NES repair/maintenance help

[FrankSerpico]

I purchased a first gen top loading NES around two months ago and its been wildly inconsistent with regard to which cartridges it will play. I think it's a problem with the console and not the cartridges themselves, as I have been able to get each cartridge I own to boot up at least once, sometimes after excessive q-tip cleaning. Also, its cartridge slot is harder than average to remove carts from. When it arrived, it had an SMB3 cartridge inserted which was quite hard to remove, leading me to believe it could have been left in the system for a number of years without being removed, which I know can cause issues. Are there any "home remedy" type repairs any of you are aware of that could maybe help with this problem, or at least help me ascertain whether the problem is with the NES or the games themselves, or should I just bite the bullet and drive the 30 or so miles to the nearest good used game store and let them have a look at it?

[leatherrebel5150]

Most common ways to solve the issue
-get yourself some security bits-
Open and clean the contacts on the games
Open Nes and dsable lockout/ possibly get replacement pin connector

[Cornelius]

Most common ways to solve the issue
-get yourself some security bits-
Open and clean the contacts on the games
Open Nes and dsable lockout/ possibly get replacement pin connector

For a toploader a replacement pin connector is pretty much out of the question, unless I'm confused about which unit he has. I'd recommend the same thing I do for cleaning a toaster's pins and posted in someone's thread yesterday.

And there is no substitute for opening games to clean the contacts as leather says. q-tip/alcohol just isn't that great.

[leatherrebel5150]

Ah, I didn't read it right thought he was talking about a toaster, my bad.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

When you say "first gen toploading" NES I asume you mean the 'toaster' style NES-001 where you place the games in horizontally?

A number of things:

disable the lockout chip. The NES-10 lockout chip was originally intended to prevent third party devlopers from making their own games and selling them without Nintendo's royalty fees, seal of quality and permission. The ONLY thing it does is stop you from playing your games. It's a very very finicky chip. All you need to do is open your NES up, locate the NES-10 chip, take a pair of wire cutters and clip pin 4 and then solder it to ground. Its super easy to do this. Just google "disable NES-10" or something like that.

a tight ZIF cartridge connector is actually much more preferable to a loose one. It's just like a pair of shoes. New shoes will be tight on your feet but old warn out ones will be loose.

make sure your game cartridges are CLEAN before ever putting them into your system. If you don't have one already, go on ebay and buy yourself a Nintendo gamebit for a standard screwdriver. This will allow you to open NES/SNES/N64/GameBoy game cartridges. Take the shells off, and then clean both sides of the cartridge contacts. I wrote a tutorial on how to most effectively do this: http://satoshimatrix.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/how-to-clean-cartridge-contacts/

[Rickstilwell1]

nobody ships a toploader with a game already inserted. that's just silly cause the game would stick out really far. You must mean a front loader.

[Cornelius]

Ah, I didn't read it right thought he was talking about a toaster, my bad.

Kinda looks like you were right, now that I look again, but it is hard to be sure what he means. Either way, I don't recommend replacing the 72 pin connector until thorough cleaning and a careful refurb fail.

[Rickstilwell1]

Yeah the lockout chip seems to be more of a problem than the connector pins actually are.

[FrankSerpico]

Yeah, sorry I meant front loading sorry for the brain fart I'd had a long night when I posted that. Anyway, thanks for the help I have a friend who has some soldering skills and I'm gonna get that NES-10 chip out of the way ASAP