Super Famicom - Display Corrupt

[cj_uk]

Hi, I thought I'd dig out my SFC from the loft after over 20 years in storage. When I try it I find that the audio is fine but the video is corrupt. The two screenshots are using Super Castlevania, the blue one is the Konami startup screen and the next is the title screen. I've tried all my cartridges and they are all the same, audio ok but corrupt video. I'm using a NTSC RGB scart to my TV. Hope someone can help, many thanks

[Niku-Sama]

my guess on that one is probably caps.

I was encountering similar problems on a SNES here state side and I tried everything short of that, I had even tried a new 7805 regulator because I had one lying around and while the new one was better it was the nail in the coffin for what ever cap was bad because it flickered on and went off and then nothing came back on again after that.
I thought the fuse had blown but I have continuity across it still so that wasn't it. it was encountering other problems too but if you have sound you'd probably get by with only having to replace the video caps but it would probably be best to do them all at once.

I'm seeing increasingly that SNES/SFCs are increasingly finicky and theres no rhyme or reason as to why some of them go bad and some don't.

I recently got a SFC for a buck plus shipping, when I got it, it turned out to be a release model with the SHVC sound module and it works fine. the SNES I was talking about above I got years ago, just recently tried it out because I wanted to use its guts in a new project since the case was yellowed and brittle beyond repair and it had the problem your describing. the SNES was a good 4 years newer too... go fig

[APE992]

my guess on that one is probably caps.
....

I'm seeing increasingly that SNES/SFCs are increasingly finicky and theres no rhyme or reason as to why some of them go bad and some don't.


Why do people guess caps every time? There are very few caps inside the SNES to start with and while the culprit for SegaCD and GameGear consoles is typically caps not everything is caps! I get people want to be helpful and offer advice but parroting the "caps are bad, caps are baad, polly want a cracker" routine is frustrating. And there is a rhyme or reason the problem is that most "modders" are just that, modders. They exchange information and help each other out but what they're not are engineers. An engineer would probably be able to narrow an issue like this down quickly and offer a possibility. I'm far from an engineer but I also realize my limitations and freely admit that it's my own shortcomings that prevent me from seeing the why and how of failure.

This is probably a bad trace or bad IC. Given the audio is fine but the video isn't I'd be checking out the traces between the VRAM and everything else. The VRAM could be bad as well. Assuming the game still plays properly it's likely limited to just this. No guarantees on that but if everything else works peachy it stands to reason it's strictly a video component causing the problem. I don't think the PPU is at fault here, however.

[Niku-Sama]

Because increasingly SFC/SNES have caps that are bad