What Color Does Your NES Taunt You With?

[Daria]

I have never had a faulty Nintendo product

Really? You're lucky, since pretty much every NES unit ever made has developed the "blinky" problem ...

Flack's post got me thinking- well not quite true I've wondered about it before but his post reminded me to actually make the topic. There's another user here whoes avie is an NES infront of a green blinking screen and I had a discussion with someone over vbender once and they didn't understand why I thought my copy of Princess tomato was busted because the opening screen is pure blue.

So basically... what color does your NES blink?

Nearly every NES I've owned has blinked a cerulean blue but I've occasionally seen pink and light grey.

[Bratwurst]

I have a deck that flashes yellow and a deck that flashes gray.

[imanerd0011]

Well... if you install a new 72 pin in your NES, it won't give you any colors anymore. But you can keep it the way it is, if you enjoy the light show that you get everytime you turn on your NES. LOL

[SkiDragon]

Mine does different colors, Im pretty sure. I think it even blinks one color, then another.

[Daria]

Well... if you install a new 72 pin in your NES, it won't give you any colors anymore. But you can keep it the way it is, if you enjoy the light show that you get everytime you turn on your NES. LOL

It just wouldn't be nostalgia without it. :P

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

My NES is frequently on blue alert. LOL

[Sibs]

One flashes orange, yellow, and purple and the other one is blue.

[Nesmaster]

mine doesnt hardly, but on the occasion it does, its grey. i have had many other colors but grey is most common

[MegaDrive20XX]

Grey or Green is what I normally get with the NES systems I have had

[Jibbajaba]

Green here. And new 72 pin connectors suck.

Chris

[Richter Belmount]

grey or plain black , ggrrrr

[Funkenstein]

The one I had as a kid and both ones I've owned recently mocked me with alternating a lovely forest green and black, plus flashing the light on and off.

[EricRyan34]

PURPLE


The only color ever that blinks on my NES

[Emily]

Ive seen purple ,blue, green, & grey on one NES.

[max 330 mega]

My NES is a rainbow... the wierdest colors mine has ever shown are a hurl lime green and bright pink... lol

[sirgeoph]

oh, to be the owner of a top loader... :)

but my front-loader doesn't blink either...

but, as far as I know, it blinks different colors based on which pin isn't making contact... sort of like an error code for the nintendo techs.. so if yours blinks a lot of different colors, it could be the game... if it always blinks one color, its probably your 72-pin connector.

[cracked8ball]

Mine switches between forest green and gray

[NESaholic]

In the past years i've seen, pink,white,grey,dark grey,black.

[whoisKeel]

mine never blinks anymore, but i think it blinked grey.

you should 'refurbish' your pin connector over getting a new one...my new one started crapping out after a few months, then i cleaned out my old pin and put it back in and mine never blinks. check the restoration forums for info. and clean your games.

[Ed Oscuro]

My NES is frequently on blue alert. LOL
Did somebody say Big Blue?

http://satyap.csoft.net/satyap/images/ibm.png

[Cryomancer]

Grey. My original did pink and blue mostly I think.

[Garry Silljo]

Pink for my toaster, smooth sailing for my top loader.

[Lemmy Kilmister]

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:fDDBjYHYnBAJ:www.fourbysix.com/albums/commercialframes-JefferyZ/Z_Skittles_Final.sized.jpg


All the colors of the rainbow.

[jdc]

Bright blue.

[TRM]

Mine always did dark/olive green. However, once I changed the connector and disabled the lockout, it stopped.

[v1rich]

I think it is a function of the game you are trying to play and how well it is connected to the connector pin. You ever noticed that if you move the game around it will flash a new color or just garbled mess? My favorite (NOT) is when it is garbled mess or when the game locks up after some amount of game play.

[Kejoriv]

Before, I fixed my Nes, it use to flash pink.

[AB Positive]

Mine sees a red door and it wants it painted black.

-AG

[joshnickerson]

Mine sees a red door and it wants it painted black.

-AG

Classic. :)

[Nez]

GRAY! DAMN THAT COLOR!

[kainemaxwell]

Gray for me!

[rbudrick]

Mine was usually green, sometimes gray or blue (rarer).

Why has no one here but me seen brown? Am I the only one....relatively common for me.

On rare occasions I will see pink...I might have seen red before, but I'm not sure...I think I did with my Game Action Replay in.

Oh yeah, and I've seen white quite a few times.

Maybe black a few times...

I've never seen purple, orange or yellow, as far as I know...

-Rob

[DigitalSpace]

I don't own an NES now, but the one I had when I was kid would flash between blue and black, and I recall seeing green and purple from time to time as well.

[slip81]

On occasion it flashes blue, but mostly it flashes light grey. But not so much anymore since I cleaned it.

[Richter]

no longer have my NES, but i remember it flashing either blue or orange

[Daria]

but, as far as I know, it blinks different colors based on which pin isn't making contact... sort of like an error code for the nintendo techs.. so if yours blinks a lot of different colors, it could be the game...

Oh.

So in other words my copies of Zelda and Ultima Exodus are pretty fucked? I'm surprised I didn't make that connection sooner. :P

[gamegirl79]

Mostly blue for me, but occasionally I'll get a title screen blink. Anyone else?

