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Finally, A Working NES!

Posted by michael on from the first-time-ever dept.

vandel405 writes "We've seen the NES PC Conversion, and we've all lusted over the top-loading NES. But, top-loading NES's aren't something you're going to pick up at a garage sale. How can you resurrect your 8 bit console hero? Easy, with this news guide from ArsTechnica! Now you can make your 8Bit NES as reliable as your linux kernel. No more Blow and Pray!"

17 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. You could always buy replacement parts... by shepd · · Score: 4, Informative

    Really, replacing the connector isn't hard, requires no soldering, and cost me $17 CDN just a couple of years ago.

    --
    If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
    1. Re:You could always buy replacement parts... by slavetrade55 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Despite popular belief, it _is_ possible to clean the connector you already have. Just remove it and give it a good cleaning--use whatever electronics cleaning solvent you like (alcohol works)--I've even used plain soap and water and one of those little fingernail brush things. Then (and here is the tricky part) you have to bend the pins back into place. The problem with the nes is that after continuous use the pins on the connector get pushed down and the connection it makes with the cartridges becomes hella loose. You can use a very tiny flathead screw driver to stick in between the pins and then verrrry gently pry them back up. Then put everything back together and it should work like a charm.

      I've done this to three NESs now so far, and all of them work fabulously. One was in pieces in a plastic bag in my dank nova scotia basement for 3 years. Previous to that I did buy a new connector for yet a 4th nes, and while it works fine as well, it just isn't worth the extra money when with about 15 minutes of extra work you can breathe life into an old one. Hell, I'm playing Blades of Steel as we speak.

      --RMT

    2. Re:You could always buy replacement parts... by Drakonite · · Score: 2, Informative
      Please mod parent up...

      I had an NES I kept in a cool cabnet that had low moisture and was kept clean of dust. For years the only games I ever needed to "blow and pray" on was two that I had bought at garage sales.

      After numerous years it finally started having slight problems, after cleaning the connectors on the games and in the NES (did not even need to open the case) with a Cotton Tipped Cleaning Applicator (hehe.. okay so it was basically a one sided q-tip with a much longer staff) and rubbing alcohol it was back working like a champ.

      If people would learn to take care of their electronics and cleam them when necessary they would find the common problems like "blow and pray" for NES games and DRE's on PS2 would disapear.

      --
      Shoot Pixels, Not People!
    3. Re:You could always buy replacement parts... by Megane · · Score: 2, Informative
      Around 1995 or so, a friend of mine had a dead NES he got at a swap meet, which had been killed at some point by a kid spilling milk into it. So I took a spare motherboard off of my junker pile and swapped it in using his slot.

      The damn thing worked more perfectly than I had ever seen an NES work! (Note, I did not have one "back in the day", and gave up on consoles from after the 2600 died until I started collecting classic games around 1993 or so.) Because the unit had been killed while the socket was still in good shape, it didn't have the typical "flashing" problems of most of the NES units of the day.

      Why did Nintendo come up with this stupid "toaster" design? Because common wisdom back in 1986 was that home video games were dead, so they wanted something that didn't look like a video game console. All the other consoles in the past, and most of the cartridge-based ones since then have had the cartridge sticking out. They made it an ugly gray color to break from the blacks and browns and woodgrains of the 1979-1984 era. They made it a box to break from all the sloped and rounded designs. All the stuff that made a console look good was thrown out the door, and they were left with an ugly gray box. At least they introduced the automatic TV switch.

      The moral of the story is that you can buy a new slot connector (after all, they're swappable) and have a perfectly running NES.

      Not that I care. I have a top-load, but even better, I have a Tri-Star, so I can play NES and SNES games on the same unit.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  2. Heh by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've actually got a Top-loading NES. I'll sell it for $100 :P

    I'd be there are some on ebay, but the problem would be finding 'em. I don't feel like searching through a few hundred listings though.

    I did find this 72-pin connector for replacing the cartage edge.

    The NES cleaning kit also helps a lot.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  3. There's an easier way by DarKrow · · Score: 5, Informative

    And you can still load from the front!

    How To Repair Your NES

    --

    It lives up to it's name: http://www.sanspoint.com
  4. No more Blow and Pray! by Tha_Zanthrax · · Score: 5, Informative

    The key to getting those old things to work a bit better isn't blowing.

    To get cartridge playing the first time you insert them withut blowing is to open the NES and bend all the connectors out a bit.

    Those things are a bit weak and tend to bend into the piece of plastic they're attached to, that's why after years of intensive use your NES doen't play games as well as it used to. Not all pins are conneced propperly.

  5. What I used to do by offpath3 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I always found that a little rubbing alcohol did the trick. Get a tissue, pour the alcohol on it, and rub it lightly onto the metal connectors on the cartridge.

    At first I thought this was just working 'cause it was cleaning the thing, but I found that I had to do it over and over to the same cartridge every time I wanted it to work. So I figured maybe it helped make the connections. It's been a while since I did any chem, tho... does anybody know if rubbing alcohol would help conduct?

  6. Tinning the leads by anethema · · Score: 5, Informative

    Like someone said, all that effort isnt neccesary.
    I took my motherboard out (of the nes), wrapped very fine grit sandpaper around a half popsicle stick and rubbed those connectors down. Blow it out good (canned air works well.)
    Then i dipped the edge connector slot in some tinning solution so it wouldnt corrode again. Wash with some distilled water, let dry, put it back together and it has lasted untill so far. No problems with games booting or losing saved games.

