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Games Entertainment

Finally, A Working NES! 257

Posted by michael 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!"
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Finally, A Working NES! More

Finally, A Working NES!

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  • heh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:18AM (#5293143)
    No more Blow and Pray!"

    just like the girls at church

    • Re:heh (Score:5, Funny)

      by grendel20 ( 466797 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:21AM (#5293152)
      just like the boys at church...... if its at the catholic church.....
      oooh bad joke

    • i take it (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...you are a priest then?

    • Blow and Pray With Static Electricity (Score:5, Informative)

      by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @10:56AM (#5294269) Homepage

      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.

      • Are they cheaper (easier, more convienente) than just getting a new NES in the super-off chance that you do fry something?

        • Are they cheaper (easier, more convienente) than just getting a new NES in the super-off chance that you do fry something?

          Absolutely! If you've ever taken the top off your computer to change a card or add memory, you should damned well be using a static strap, so I'd expect that most Slashdotters would have one anyway.

          Actually, the other thing I'd do in one of those NES machines is replace all the electrolytic capacitors. Those things used very cheap components, and electrolytic capacitors have a tendency to fail open or fail leaky after a few years.

    • Not the church I go to. ;)

  • You could always buy replacement parts... (Score:4, Informative)

    by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot@org.gmail@com> on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:18AM (#5293144) Homepage Journal
    Really, replacing the connector isn't hard, requires no soldering, and cost me $17 CDN just a couple of years ago.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @08:54AM (#5293680)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • 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.

      • You must be an extra from 'The Wizard' if you can type that post and play Blades of Steel at the same time!
      • I used a pencil eraser to get the dirt off. After receiving my NES in the early 90s, you can imagine my amazement when I turned it on and it worked as well as the day I got it.

        Game Genie is very bad at loosening the connectors. Luckily, that doesn't seem to be too much of a problem right now. Occasionally I get a blinking screen, but not as much as before.
    • 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.

  • Heh (Score:5, Informative)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:20AM (#5293148) Homepage Journal
    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 [ebay.com] connector for replacing the cartage edge.

    The NES cleaning kit also helps a lot.

    • Re:Heh (Score:5, Informative)

      by Duds ( 100634 ) <dudley.enterspace@org> on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:19AM (#5293294) Homepage Journal
      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?
      • I would expect that with the large marketshare of the PSX, with the long shelf-life, and with the more and more trivial size of CD's compared to HDD's, we'll see very little archival problems of PSX games. Remember, when the 16 mb Street Fighter 2 was released for the SNES, a good hard drive was only 500 MB. Plus CD archival tools are common in nearly every computer, whereas every ROM that was saved was done with some rare hardware.

        I'm not too worried yet. Technology seems to be outpacing obscurity at this point. Compress the redbook to MP3 and you can burn a few dozen PSX games to DVD.

        -C
        • we'll see very little archival problems of PSX games

          It's the wierd format games like Dreamcast (using "GD-ROM", but can boot homebrews without modification, so can have ripper programs uploaded to it) and GameCube (supposedly the disc spins backwards, and nobody has yet gotten it to boot a homebrew disc) that will be the problem.

    • I don't know how much those things are going for on Ebay...you can get 'em in Japan for under $50.
  • ...now i can play burgertime once again!!!

  • No thanks... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dknj ( 441802 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:25AM (#5293165) Journal
    This requires you to cut your nintendo case and use even more space with 4" of cartridge sticking out of the back. Plus, nothing is like coming back from a frat party and trying to load Super Mario Bros 3 while verbally abusing your nintendo :)

    -dk
    • Meh, I just play the games online. No need to clean the NES or replace the connector [see sig :]

      • Re:No thanks... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by zeno_2 ( 518291 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @06:52AM (#5293477)
        Meh, I have a better idea. First lets skip the step of going to your webpage and registering to *borrow* files from you. Next step, go to a page that has nes roms (you can't feel that bad about downloading them, they are old =), download them, and have the ability to play anytime you want, online or not =P
        • Next step, go to a page that has nes roms (you can't feel that bad about downloading them, they are old =)
          If you already own the game you are downloading, then I can agree with you, so don't bother reading further. However, if you don't...