[The Manimal]

Title screen blink/scrambled screen sometimes...


My original shared NES with my bro: worked most of the time...I think it occasionally blinked a light gray.


The NES whose connector I broke refurbishing: Don't remember...


The NES I have right now which is blinking. GREEN.

[Ninja Blacksox]

Mine seems to blink the standard blue quite a bit...

...But I also get a bit of pink and off off-white. Taupe, perhaps?

-A Boy

[rpepper9]

Well... if you install a new 72 pin in your NES, it won't give you any colors anymore. But you can keep it the way it is, if you enjoy the light show that you get everytime you turn on your NES. LOL

What is a 72 Pin Connector and where can I get one? I have the blinking problem and I don't know what to do. :embarrassed:

[Sotenga]

The most common colors for me, if I recall, are light blue and light green, though I believe it has been yellow a few times, and rarely, a rich purple. Very recently, however, the damn things went apeshit on me when I was trying to play Strider (which is a cart that I should probably use rubbing alcohol on, now that I think of it), and it flashed through many colors rather quickly... that's not a good sign, is it?

[Gapporin]

My NES blinks periwinkle, mauve, fuchsia and emerald. Mine's pretty cultured.

(Or it could have been blue, brown, pink and green. I forget.)

[izret101]

Grey means no or screwed up video feed and black means the data can't be read off the cart.
I have seen damn near every color under the sun. Most common is green followed by blue.

[Dobie]

Ever since I cut the lockout, my NES doesn't blink. If there's a bad connection with the cart I just get a solid grey with no blink. Weird.

Before, it used to blink mostly a pink color, sometimes green.

[EnemyZero]

initially blue, then fades to a grey, but ive encountered green a few times before as well

[omnedon]

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46639

[XxMe2NiKxX]

I never get colours, just lots and lots of letters replacing sprites.

On another note, when loading a CD on my CDX, the screen will flash red, then green, then it'll work.

[Joelius]

Mine definatly throws out a neon green. Kinda like it too, very mesmorizing

[GarrettCRW]

My (now sold) NES blinked black and white. When I put dirty games in my AV Famicom (i.e., just about every new game I score), I get a solid and very ugly greenish black.

[alexkidd2000]

I wonder how many millions of gallons you would get if you collected all the spit that was blown into every blinking nes over the years?

[xelement5x]

Almost 10 year bump, but this was linked from another thread so I don't feel that bad doing so.

My childhood NES always flashed grey screens, my current beater does blue screen flashing regularly though if the carts aren't cleaned enough. I need to just bit the bullet and snip the 10pin lockout chip though.

[Daria]

My current NES was displaying solid grey for nearly every game I slid into it. But then I cleaned it and everything boots up fine.

[Natty Bumppo]

Mine does different colors, Im pretty sure. I think it even blinks one color, then another.

When I was doing my misspent youth in college gig I had to engage in mind expanding experimentation to get that effect. :devilish:

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

Olive green. I got my NES in 2006, so I have no idea when it was made.

[stardust4ever]

My NES always blinked solid white (except occasionally titles screens were momentarily visible) before I disabled the lockout years ago. Ever since then, power on gives solid white with nothing in it. My A/V Famicom displays light gray. My 2004 Yobo with swapped duty cycles displays blue. My 2010 FC Mobile II and my brand new Super Retro Trio display bright red. My Turbografx (which shares similar 6502 CPU architecture to the NES) typically displays a peachy yellow everytime it cold boots. My Atari displays vertical bars with random color values and occasional constant audio tone/buzz. The Atari VCS has different vertical bar patterns/colors/buzztone every time I switch it on, due to randomized registers in the TIA. No two boots are exactly alike.

My SNES, Genesis, and N64 always display solid black if they fail to boot or no cartridge loaded.

The colors are determined by the initial states of the CPU, PPU registers and RAM. Most electronics logic quickly create chaos when booted from an "off" state. When power is first applied, all logic is in a floating state which is invalid parameters. There is chaos for a few nanoseconds until all gates within the entire circuit settle into a valid and stable logic state. Most logic circuits, some gates will be slightly dominant over other gates, even within the same chip, so the nuances of individual systems will display different colors, but it is typically the same or similar state for the same system. Games contain boot code which sets all the registers during initialization and clears the random garbage by replacing it with useful data. Without this boot code, the system is stuck in a perpetual state of random 1s and 0s. Because no data is written to the PPU and all existing tiles are transparent, each pixel glows the same perpetual background color. Atari VCS operates differently, so the TIA gets booted to a random state and repeats the same scanline infinitely.

Rapidly bouncing the power switch will not allow ample time for the filter capacitors within the circuit to fully discharge, so the logic states get re-scrambled and typically change the output color compared to a cold boot. You won't damage the electronics by flicking the power but this seudo-random scrambling effect could potentially corrupt your save file if a cart with SRAM is inserted, hence the warning message on the back of cartridges which contain SRAM. The NES10 lockout reset cycle is not a hard power cycle but rather disables the CPU using the RESET line. Even so, the delay is long enough that the circuits are given time to rest, so most systems reinitialize and blink the same color each cycle.

[stardust4ever]

Wrong thread, sorry...