Been doing some research over the internet for whether Nintendo ever disabled/never included the 10NES chip on early consoles, or if they (or their local distributors) ever disabled the 10NES chip on problematic units during service/warranty repair. Recently just acquired a PAL Mattel Version NESE-001 (AUS), which came with a pile of early games, and generally everything that would've come with the original Deluxe Set (boxed standalone copies of Duck Hunt, Gyromite, Grey Zapper, documentations and a ROB). Generally all the games were early black box games, mostly 5-screw cartridge variants (Super Mario Bros, Excitebike, Kung Fu, Hogan's Alley etc etc). There was also one sole -USA title in the lot, which I thought was really weird since the whole lot was Mattel PAL, except for the one oddball NTSC bowling game. Seller talked about how it used to be her grandmother's, and all she played was the bowling game, hence the rest of the stuff included showing very little wear and tear (go figure!). After I cleaned up the outside of the NES and powered it up to test that it worked, I noticed that it didn't blink like NESs normally do when there's no cart detected. Just a grey screen, and solid red light. I tried the NTSC game, and it loaded up first time, no hassle. The only thing I can conclude is the 10NES is disabled, but before I go disassembling this thing to verify for certain (I'd prefer not to as it's very nice original shape and I'd rather not tamper with a 30 year old piece of electronics if I don't have to: has anyone heard of Nintendo, or any local distributor (Mattel etc.) disabling 10NES chips or installing a different mainboard variant during warranty or service? I know the simplest explanation is that someone modded the console in the past, but it really doesn't seem like this unit has ever been internally tampered with. Another curiosity I notice, is that two of the screws holding the NES together are Nintendo gamebit security screws (the rest being standard philips head). Every NES I've ever encountered has always just been held together with just philips head screws, so this seemed bizarre to me, and I can't imagine any third-party modder deliberately installing security screws in the NES - this seems like something Nintendo would do themselves to discourage access. Not to mention the extremely low serial number, and the early age of the games that came with it (most of the games are all 5 screws, with the early flat head screws). Sorry for the long winded explanation, and if this not the appropriate place to discuss. Additionally, if anyone knows of any real hardcore NES expert forums out there, please point me in their direction and I'll ask there. Thanks for your time, and if there any pictures you'd like me to provide, please let me know.
if nintendo did it, they would have used all security screws. This just sounds like a mod, probably a paid job.. look up the service manual, if it isn't stated in there I doubt it was part of procedure
My curiosity got the better of me, and decided to open it open and check out the motherboard, and it definitely looks like something's been added to it. The 10NES doesn't appear to have any lifted legs either, was this common practice back in the day?
I bought a NES PCB only from ebay and it turned out to be an Asia NES, with a very similar modification to disable the lockout chip. I have since replicated this "non destructive" method of disabling the region protection on NES consoles which I rgbmod and sell (NTSC and PAL). I thought I may have been the only person who had run into this apparently-factory wiring..