          Maybe you don't feel bad, but you should. Just because the games are old doesn't give you any more rights to the game than if you download whatever game came out yesterday. People always treat old games as abondonware. They have been saying for years that original NES games should be fair game for downloading since they aren't sold anymore. Well guess what...now Nintendo has a market for the original NES games. Many are part of the Animal Crossing game, and many are available for purchase as cards for the E-Reader for the GBA. Nintendo has every right to these games, and suddenly all the people tyring to justify downloading these games has had their only real justification shot down.
          • Maybe you don't feel bad, but you should. Just because the games are old doesn't give you any more rights to the game than if you download whatever game came out yesterday. People always treat old games as abondonware. They have been saying for years that original NES games should be fair game for downloading since they aren't sold anymore. Well guess what...

            You are right, Nintendo does still get value from its old ROMs...they love including them as pack-ins to "modern versions" of games to, from DK64 w/ Arcade DK, Excitebike 64 w/ Excitebike, and Metroid in a combo of Metroid Prime and Fusion.

            Though I don't know if the third party games will get similar treatment...but I guess the point is you don't know.

            (Of course emulators are probably more fun than this, adding in state save as well as the 'one stop shopping' approach.)

            So people shouldn't feel totally free to ROM it up, though if they support efforts where the license holder is making money off the ROMs (like the recent Activision stuff for PS2, and Nintendo's games) maybe they don't have to feel all bad.
          • My point being is that this system of *borrowing* the games isn't any better then downloading the roms. If you go and play these games online, your still taking that market share away from Nintendo and Animal Crossing (which I own btw). So, if you can live with yourself for doing that, you may as well go and download the rom and not go to some page and register an account with them to *borrow* the games for a certain time.

  • The Games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:27AM (#5293173)
    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.
  • or did that soldering job look super shady? You might be better off buying that game genie afterall...

  • Drill the screws out... (Score:5, Funny)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:30AM (#5293181) Homepage Journal
    you may have to drill the screws out and get some new ones

    Will this void the warranty?

    --sex [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Drill the screws out... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      warranties dont last forever...

      [alexchiu.com]
      Help me become Immortal!!!
  • What do I need a NES for I'll just play on my SNES, N64 or GC instead!!!!! hahahahhaa

    Okay I admit I have no NES!!! And it's bothering me every day *sniff*
  • River City Ransom was the BEST. You are going double dragon style to rescue Alex's girlfriend. It rocks. It's real fun too!
    • damn right. throwing in the stat-building qualities into the game were a stroke of genius. just last week I downloaded a NES emulator, just to play that game. it's still just as much as fun as when I used to go over to my friend's house everyday after school.

  • Try just cleaning it first (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saturn49 ( 536831 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:32AM (#5293188)
    Before you dig out your soldering iron, try this first. Clean all your cartriges with your favorite cartrige cleaner and some isopropol alcohol. Then take your Nintendo apart, and clean that motherboard connector the same way. Now clean all the pins in that big, strange looking black connector with something flat, slightly abrasive, lint-free, and some more isopropol alcohol. Use some really fine grit sandpaper if you have to.

    Now put the whole thing back together and forget about solder. Usually the insides just need to be cleaned, as the copper oxidizes slowly over time.

    I turned an almost useless Nintendo into one that worked perfectly in under an hour at no cost.

    • That's true; I had my NES for a great many years before selling it off & all it ever took was a good cleaning with alcohol :] I gave up on that, though & just started playing them online, tho. No more connectors to replace or anything [see sig :]

    • Re:Try just cleaning it first (Score:5, Funny)

      by muffen ( 321442 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @06:00AM (#5293384)
      I turned an almost useless Nintendo into one that worked perfectly in under an hour at no cost.

      Where did you get the free alcohol, cause I'd like some :)
    • 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...

    • This method does usually NOT work, because the main problem isn't corrosion but the fact that the connector pins (the ones that get in touch with the cart) bend a bit, over the years. The solution is to use a very tiny screwdriver or a needle to (carefully) bend those pins in the correct position again, as this nice article explains. [classicgaming.com]

      But of corse, the best is to buy a new Nintendo-style edge connector, as someone noted above.

