Earthbound cartridge (snes) suddenly stopped booting.

[Beakman]

After trying to find this game for years, I finally bit the bullet and bought a cartridge on ebay. The cartridge I received took a number of tries to get it to boot up (but most snes games do), but once it booted, it worked fine and the previous owner's save was still on the cart.

Two weeks later, I get around to actually starting my own game on the cart. I play up to the first save point, save my game, turn the system off and back on to make sure my save was still on there (it was) and continue playing.

About 20 minutes later, the game violently glitches out and freezes. The graphics and sound garbled for a split second then the screen went black, music continued to play normally, but the game was frozen (nothing I did on the controller was making any in game noises or anything).

I turned it off, and back on. Nothing. I kept trying this and 1 out of the hundreds of times I booted it, it made it to the very first nintendo logo and stuck there. I've already tried most of the obvious solutions. I opened the cart, cleaned the contacts (which were already pretty clean) tried the game on both a model 1 and model 2 snes, etc. Also, I can still get plenty of other carts to boot on this same snes.

I'm willing to go to any lengths to get this cartridge working. Here are pictures of the board:





2 things to note:

The ends of the contacts (the parts that actually touch the snes contacts) are silver colored instead of copper.
on the side of the board without the battery and chips, there is a small pink splotch on the trace going from the 11th contact from the left. It's right after the trace turns 90 degrees. I have no idea what this tiny pink splotch is or if it would actually effect anything.

Like I said, I'm willing to go to any length to get this to work. I also have a soldering iron and a multimeter.

Thank you!

[bust3dstr8]

Check resistance of the traces from the edge connector to the components. Look for bad solder joints. You might as well change the cap while it's open too.

If those all check out fine, probe the enables and I/O pins of the SRAM and ROM.

[dendawg]

on the side of the board without the battery and chips, there is a small pink splotch on the trace going from the 11th contact from the left. It's right after the trace turns 90 degrees. I have no idea what this tiny pink splotch is or if it would actually effect anything.

Like I said, I'm willing to go to any length to get this to work. I also have a soldering iron and a multimeter.

Thank you!

Have you done a continuity check on that trace? Sounds like a good starting point.

[Beakman]

I just borrowed the multimeter from a friend (I've never used one before) so I'm just now learning how to use the thing. There are like 20 different settings and I have no clue which to use to test an snes cart, and what kind of readings would indicate a good trace or bad trace.

I'm reading up on how to use it now.

[Beakman]

I'm checking out all these traces with the multimeter and they all seem fine. Is there any visual indicators of damage that I can be looking for?

Also, is there anything that can cause a cart to be 100% non fixable?

Given the context of how this game stopped working (sudden violent glitch), is there any obvious troubleshooting path I should go down stemming from that?

[fluid_matrix]

Wasn't there an issue with the game doing that if it were a bootleg? I remember reading/seeing that somewhere I thought.

[Beakman]

Wasn't there an issue with the game doing that if it were a bootleg? I remember reading/seeing that somewhere I thought.

No. There are a lot of other piracy checks that Earthbound uses, but none of them are even close to this, and none of them would cause the game not to boot.

[xelement5x]

This is a really basic starter, but have you tried cleaning the contacts as well? They look pretty dirty/worn from those pictures you posted.

[fluid_matrix]

No. There are a lot of other piracy checks that Earthbound uses, but none of them are even close to this, and none of them would cause the game not to boot.

OK, thanks for the info. I knew I had heard something about that before, but didn't know if this was related.

[Beakman]

This is a really basic starter, but have you tried cleaning the contacts as well? They look pretty dirty/worn from those pictures you posted.

Yes.

The pictures don't show it very well, but the discoloration is actually a shiny silver where the copper/gold has faded away.

Though when I use a multimeter to test the contacts, and place one probe on that silver, it still tests just fine. I assume this also means that the system can connect and receive signals through the worn away copper/gold just fine as well, right?

[Beakman]

WELL...

looks like I'm an idiot.

I had cleaned the contacts with an eraser multiple times, even though I didn't think the contacts were the problem in the first place, and also because I thought I didn't have any rubbing alcohol in the house. I asked my wife if we had any and sure enough, we had like 4 bottles.

Did a very simple cleaning of the contacts with 70% rubbing alcohol, dried them off, stuck it in, and the game booted beautifully on the 2nd try.

This is such a relief. I was fully prepared to start desoldering everything on the board if necessary.

However, my save game was gone, but that's to be expected when constantly flicking the power on and off and jostling / probing the battery.

Thank you everyone for your help.



EDIT: well, I'm not 100% in the clear yet.

I played the cart for about 2 minutes and it froze and won't boot again. At least I know it's not 100% destroyed though.

I'm thinking that maybe the pins in the snes need to be bent into place. The game is fairly loose when it goes in. I noticed on some of my other carts, the PCB board at the bottom is ever so slightly thicker (I've been testing this with megaman x) and that they feel snug when inserted, and boot 100% of the time.

So maybe the not 100% dry rubbing alcohol was causing the cartridge to connect to the system because of the liquid between them? This is my best guess as of now. I ordered a screwdriver bit to open the snes (I had been using the melted pen trick to get my carts apart) so I'll be able to open the snes up and bend those pins when it arrives.

[Beakman]

I think I've partially confirmed my theory about the pins inside the snes not being snug. I took the front half of the cartridge off, inserted it into the snes, then applied slight pressure to the board, to force the contacts to be snug against the snes pins, and it boots 100% of the time doing that. As soon as you let off pressure, the game goes black.

So, now I need to know if there is a good guide for opening the snes and bending these pins into place or if you even need to open the snes at all to do this.

[Beakman]

Another update:

I took a pencil eraser and cut it to the size I needed and wedged it inside of the cartridge so that the closed cartridge pushes the eraser slightly onto the board which then forces the contacts to touch properly.


This makes the game work absolutely fine, but I know its not the proper solution, nor is it probably very good for the game.

So I'm going to play the game like this for now. I would still like to know the proper safe solution for my problem though, so if anyone knows a good way to re-bend the pins in the system, or if there is an easy way to replace the entire 62 pin connector, let me know. (I hear different snes models have vastly different ways in which the pins connect to the snes board, and in some models each individual pin is soldered to the board)

[Shulamana]

Yeah there's at least two types of connectors I know of, one that solders in and another that is more of a "cartridge" connector that screws down directly on top of another connector that is soldered directly to the board. Replacement ones that solder in are pretty easy to find, but I've never actually come across the "cartridge" type except for refurbished/used ones.

Have you tried cleaning the cartridge slot itself? I have heard people recommend wrapping some soft, lint-free cloth around the edge of a credit card, wetting it with alcohol and then gently rubbing it in and out of the slot. After you do that make sure to pick out any threads other foreign matter that might have been left inside with a pair of tweezers.

[Beakman]

Yeah there's at least two types of connectors I know of, one that solders in and another that is more of a "cartridge" connector that screws down directly on top of another connector that is soldered directly to the board. Replacement ones that solder in are pretty easy to find, but I've never actually come across the "cartridge" type except for refurbished/used ones.

Have you tried cleaning the cartridge slot itself? I have heard people recommend wrapping some soft, lint-free cloth around the edge of a credit card, wetting it with alcohol and then gently rubbing it in and out of the slot. After you do that make sure to pick out any threads other foreign matter that might have been left inside with a pair of tweezers.

Yeah, I tried that exact method of cleaning the slot but it didn't make a difference. This is definitely an issue of loose pins. Same issue that every NES has.