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The Un-Official Fix Your Console thread (Check the OP first)
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shooter21198  





Joined: 25 Jan 2008
Posts: 577
Location: Erie PA

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

can someone post how to clean the inside of an n64 because i'm looking to get it working again because i recently found a goldmine of N64 nostalgia
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds good! I just so happen to have both of those laying around so I can work on those next. Explain what do you need cleaned out with the N64? If you mean the whole inside, then you need to order yourself some Nintendo game bits. If you just need the cart slot cleaned, follow the same instructions as the NES cart slot cleaning directions, except you already have direct access to the cart slot itself. Oh and don't bend the pins.

Eventually I'll do every system that I own (which is a ton), including how to recalibrate your Vectrex monitor, how to refurbish your Atari 5200 controllers, and how to clean out your Intellivision. If you all are interested in some modifications too, I can type up some of those also. Nes controller to work on the Atari 2600 anyone?

Thank you for the kind words, and they will be just as good as the rest. I'm just a busy guy (I have my own work to do as well, currently modding a commodore 64 to work on a standard pc power supply), but I will get to them.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How to clean cartridges

There are several ways to clean cartridges, in order, from the easiest to most desperate. Of course, you go to the next step if your cart does not work using the previous method. First, what not to do.

Things NOT to use (aka, LOL methods that someone has tried):

Don't use any of these methods, and will explain if needed.

1. Do NOT blow into the cartridge. Yes it is a quick fix. Yes it does work temporarily. However, due to the moisture of you blowing onto the cartridge connectors, eventually, it *will* corrode the contacts, and you *will* have to use step 2 below to get your cart working again.

2. Armor All. Yes, one sad person used Armor All. They used it on the whole cartridge in fact. Nothing like a non working slippery cartridge.

3. Pledge. Yes I had someone try using furniture polish onto game contacts. Needed sandpaper to get the game working again.

Now, here is what you do to clean the cartridge.

1. Rubbing Alcohol and Q-Tips/make-up applicators (the smooth white things that women buy for their makeup, that look like q-tips). From now on, I'm just going to say q-tip, but its represented as both. You can also use Windex.

First off, take your q-tip and soak it with rubbing alcohol. Leave it soaked, and clean your cartridge by rubbing roughly on one side of the contacts. Next, take the cartridge, insert it into the cartridge slot of the console a couple times, in and out, quickly. Next, take the dry end, and rub again on the same side. Repeat until you see the dirt disappear from the q-tip. Once all the dirt is gone, go to the other side of the cartridge connectors.

2. 800 grit sandpaper

There must be some corrosion on the contacts if the game still does not boot. 800 grit sandpaper will polish those metal contacts right off, make them look shiny new. It *will* take off a tad of the pcb, but its nothing to be conserned of, you don't take off enough to even remove the color of the PCB, let alone ruining it.

Take your worst credit card or some kind of card that is like it. Fold the sandpaper across the card, of course, the abrasive side out. Now, sand with medium strength (not too light, but not hard either) on one side of the connectors, until you see a shine on the contacts. Now, repeat on the other side. Don't do this until you do step 1 first, because step 1 also cleans the cartridge slot's contacts.

Experimental: Lysol.

There was a tale going around on AtariAge (I'm keilbaca on there), about instead of blowing into the cart, he would just shoot the contacts with lysol, put in the cartridge, and it'll work. I'm testing this theory in the very near future, and I will update this section.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Clean/fix your Cartridge Slot

FIRST OFF. I MADE A SEPERATE CLEANING SECTION FOR NES CARTRIDGES, INCLUDING HOW TO TAKE IT APART TO GET TO THE CART. GO THE NES SECTION.

Alrighty, now with that out of the way, this will clean your cart slot for all the consoles you can get to the cart slot, without opening. Colecovision, Intellivision, Vectrex, SNES, Genesis, SMS, N64, the list goes on.
Like the cartridge cleaning section, this goes in the order of steps to try.

1. Rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush.

Open up the cart slot door. Soak toothbrush with windex. Scrub away. Dry off the toothbrush, then scrub again. Repeat until dirt is gone.

If that does not work, then the connectors have corrosion on it.

2. 800 Grit sandpaper, credit card, rubbing alcohol, and a toothbrush.

Fold the sandpaper, grit out, around the card. Now, grip the card, and the sandpaper. Insert the sandpaper in and out of the cartridge slot 3 or 4 times, like you would with a cartridge. DO NOT MOVE LEFT TO RIGHT AT ALL. You can rip the paper, cause some stuck in there, and then you would have to dig it out, before playing a game. Sand the whole connector that way, credit card length at a time. After that is done, take a toothbrush, soak in rubbing alcohol, clean the cartridge, to get all the sand grits, dust and dirt out. Dry off the toothbrush, and scrub more.

3. Bend the pins using a jeweler's flat head screwdriver

If its *that* bad, or if the cartridge only works if you lean the cartridge to one side or the other, then the cart pins are pushed in. Bend one side out at a time. Start from the farthest away pin on one side (for example, if you are right handed, and if you have the console facing you like it was plugged into the tv, start with the leftmost pin), get underneath the pin, GO EASY, and slightly bend it out. If you pop it out a couple millimeters, that's enough for it to make a connection. Do that with the rest of that row. Now, try a game. If it still acts that way, then do it to the other side. Apply until you can just stick in the cartridge, and it'll work.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PSX/PSOne

At about this point of gaming, they pretty much fixed up all their mistakes on faulty hardware, and things are easy to fix. If it doesn't power on, replace the power brick. If its the psx, its the power supply. REALLY easy to change out. They seemed to have had everything perfect, except... the laser. Its better than the ps2 laser in life, however, like all moving parts/lasers, they just go. Here's how to fix it.

Thankfully, its EASY to fix this laser. Its the same as the ps2, but its super easy to adjust it. This tutorial goes for both the psx and psone, just the psx has more screws.

1. Unscrew all the screws. I'm not worried about warranty, I'm sure by now all warranties have ended. Once all the screws are out, flip over the machine, and lift off the top.

2. You will see the laser in front of you. Take off the tape that tapes down the cords to the metal shielding, and lift off the laser from the 3 pins that it sets on. On the ribbon that goes into the laser, and into the console. Near where it goes into the laser, you will see one small screw. This is the voltage adjuster. Take a small screwdriver, phillips preferred, and turn it 2 degrees clockwise. Put in a game, see if it reads it fine. If not, repeat until it works.

IF it does not work after doing all that, then you can turn it the other way until you can read the games like it was. The laser is unfixable, and you're probably be better off buying a whole console, than buying a laser.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 12:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't forget about the thread, just been *insanely* busy. I will get these specific consoles up soon, don't worry, and then some.

I might add some mods to the list, like an atari 2600 audio/video mod, how to disable the lockout chip to make your NES games boot every time no problems, and more.
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MSH-Hitman  





Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 4481
Location: Florida

PostPosted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 8:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bumping this for a question about the sandpaper. Does it need to be 800 grit? I had to go to a hobby shop just to find something over 150 and could only get 600. Will that still work just fine? I was gonna be double safe and use it on a Super Mario Bros cartridge since those thing are out there in the millions and in case it didn't work it wouldn't be of any loss.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

MSH-Hitman wrote:
Bumping this for a question about the sandpaper. Does it need to be 800 grit? I had to go to a hobby shop just to find something over 150 and could only get 600. Will that still work just fine? I was gonna be double safe and use it on a Super Mario Bros cartridge since those thing are out there in the millions and in case it didn't work it wouldn't be of any loss.


600 is good, its fine enough to be a metal polisher. Anything from 400 and up will work. I personally use 800, but there's very little difference.