  • There's an easier way (Score:5, Informative)

    by DarKrow ( 252112 ) <rich.sanspoint@com> on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:33AM (#5293192) Homepage
    And you can still load from the front!

    How To Repair Your NES [classicgaming.com]

  • No more Blow and Pray! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tha_Zanthrax ( 521419 ) <slashdot.zanthrax@nl> on Thursday February 13, 2003 @04:34AM (#5293195) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • What I used to do (Score:2, Informative)

    by offpath3 ( 604739 )
    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?

    • Re:What I used to do (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )
      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.
  • See, back in 1993, I told you to get one of them top-loading NES's. They were selling for only $50. But NOOOOOOO, you said your old box version was doing just fine. Now, ten years later, who's system still works perfectly? Hmmm? Serves you right.

    (Of course, I never use the thing. Emulators and all. Wonder how much I could sell it for on e-bay...)

  • Tinning the leads (Score:5, Informative)

    by anethema ( 99553 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:01AM (#5293248) Homepage
    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.

  • Or... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Quixotic137 ( 26461 )
    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

  • As Reliable? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Duds ( 100634 ) <dudley.enterspace@org> on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:13AM (#5293278) Homepage Journal
    Now you can make your 8Bit NES as reliable as your linux kernel.

    Believe me, my NES is EXACTLY as reliable as my linux kernal.

    Now if you'll excuse me I'll be attempting to get the fscking thing to survive a boot sequence...

  • I cannot believe you posted this "story" ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by syukton ( 256348 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:21AM (#5293301)
    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.

  • My Favorite Hobby (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:41AM (#5293340) Journal
    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"!!!).
  • When the games don't work, most people blow and pray... and shove the game in as hard and far back as possible...

    I've found that the easiest ways to get games to load good as new is to just not push it in all the way...

    Push it just so that you can feel the game has "made contact" inside the system and everything should be good to go.. (this is cause most of the time the part worn out is the "root" of the connector inside)

    It'll be like brand new... or atleast for another 5 years until you wear out the tips of the connector...)
    • Yeah my friends and I used to use that trick, about the only one that worked.

      You push the cartridge in and down at the same time, as soon as the cartridge clears the inside lip on the case it'll click down into position. At that point it usually worked.

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by muffen ( 321442 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @05:57AM (#5293377)
    Now you can make your 8Bit NES as reliable as your linux kernel.

    Guess I shouldn't try this then... just recompiled my kernel and now it won't boot :(
  • I once used a screw driver and pliers to pull out each and every one of thoes metal connectors out of the plastic 'U' frame, filed, bent, and reinserted them. (I'm not kidding).

  • Coming soon (Score:2, Funny)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 )
    Next week on Slashdot ...

    I repair my ancient 4x CD Rewriter using some meths, a couple of cotton bud, a death metal CD and a hacksaw ... and you all get to see the pictures!

  • My PSX has only one of the ball bearings left, and even then it often falls out when the CD is removed. Half of the games don't work right unless (strangely) the PSX is on its side or upside-down - when they do load, it's unsettling to see Kunimitsu teleport randomly around the arena and end up with the polygons for her hair through the ground, while Law's finds his arms are on backwards. I'm sure I'm not the only owner of a borked PSX!

    Hows about a conversion to let a PSX use a standard dirt-cheap CD drive?
    • 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.

  • Legacy to the durability of the NES (Score:5, Funny)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @06:39AM (#5293461) Homepage Journal
    I once had a NES that was thrown 40' over the edge of a deck of a house that sat on a steep hillside.

    Crushed by this abuse of my baby, I picked her up and carried her inside, I had spent so many a hours with her and metroid, amungst other games.

    Upon openening the case, I noticed that the PCB had cracked near the AV out panel, across only 3 traces. I found some blue wire wrap wire and began carefully soldering the 3 traces.

    After slapping what was left of the case back together, I put in a cartridge and pressed the power button. Sucess as I turned up the volume to annoy my father with my victory over his rage on my defensless nintendo.
    **Shudders**

  • Off but On Topic... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @07:07AM (#5293502) Homepage
    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.
    • >> there is a high demand for used DVD mechanisms taken out of broken XBoxes

      This is largely because kids who mod their xboxes believe a bunch of mumbo jumbo about different makes of DVDS (xbox uses models from phillips, samsung and thomson) play CD-R/DVD-R better than others. The scuttlebut is Samsung is the best, then Phillips, then Thomson. I've seen no difference personally.