    --


    It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
  7. Or... by Quixotic137 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I had pretty good success with opening it up, cleaning the connector with rubbing alcohol, and bending the pins up a little bit (so they grip the cartrige tighter). Replacing it entirely probably works better, but you might want to try something simpler first. YMMV

  8. Re:Heh by Duds · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was lucky. I bought the last 5 cleaning kits from my local store for 10p each (weren't they £9.99 or something daft originally)

    Actually I did love that, basically they were making £9.99 a pop out of their own inability to design a console, my Sega Master System 2 hasn't had so much as a blow and it's soldiering on 10 years in its life.

    Actually I do wonder about this. In general CARTS were bullet proof things. How easy is it going to be to find less trivially download sized old PSX games in 10 years, is there any project to dump these now while the CDs nearly work?

  9. I cannot believe you posted this "story" ... by syukton · · Score: 5, Informative

    I cannot believe this story got linked. Look, the ars technica story is bullshit. It's half-assed and it's absolutely idiotic. Go to mcmelectronics.com, get part number 83-3785, the "NINTENDO TYPE 72 PIN CONNECTOR" and then just take apart your nintendo, pull out the old edge connector (it's a slide-on/slide-off procedure, no soldering or glue involved) and REPLACE IT WITH A NEW ONE. Then you're out like $6 + shipping and you didn't have to cut a hole in anything. Then again, if you like sticking it in from behind, this might be the mod for you.

    --
    Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
  10. Re:Heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Master System 2 hasn't had so much as a blow and it's soldiering on 10 years in its life.

    Well yes, you do see don't you that the SMS was top-loaded? Notice the same thing about the Snes and Genesis by any chance?

    The original front loaded NES showed console manufacturers that front-loaded consoles were bad.

  11. Replacing cartridge battery by J0ey4 · · Score: 2, Informative

    For games like Final Fantasy or Zelda, you probably will need to replace the cartridge battery

  12. Blowing & Praying by Zanthany · · Score: 4, Informative

    I actually had the fortitude in my younger days to save up enough cash to send it Authorized Nintendo Repair Service. While it didn't amount to a great deal (replaced the connector...sound familiar yet?), it still put me out US$50.

    Of better note, however, was the tech who serviced my console, and brought up an interesting point I haven't seen posted yet. The very "fix" we used to use (blowing...air, that is) as youts is the major cause of corrosion. Yes, I know copper oxidizes on its own, but when introduced to a moist environment, the process is accelerated.

    "Moist environment? But this is my Nintendo?" you may be asking yourself. Consider this: besides CO2, we also exhale H2O. Condensation of that water vapor on the cartridge contacts is the main culprit. "But the velocity of a blow on the cartridge would negate any condensation," I can hear some saying. Nay, if your warm breath, no matter how fast, comes in contact with a colder object, condensation will form.

    But we're all slashdotters. We all knew this already, correct? :-)

  13. Blow and Pray With Static Electricity by BigBlockMopar · · Score: 4, Informative

    No more Blow and Pray!

    Hey, if he's doing it with absolutely no regard whatsoever for static protection, there's gonna be plenty of blow and pray... and I don't see a single wrist strap in the photos.

    *PLEASE* use static protection on anything you're repairing or modding. Why? By the time you see a static electric spark, it's on the order of 3,000V per millimeter. Sure, there's very little current behind it, but it's still more than any one of the millions of MOSFET transistors in a microprocessor or memory chip can handle. And it only takes about 25V to exceed the dielectric strength of the gate-junction layer in a typical MOSFET.

    Static damage is seldom obvious. Usually, a damaged system will still boot and appear to work. But one bad transistor out of the millions in a memory chip or CPU can make it intermittent. What if one bit in a RAM chip sometimes spat back a 1, no matter what had been saved there? The computer would probably work just fine... except for the occasional "inexplicable" crash when the CPU tried to execute an instruction read from that RAM location.

    A wriststrap and antistatic pad are *so* cheap and save *so many* problems.

    --
    Fire and Meat. Yummy.
  14. Re:Use WD-40 ! (Seriously) by tiohero · · Score: 3, Informative
    Connectors work much better with a small amount of lubrication. Try swabbing a tiny bit of WD-40 on the contacts. This prevents microscopic surface oxidation and significantly reduces the wear on the contacts. The contacts will operate MUCH better and more reliably than if they were perfectly clean. (It has nothing to do with the conductivity of WD-40.) Similar lubrication is commonly applied to the tracks of potentiometers and switches when they are manufactured.

    This is not B.S., It works. This is commonly done by antique radio restorers to fix faulty switches and controls. It was also a trick used in the days of "slot cars". A similar thing is done by using di-electric grease on light bulb sockets and spark plug contacts.

    Radio-shack TV tuner cleaner (which leaves behind a lubricant) is another thing you can use if you want to get fancy. Craig Labs "DE-OXIT" (available on the web) is what the pro's use.

    WD-40 attracts dust so you can use the fancier stuff if you believe your gaming system is collectible.

    This is from someone who does a lot of repair of high-end test instrumentation...