the title screen. At most, and least, it would just reset over and over again. Never could bring myself to throw it away though.
Then I did a little digging and had a lot of repair articles pass over my eyeballs over the years and had found the system again a few weeks ago. I immediately hooked it up, tried wiggling the games in and out to no avail. Tested the games in my two other working systems to confirm it wasn't the games, and then buckled down and decided it was time to open it up and fix it.
First I did the boiling trick. Then cleaned the pins with alcohol and a toothbrush. Let it dry out for a few hours. Put it together. Nothing. Just blinkng still. Then I reset the pins. Connector now has a death grip on the cartridges. Still blinking. Disabled the lock out chip (as seen in the last picture), and now it just goes to various color screens with each reset. For a moment I had thought to change out the 72 pin from my known working system to test that, but didn't want to go through the hassle of taking another system apart just to Frankenstein it. But honestly that's looking to be my only other option at this point.
Outside of cleaning the board (did that), cleaning the pins on the board (did that), boiling and using a cartridge to reset the pins (did that), resetting the pins (did that), disabling the lockout chip (did that according to everyone else on the internet), is there something I could possibly be missing? Later this week I'll be looking around for a replacement 72 pin connector as the final check of it all. Worst case scenario is that it doesn't work, but I'll have a spare in case my main NES toaster needs one. Best case, it was the connector the whole time!
The only blemish I can see on the board that draws concern from me is on the pins as you can see on the 11th pin from the right. Outside of that everthing else looks cherry as far as I can tell.
There's already a lengthy thread of me and my pleading madness on the NA Facebook page, which is why I'm afraid I may have to call this thing dead if the new connector doesn't fix it.
Then I did a little digging and had a lot of repair articles pass over my eyeballs over the years and had found the system again a few weeks ago. I immediately hooked it up, tried wiggling the games in and out to no avail. Tested the games in my two other working systems to confirm it wasn't the games, and then buckled down and decided it was time to open it up and fix it.
First I did the boiling trick. Then cleaned the pins with alcohol and a toothbrush. Let it dry out for a few hours. Put it together. Nothing. Just blinkng still. Then I reset the pins. Connector now has a death grip on the cartridges. Still blinking. Disabled the lock out chip (as seen in the last picture), and now it just goes to various color screens with each reset. For a moment I had thought to change out the 72 pin from my known working system to test that, but didn't want to go through the hassle of taking another system apart just to Frankenstein it. But honestly that's looking to be my only other option at this point.
Outside of cleaning the board (did that), cleaning the pins on the board (did that), boiling and using a cartridge to reset the pins (did that), resetting the pins (did that), disabling the lockout chip (did that according to everyone else on the internet), is there something I could possibly be missing? Later this week I'll be looking around for a replacement 72 pin connector as the final check of it all. Worst case scenario is that it doesn't work, but I'll have a spare in case my main NES toaster needs one. Best case, it was the connector the whole time!
The only blemish I can see on the board that draws concern from me is on the pins as you can see on the 11th pin from the right. Outside of that everthing else looks cherry as far as I can tell.
There's already a lengthy thread of me and my pleading madness on the NA Facebook page, which is why I'm afraid I may have to call this thing dead if the new connector doesn't fix it.
Comments
Sounds like you might have a bad work RAM chip, I would try replacing the work SRAM and the video SRAM.
Could also be a bad CPU/PPU but I would start with the SRAM first
Though I read some where in the forums that because I'm getting different color screens that it may be the result of the 72 pin connector.
i would try reflowing the board or replacing the ram but if all else fails i have a fully funtional nes motherboard you can buy off me if you want
I like the idea, but I don't have a heat gun. Not to mention I'm a little leery about using my oven to do such a thing. Mostly because everyone seems to have different temperatures at different times. Plus I feel like the Audio/video wouldn't appreciate that none-too-much.
I think he was suggesting you use a soldering iron to reflow but maybe I'm wrong.
soldering it would take forever i ment a heat gun lol. so in that case try replacing the ram
Got a feeling I'll be out a Nintendo, but I'll have a leg up on experience. Worst part is I took another look at the cap as shown in the second picture, and it feels slightly puffed, but it could also be paranoia.
LEARNING IS FUN!