      If you're pretty sure your xbox works and its just the drive, sell it on eBay. You should get a few bucks. Someone like me would buy it, mod it, replace the XDVD with a regular PC DVD and go off running copied^H^H^H^H linux on it. You could do this yourself (mod xbox, replace old DVD with PC DVD), but it wont play original xbox games anymore.

      Anyhow, on topic. I'm not convinced that Xbox or PS2 fail any more than the old NES's did. If your NES died back in the day you didn't have the ability to go online and see how many others did. Global community and all that. In NES days you knew only about the other NES's in your community. But you can hear ever Xbox story worldwide.

      Frankly 99.9% of the 'broken xbox' stories involve a 13 year old, no common sense, and traces lifted off the motherboard while installing a modchip.
      • I don't know. The whole "moving parts" thing always worried me with the PS2. In general it is easier to make something last a long time when there are no moving parts involved. Like most posters in here have said, most of the time an old 8 bit NES can be made to work again by just cleaning off the contacts; and it was poorly designed by modern standards. will the spindle motor on my PS2 still be good after 10 or 20 years? That's a big if. It is not encouraging to remember that I've seen many many old CD-ROM drives (except the 1x drives for some reason) with dead spindle motors, especially the 2 and 4x drives.
    • In all fairness (and I agree that the Xbox quality control needs some serious help), a mechanism that involves spinning a disk at high RPM has a much shorter MTBF than one that has no moving parts (like a cartridge system). When was the last time you heard somebody complaining that the RAM in their computer had failed?
  • For games like Final Fantasy or Zelda, you probably will need to replace the cartridge battery [planetnintendo.com]
  • What is up with the top loading NES??? I bought one of these a while back (about 4 or 5 years ago I think). Wasn't a big deal, was real cheap (like 40 bucks or so).

    Are people trying to get ahold of them??? Are they rare?

    Sometimes I just dont get why old stuff is popular.

    Derek

    • Re:Top Loading??? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by curtisk ( 191737 )
      Yes, they are hard to come by, at least in the US. There weren't a whole lot of them made, and like many ppl here have pointed out, they still had their old NES, why should I by this new "odd looking" one?!?


      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
      • The toploading NES had no composite port. Instead, you had to re-add the composite and audio mono hookups via a complicated hardware hack. I once saw a webpage that showed how do to it.

        However, when you consider that a NES GameGenie will also fix these troubles for far less $$, it really doesn't matter :)
  • I did this, it took ten minutes, and it runs absolutely flawlessly.
    1. Order a replacement 72-pin connector [mcmelectronics.com] from MCM electronics. Go ahead and slashdot them, but BUY ONE. If enough people buy them, hopefully they'll keep making them.
    2. If you don't have one, order one of these tookits [mcmelectronics.com] too. You'll need some of the bits to open your NES without destroying it, and it's got lots of insanely useful other bits too.
    3. Take your NES apart, carefully, and replace the connector. It's all screws once you're past the cover. Take a few digital photos along the way so you can back up if you get lost. It's not hard.
    4. Be happy.
    I'd invite you over to Nintendo Hockey, but that game as a fatal flaw: I can't be beaten at it. Oh well.
  • I picked up two of those top loading nintendo's at a garage sale for $10!

    There really slick, however they've got their own little quirks.

    I've since sold one of them, but they both needed to have a little wedge of paper crammed behind the cartridge, otherwise you'd get the GGSOD, "Grey Gibberish Screen Of Death"

    BTW, mines not for sale...

  • Blowing & Praying (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zanthany ( 166662 ) on Thursday February 13, 2003 @10:15AM (#5293991) Journal
    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? :-)
    • Yeah, I remember trying (and failing) to convince others of this problem.

      My aunt ran one of those ANRS shops--fixed Nintendos and video cameras down in Texas. We got Star Fox for the SNES a week before it was released to the general public! I remember a story she told me about a guy who took a *HAMMER* to his NES and a Genesis cart, trying to get them to go together... she had to send that one along to the corporate repair shop, where they declined to fix it and just sent him a replacement unit instead.

