NES Restoration/MOD Part 2

So back in April I posted about dusting off the old NES, sanding off the spray paint, changing the power light color and other fun things of that nature.  With regards to "restoration" after studying the sanded down NES shell I decided to buy a broken NES and steal the plastic shell for my old NES.  Remember back in the "NES Toaster MOD" post we talked about the main design flaw of the original NES was the 72 pin cartridge reader.  Thankfully these 72 pin cart readers can be purchased new on the net for about five to ten dollars.  To the left are some pictures showing the removal of the 72 pin cart reader from the NES motherboard and cleaning.  Back in the day, they sold cleaning kits to take care of this, but those things are dried and gone. All you need to do is find something that’s 1/16” thick (like a scrap of engraving plastic or the edge

of a circuit board) that you can cover with a thin, tough cloth (like a baby wipe or a shirt you don’t like), soak it with some rubbing alcohol and cram it between the connectors. In this case I used an extremely small jewelers' screwdriver which I personally do NOT recommend because it may scratch and damage the contacts. Rub back and forth, and you’ll pick up a lot of dirt and grime.  Also, these pins do stretch out over time and don't fit as snugly on the game cartridge as they used too.  This problem is the second leading cause of the blinking power light /solid yellow screen / console not working issue.  To resolve this either replace the 72 pin cartridge reader as mentioned before or perform a little maintenance.  Simply stick a pin or extremely small jewelers' screwdriver under each pin and pry it up a ways. Do this for the entire bottom row.  It should fit very tightly and be quite firm.

 -kaokensho