The Legend of Zelda NES PCB Royally Jacked

[xelement5x]

So I went to my local thrift and the other day and picked up some NES games, and I was delighted for find a copy of the original Legend of Zelda for the NES cheap. I figured what the heck and dropped it in my stack and took it home. Doing my normal post-purchase game check I'll open the cart and clean the PCB and contacts before testing. All my games were fine except this copy of Zelda, which was insane looking:


Legend of Zelda NES PCB Front Damaged by xelement5x, on Flickr


Legend of Zelda NES PCB Back Damaged by xelement5x, on Flickr

Wowser! The cart looks perfectly fine though, I'm not sure what happened here to the PCB since it looks like a combination of corrosion and water damage. I've thought about cleaning it up, but I almost wonder if it's even worth the effort. Any ideas/suggestions on what might revive this mighty copy?

[bb_hood]

Does it work as it is? If so, I would just leave it alone. If it doesnt work I dont see how it would be fixable.

[staxx]

The traces look good, the battery needs to be replaced and most likely at least one of the caps. It's not that difficult to replace the caps. The roms seem fine. You may want to just use rubbing alcohol to clean up all the dirt and try it first.

[BlastProcessing402]

Looks like someone dropped it in a mud puddle, then just cleaned up the casing (which isn't pictured buy you say looks fine) so no one would think twice before buying it.

[omp!]

Battery has leaked and the gasses has stuffed a few items, replacing them would be the key

[bust3dstr8]

That thing has some serious hurt going on. The corrosion is bad enough that
it has traveled through the components and has damaged the joints on the
other side. Desolering corroded parts is a bitch. You would probally need acid
cleaner to disolve the corrosion, so you could remove and replace the parts.

Unless don't mind spending the time on something that still may not work after cleaned
.... just take a hammer to it and put the thing out of its misery.

[xelement5x]

Well I figured I had nothing to do today anyway so I decided to take a crack at this after the original post. Here's the result:


Legend of Zelda NES PCB Front; Fixed! by xelement5x, on Flickr

After a generous amount of rubbing alcohol (91%) on many of the spots, a lot of the corrosion came up and the PCB looked a lot cleaner. However, some of the damage was already done in that the component in D1 (right below the battery) had corroded through.

I touched up a couple of the solder spots on the other side that were the worst and did a little continuity checking. The battery was also dead, but since I didn't have anything to replace it with I just left it as is.

I thought about trying to bridge D1 with some solder, but having touched up its spots on the other side already the gap between the broken parts was pretty big and there was almost nothing left on one side near the diode to solder to.

Deciding I didn't want to go to Radio Shack, I pulled out a junk PCB and desoldered a diode from it, stuck it on the board, and decided to give the game a whirl to see if it was working now.

Much to my surprise, everything seemed to work! There was even an iota of charge in the battery after I started, so I was able to create a game and come back to it after shutting off the system. I'm not very confident about the data persisting for long, so when I get some coin cell holders I might slap one in for future posterity.

Not bad for a couple of wasted hours! But I hardly feel like I would trust this copy to a full playthrough!

[bust3dstr8]

Nice save...that's some real dedication for a common cart.

Is that the same battey? If so, you should probally replace it.

[APE992]

Nice. It looked worse than it actually was for sure.

Even if it is common there is no need to let something perfectly good go in the trash.

[xelement5x]

Yeah, I had a half-day that day so I decided to give refurbing it a whirl since I'd never done so before. I've never ran into a cart that looked this bad before so I figure at best I'd get it fixed, at worst I'd be out a $1 from the thrift and my time. Though, now I've grown oddly attached to it :P