Before I go on, I apologize ahead of time if this has been asked before. I recently picked up a Nintendo 64 plus 28 games for thirty bucks at a goodwill store nearby, and began testing them. However, many games will not boot, and those that do boot usually have to be immediately reset, because most of the picture is moved up to the upper left side of my screen. Sometimes reseting fixes the problem, sometimes it does not. These problems persist on both the system that came with the lot, and the one I already owned. Is this a problem with the games, the system, or both?
Never heard of that kind of problem. Different carts having the same problem says it's the consoles that are faulty, but both N64s failing in exactly the same way isn't too likely. Anything else you could try switching around? Maybe it's a bad power supply?
Well, now that I take a closer look, it seems the AV cable is really mangled. Perhaps that could be the problem... I think I have another one laying around, so I'll have to check, but the one N64 bought in the lot is playing Star Fox 64 just fine right now, but I had to reset to correct the image.
Have you tried cleaning the contacts on the cartridges? There are plenty of topics around here that mention this and the best methods of doing so.
i always clean my carts with a q-tip and some window cleaner, gets them very clean, and its not damaging in the long run :thumbsup:
Yeah. I take an old credit card, wrap an old white shirt over it tightly (I use the same shirt and a clean spot every time) and wet the edge with alcohol. Rub it along the contacts, use some pressure and keep doing so until you can rub it without the shirt turning all gross. Same method works for cleaning cart slots. Just make sure you use a thin cloth so you don't snag the contacts in the slots. Wet both sides of the card with the shirt wrapped tightly over it once.
you could put the cart solt in a ultra sonic cleaner useing alcohol and it should bring it up like new i have not tryed it
Aren't the ultrasonic cleaners those where you have to immerse stuff in a bath of something during the cleansing process? Wouldn't that be really bad for the labels, nevermind if it's water (distilled or not) or alcohol? Might work for the bare pcbs though.
This method works well, but if you use it to clean a cart slot dont rub, just push in and out - rubbing will bend the pins in the slot.
I've water-soap washed any kind of electronics you can think of. The only thing I'd say "water will KILL" is electrical-mechanical/optical devices like laser pickups, motors and transformers. Because you can't dry these devices properly after they've been washed. Also some of these devices have greases/lubricants you don't want to ruin with the soap. I've washed plenty of arcade boards too (oh please don't try to wash boards with suicide batteries for obvious reasons...) and never had a single problem by doing so. Remember to dry them as soon as possible and the best method to dry them up is hair drier as it's not hot enough to damage stuff. :thumbsup:
Personally for cleaning cartridges, memory DIMMs, PCI cards and the like, I use a rubber, and rub it up and down the contacts, works magic each time!
