NES advice

nater · Friday at 11:21 PM

Hi all,

I have an original NES I'm refurbishing for my kids. It's in solid shape. I started it up a few weeks ago and it worked, but the images were off - like in MLB Baseball everything worked but I couldn't see the batter, or in Goal, only some of the players were visible etc. I read a bunch of things online, cleaned the games - nothing worked. I then bought a new 72 pin connector. It is quite hard to get the games in (like a tight fit) with the new connector. It's helped some - i.e. some of the fuzziness has gone away, but serious image problems remain. Can anyone help with additional steps that would help solve this problem?

Thanks in advance for your help!

N

Tanooki · 2023-05-27T03:07:10Z

Hmmm those 72pin newbies are largely nothing but trouble, and if they have death grip you got a crap one.

The thing is, I don't much like what you're saying the problem is. Even that crap connector, if the connection was the issue at all, would have cleared that up and it hasn't. You say some stopped, not all.

That in itself is a clue. What have you done specifically and with what to clean your carts (and how?)

I'm talking WORST case here your PPU (picture processing unit) is failing or solder joints have gone cold both are rare extreme cases as they were overly well done.

Personally Id remove the crap connector and clean/fix the original if you didn't trash it. I'd plunk it down in a pot of boiling water for 5min after using a safety pin a bit on the lower side of the row that touches carts(not the NES motherboard) and lift each of them back up a bit before the boil. Shake furiously, let dry a few minutes and re-assemble as it makes it basically factory fresh.

The games, security bit and open them up. 91% alcohol(walgreens, cvs etc) minimum if not 99% IPA from amazon or whatever online. Use that on a paper towel, direct wet paper+thumb to board and rub that a lot until the paper stays white.

If that fails, I'd soak a piece of magic eraser and see if that stays clean, odds are, it'll gray or blacken, so let it have it with that, then the paper towel after to get all the leftover film from the magic eraser off.

Utterly worst case scenario and people will hate me for this I'm sure, but you can get a sand paper (fine grit) SPONGE, a sponge with a sand paper exterior edge to it... it'll just barely take the top most layer of crap, grime, rot, corrosion, etc right off the pins without ruining them, then work back with magic eraser and towel. I've done this on some utterly dead and hateful carts that didn't have a busted chip/trace to good effect.