Quote Originally Posted by George1 View Post
So I bought a "for parts" SNES on craigslist...

*SNIP*

There was also something rattling around inside: a 22uF electrolytic capacitor with only a few mm of its legs left. Didn't look like that ones on the board. I looked it up and the SNES doesn't use a capacitor like that. Weird.
I recently had a similar experience finding odd objects in a potentially-junked SNES console. I picked this up at a thrift store "as-is" with no power/av/other connections. It had some damage to the front of the case and rattled a bit. I took a gamble, but I thought for sure it would be dead. After I opened it up, I found about 10 beads (some bigger with letters) from what must have been a broken bracelet, a penny, and pieces of the case inside. It was unwilling to die and fired right up!

I hope you can find out what the problem is, George1. It seems certain that someone tampered with it or planned to. Is there any debris on the board? I wish I had some solid guidance to give to remediate this problem...