AV Famicom reliability?

I've had and sold many AV Famicoms but lately around 50% of them are reported to be faulty after I send it ...

Usually it is the regulator... it gets warm and smoke is coming out of it.

I had one recently where the sound didn't work. I think I tried it before hand but maybe I didn't listen to the sound enough so I can't say.

Now I'm trying to understand why this happens. Could it be the 9V third party DC power supplies I'm using? I haven't had problems with them on other consoles though.
Could it just be age?
Could it be the NES to Famicom adapter some people use to play NES games on it?
Could it be pirate games? I've heard they can destroy consoles. I think people use the AV famicom for both famicom pirates and NES pirates.

 

If it's a 50% hitrate then yes, I would say that it's most likely to be the third party power supplies you're using. What are their specifications?

Personally I've never come across an old pirate cartridge that destroyed systems, but I don't know about the new ones.

 

I’d say definitely the power supply if the regulators are popping.

 

Mine has well over 200 hours using the 100v Japanese power supply without step down converter, an Everdrive (see recent article about flash carts potentially killing consoles) and it travels between multiple houses regularly. Nothing gets hot and everything seems to be running fine.

My bet is on the third party power supplies. One of them nearly destroyed my beloved SNES after a few hour of use.

 

What article is that?

 

Sorry, was too lazy/tired to cite sources in my reply earlier. It was found through a post on here a little over a year ago. Whatever truth to those claims actually exists probably would apply to the pirate games question too.

 

How did it nearly destroy your SNES?

Thing is, I sell a lot of power supplies, mostly for the SNES so the AV Famicom would need to have some special vulnerability if it breaks from them. I buy them in lots of 50 or 100 from China. And I don't know how a 1.5 / 1A, 9V power supply could break the console. Some cheap one can cause disturbances in the picture.

I did find the cause for the latest failure though: something had pushed the connector slot and probably broken some lines on the main board. I think it could be the Famicom->NES adapter .
It would be interesting to hear if other people have had problems using an NES->Famicom adapter (playing NES games on Famicom). I think the AV Famicom might be more susceptible because of the cartridge cover it has.

 

If it wasn't for the progressively worsening distorted picture I wouldn't have noticed how hot everything was getting before it was too late. Might have been arcing at the back of the console because of poor tolerances on the connector for all I know (15 years ago). Never bothered to measure the ID and OD of the plugs as it went straight to the trash and only used the authentic one from then on with zero problems.

 

Oh, I see.
I'll keep it in mind.

I read that power supplies with high ripple can cause overheating, but I wonder if it wouldn't be seen with noise in picture first. There could be other reasons for overheating too, such as having too high voltage (15V under load, or so).