So I have a Z64 v3 that's been sitting in a box for at least 10 years. I bought it second-hand off of Yahoo auctions and it has never worked. I've had the BIOS chip reflashed and that made no difference. When you turn it on, the screen lights up, but that's it. No drive click, no characters on the screen, nothing else. Does anyone either A - Know what might be wrong and how to fix it, or B - Know if it would be worth anything to anyone?
Open it up and check for any visible faults - burnt components, loose cables, etc. Did the person who reflashed it know what they were doing? It could possibly be a bad flash. I was looking to buy a Z64, but with the 64drive flash cart coming out soon, demand for the Z64 is going to fall. If you can't get it working, you might be able to sell it to someone who's willing to have a shot at fixing it.
I've looked at the board and didn't notice anything burnt. I've also quadruple checked the cable connections. My only doubt is whether or not the flashed BIOS chip was successful or not. I guess I'll investigate that again - and it just occurred to me that I now have a Willem Programmer from a completely unrelated project - totally forgot about that.
The v3 has a couple of known problems. You may want to see if either of these mods have been done, and if not, do them. http://www.z64faq.tk/z64-v3-freezes
Thanks, I'll check those out. I feel like I've looked at that page before and my Z64 doesn't even have a transistor where it says there might be one... should I add one or leave it empty?
Yup, as you can see toward the bottom of the page some are shipped without them. Just be sure you are good at soldering.
Are you saying it's safe to add one even though it didn't come with one? And yes, I'm mighty fine with a soldering iron.
I'm 99% sure that it's alright. Later revisions had one included while the early ones did not. So adding one would be the right thing to do. I'm sure there's someone on here that can confirm this.
If you don't have a transistor in it to begin with I wouldn't add one, afaik the transitor mod just disables it. So just solder the red cable. But this will not help you in your situation either, because that mod is to prevent the Z64 from freezing, meaning you play a game and then it randomly freezes. But since your unit doesn't even power up correctly you should look elsewhere. The symptoms you discribe are most likely caused by a defective bios chip. Buy another Z64 and exchange the chips, see what happens. If the bios chip is ok, then it could be the socket where it rests in, resolder all it's connections. Use a multimeter to find out if the correct current is supplied to the socket. Then check if the cpu/the large chip on the mainboard gets warm, it should get warm, if not check if it gets power, therefore you need the pinout of the chip. Read whats printed on it and google for datasheets. If it gets the correct currents and all and it still doesn't work my guess would be that it is fried.