      Jouster

  • question. (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_real_tigga ( 568488 ) <[nephros] [at] [users.sourceforge.net]> on Thursday February 13, 2003 @11:06AM (#5294341) Journal
    Can someone please take their time to explain to me why the words "linux" and "kernel" are contained in the above post?

    The only explanation I can think of is those words automagically alter the probability of acception and posting of ones` submission to slashdot, in much the same way the words FREE and ENLARGEMENT alter the probability of e-mail ending up at /dev/null.

    But procmail does not get paid to do that.

    ???
    • Can someone please take their time to explain to me why the words "linux" and "kernel" are contained in the above post?

      The only explanation I can think of is those words automagically alter the probability of acception and posting of ones` submission to slashdot, in much the same way the words FREE and ENLARGEMENT alter the probability of e-mail ending up at /dev/null.

      It's natural that they should go together. When you said FREE and ENLARGEMENT, I automatically thought of downloading and compiling the latest Linux kernel.

  • What more can you say about this utterly usedless mod but:

    "Imagine a Beowold Cluster of these in Soviet Russia!!" Don't forget to tip the waitress on the way out :)
  • You lose the composite out, and it's not any more reliable than the classic model.

    How can I say that? It's simple, you need to go get a NES GameGenie. If you're unfamiliar with it, the added 3.5 inches/8.75 cm makes it so you can't push the cartridge down. The benefit of this is that you get a nice, solid connection every time you push it into the unit. My NES became practically useless to use without the GameGenie in 1992, but with the GameGenie I've never had a problem.

    So, save yourself either time (the time to fix in this article), the money (a top loading NES is not worth 150$ CDN), and the composite out (because top loading NES is RF only!), and just get a GameGenie.
  • I still have my original Nintendo.....and I never have had to blow & pray...even to this day it works perfectly. In fact, I remember back in the day hearing that blowing on your cartridges was actually a bad thing to do.

    Yes, mine still works great, granted my mother was a clean-freak, so take it w/ a grain of salt
  • ... never had an nes, but did have a Sega Master System & Sega Genesis.. Maybe I'd still play them, except almost all the controllers are dead. :(. Anyone have tips for reviving those parts?

  • I don't know if you know about this game called Animal Crossing [ign.com] for the Gamecube. It has a kiddy title, and a kiddy appearance, but ANYONE who plays it know how much it rules! AND... as a bonus, there are tons of hidden NES games in it! Punch-Out, Pinball, Ice Climber, etc. Others are RUMORED to be there too (Zelda, SMB, etc).
  • Thanks to a good cleaning. The edge connector on the motherboard is mostly to blame, it gets corroded over time. The actual pin connector that makes contact with the cart is actually very durable, none of my pins have bent to the point of no connection despite this unit being 15 years old.

    Some suggestions to get your unit working:

    1. USE AN ERASER. YOU MUST, -MUST- DO THIS.
    Smirk if you will, but erasers have been the #1 most effective way I've found for getting corrosion off conductive surfaces. When you open the NES to clean the edge connector, use these before you use any chemicals.

    Even better, you can use erasers to clean up your cart pins just by running the side of a pencil eraser along your cart's pins. You can use the pencil to reach down in there, so you don't even have to remove the plastic case.

    2. Still having games with flashing green screens at boot? Use the friction between the pin connector and the cartridge to your advantage. Since this is a metal-on-metal connection, you can use the two connectors to cut through the grime.

    Insert the cartridge so that it's not quite seated in the back and push it down so it locks in and the pins bite down on it. Now, if you push hard, you can still move the cartridge forward just a little. Without removing it, carefully push it forward. It should move all of a few millimeters, but that much friction between the two will cut through corrosion on both the cart and the pin connectors.

    You should be able to make games work more often on the first try with this trick, although admittedly it may not be good for the long-term life of the connectors.
  • What I'd like to see is an NES controller mod for the dreamcast. NesterDC is extremely mature, and can play most games with no problems whatsoever. That way, you can shove the entire NES library on a CD and you don't have to worry about dead batteries (the VMU will still save games without batteries.) The only real problem is that the DC's controller blows.

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