Sorry for the lack of updates, I got a gf lately, and well, guess where all the time goes now? *sighs*

Anyways, I'm in need of a sega cd power supply. The other systems shouldn't be hard to do to completely clean, I'll take a look at them tonight, find out what screws are needed to open it up and clean it. The N64 I know of needs a Nintendo gamebit.
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MSH-Hitman  





Joined: 27 Aug 2007
Posts: 4481
Location: Florida

PostPosted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the info. This topic helped me fix my Banjo-Kazooie game that was freezing up in the first level. Some rubbing alcohol and q-tips to clean it and it's working wonderfully. Next is to take apart my NES, clean it up, and then clean up the games and I'll be good to go.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm glad this helped out someone, I'm going to add a few more this weekend, whether the gf likes it or not, this weekend is for me.
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Tahmer  





Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 3234
Location: Thief River Falls, MN

PostPosted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 5:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This thread basically saved me a lot of frustration. I never really knew you could clean the cartridge with rubbing alcohol. Now anytime I pop a game in my NES I don't have to sit and wiggle it around for hours, which I never thought was really helping the game much anyway.

I have yet to try this on my copy of Perfect Dark and Starcraft 64 which were in a friends house when it burnt down. Those games take forever to get to work, I assume it's just smoke residue on the contacts, so hopefully if I decide to play those again I can just rub it down. I dunno if there is any internal damage, but the fact that they still work after being through a fire amazes me enough. It's funny too because Perfect Dark was in the N64 at his house, so half of the cartridge is black, and the other half is perfectly fine.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 5:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yep, probably smoke residue on the carts.

If rubbing alcohol doesn't work, use 400+ grit sandpaper and sand the contacts till they're shiny. That fine grade of sandpaper basically polishes the metal.
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Desertman123  





Joined: 29 Jul 2007
Posts: 2957
Location: Central FL

PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, My PSX disc drive to motherboard thing broke so I superglued it. Now it doesn't spin the discs. What should I do to get it off. I have sandpaper, a chisel, solder, a soldering iron.
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Squirrel  





Joined: 27 Jul 2006
Posts: 4828
Location: Wyano, PA (Come visit! My gameroom is always open.)

PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Desertman123 wrote:
Hey, My PSX disc drive to motherboard thing broke so I superglued it. Now it doesn't spin the discs. What should I do to get it off. I have sandpaper, a chisel, solder, a soldering iron.


Do you mean the cable that goes from the laser to the motherboard? Or the power cable? There are two plugs. If its the power cable, you can use acetone, a very little bit, to remove the super glue, then you can strip and solder the power back to the motherboard.

If its the laser cable that broke, unless you can get another psx and swap out cables, if that's even possible, then just use acetone to remove the cable, then get a new laser, or just get a new psx. They're cheap nowadays.

Oh, hopefully within the next couple days, I'll be typing up a new console. The xbox 360! My mosfet came in today, time to solder it in when I get home from work, and see if it resurrects my 360 from the RROD.
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munkyzero  





Joined: 18 Jul 2007
Posts: 2482
Location: Oregon

PostPosted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have another thing you can add for the PS2. I'm not sure if this applies to skinny PS2's, but it sure did work on my fatty. If your PS2 skips and makes clicky, scratchy noises while playing games, open up the PS2 to the point where you can see the disc tray. Underneath it are two silver rails that the lens motor runs on. Plug in the PS2's power cord, turn it on, press the eject button so the disc tray is extended out, and then turn off/ungplug the PS2 again; now you have better access to the rails. Use cotton swabs to wipe off any gunk until the rails are completely clean. Now get some kind of oil or luricant (I used WD-40, but apparently cooking oil and motor oil will also do - Not too sure about that) and make a little puddle of it on some newspaper or whatever, wipe cotton swabs in it, and then use those to rub it all over the rails so that they're really slick. I don't know if it'll fix your problems, but it completely stopped any skipping for me, so now I can play GH without fearing that the songs will freeze and mess up.
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