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Finally, A Working NES!
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!"
My friend has a top load NES and we've been playing it a lot this year. It's the shit! We don't really use the PS2 except for a DVD Player. The games seem just as addicting. Even though the graphics aren't the best, it's still very fun after all these years. Just goes to show how good graphics can't compensate for good game design.
My favorite hobby is fixing semi-working game consoles because it's so damn easy.
First, find a console where, either the game just doesn't make the connection unless it's put in just right, or one of the connectors (controller, power, etc) has a similar problem.
This happens because a lot of (gradual) force is exerted on those connectors, and the designers were so stupid as to not insert something to take the punishment. In otherwords, everytime you plug in a cartridge, you are damaging the solder connection a little more.
Now that you know the problem, it should be easy to fix. Open up the system you bought for $5 at a pawn shop, and find the damaged connector. All you need to do is heat up a soldering iron, and add a little bit more solder to each one of the pins connecting to the board.
In some cases, the system was used in it's state for a good ammount of time, and the actual etchings on the board are damaged. In that case, you simply have to trace the etching te the next solder point, then connect a wire between the two.
With that info, you can now repair 90% of the consoles on the market. The other 10% were either dropped off of a building, or hooked up to the wrong AC adapter (``POP"!!!).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Do you work for ConsoleClassix? Just noticed that almost all of your posts are Nintendo or game related.......nice cheap advertising on slashdot?
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Man, I have a friend with a NES that works perfectly. Mine worked perfectly before I sold it to him! :( (A mistake I would not make again)
Anyway, it's what? A million years old now? Give or take an hour?
My XBox died tonight. That stupid DVD-ROM thingie that everybody loves so much about modern day machines went out! It DIED! DEAD! It won't read a CD, it won't read a DVD movie, it won't read a single damned thing!
After doing a web-search I found that this is common on the XBox, and apparently there is a high demand for used DVD mechanisms taken out of broken XBoxes.
So I called Microsoft and much to my shock they were aware of this issue, considered my XBox still under warrenty, and are going to repair the unit.
Now, I would like to point out that this XBox is hardly used because there really just aren't that many great games for it. If I had to guess I'd say the machine has maybe between 60 to 80 hours of use.
Now, that old Nintendo probably has somewhere near thousands of hours of use. LITERALLY Thousands. We figured out long ago that the old "blow on the terminals" trick isn't even necessary. If the game give a flashing red screen or solid black screen we simply turn the machine off, eject, reinsert, power back on (sans blowing) and it is normally fine.
Do you know how many times I ejected that DVD and reinserted it into that XBOX? At least a half dozen. Trying to "Clean it" to make sure the disc wasn't defective probably created more scratches than existed previously and it wasn't until after I tried other games that I realized it was the XBox, and not the discs.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while I actually remember cases of Nintendos breaking down they were the few sad stories, and not an epidemic.
So while people might complain that those 15 year old game machines are a pain in the ass to get running, just remember, they don't build them like they used to. And they don't make the games nearly as fun, either.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
alcohol is nonconductive last i checked. or maybe that was mineral oil. both go in a home-made lava lamp. anyways a better "lube" would be the electrically conductive K-Y jelly (it's called somthing much, much different in real life) they use on car battery terminals to prevent corrosion.... although how to keep it from crossing the signals... i dunno. you'd have the same problem with alcohol though, although that evaporates much more quickly than the K-Y.
moox. for a new generation.
What happens on a lot of older PSXs is that the laser goes out of focus. There are guides to do this around the internet, but from what I remember it seemed quite tricky.
An alternative that a friend of mine once did was to replace the black cd mount (laser, motor, etc... basically the moving components of the drive) with that of a very old sony discman, which had the same shape and connections. You have to make sure you have the right one for it though.
I remember seeing them in KB toys in STACKS....oh well
The main appeal is there's no spring load action and its more reliable
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!