SNES - Black screen with all games

You would need an oscilloscope to be able to see what the CPU is doing ...

Basically you watch what is happening on the data and address buses, if there is clock being fed to the CPU ansd workram (it's a 128KB DRAM and a lot of custom logic inside that chip) and depending of what you find you can have a very good idea of what need to be repaired.

 

I think I just got one of those ''Black screen of death'' SNES...
Connector and games are perfectly clean. All the hookup are tested, console getting power.
All I get is a black silent screen

It is one of those early board with deparate sound module. A shame as it is the cleanest mobo I have ever seen.

 

I had three of those Black-Screen-SNES' at home. At least one of them stopped working from one day to the other. I have replaced all electrolytic capacitors inside of them a few days ago and *wow* - they are doin' their job again
What kind of SNES do you have - I made several cart on digikey.com for different SNES' with capacitors having appropriate specs...

Edit: Whoops - I have read that you have one of the earliest mobos. For this one I haven't made a cart so far...
Edit2: I modified another cart for the SHVC-CPU-01 board -> www.digikey.de/short/7tr9vd <- If someone wants to use it, please check quantities and sizes as I do not have such a board to do so. One may also look for cheaper capacitors as I looked for durable ones

 

That is pretty nice, replacing caps necroed all 3? I would not have thought caps would do that to a snes, it usually does weird analogic issues on other consoles rather than having them stop cold turkey.

I will have to try that on mine. I usually order cap kits from console5, I think they offer convenience price and decent quality. But I actually placed an order there yesterday ( Doh! )
So I will have to wait a while, I only order when I need sufficient things to get some scale savings. Or if I need to use Digikey your cart would be usefull, if I can transfer it to Digikey.ca
Anyway Thanks! You just game me hope.

 

Indeed I was a little bit surpsised, too, but really really happy about it! One of the three was a SNES-Mini

I think the caps from console5 will do their job too. The only reason why I ordered on my own was to control the specs and especially the size and mounting type. I think console5 just offers THT components instead of SMD where needed, or am I wrong?

At least the Digi-Key part number should be the same - opening two taps and transfer each cap should do the job

Best

 

Yeah console5 does not ship SMD caps, but I got used to soldering leaded ones on the pads.

 

Hello. I decided to respond to this since making a new thread seemed like it would be a bit too much.

Can this be done with a Logic Probe? Or can it be bad with data still going through the pins? I got a bin of about 8 motherboards which all have the same problem - black screen. I'm trying get at least two of them up!

 

I am bumping this since I have accumulated several SNES consoles with similar problem. The main symptom is the black screen of death but I have found that on several of these consoles some games will actually start but usually quickly crash or glitch out.

The game Magic sword in particular is interesting as it works perfectly well on one console but with other games it will either not work at all or glitch out nearly immediately.

On yet another console, Magic sword reaches the start screen but freeze there. No other game that I tried will so much as produce a sound or picture on this console. So once again I am intrigued that Magic sword actually does something.
I tried recapping that console and that did not change anything. I also manually reflowed the wram and vram chips too and it did not change anything.

I also noticed that pretty much all these consoles are of the early SHVC variety with the separate sound board.

I am intrigued by Oliviveira experience with the wram chip. I have a feeling some of these consoles could be revived with a new wram ship.

It seems some of the wholesale distributors of electronic parts might have some nintendo S-WRAM chips. I was wondering if it would be worth it to try get some, and if there are important differences between different WRAM revisions.
http://www.ic2ic.com/search.jsp?sSearchWord=S-WRAM&prefix=S#
http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Available-new-and-original-IC-chips_705626737.html

 

MaxWar, I'm attempting to repair several black screen and graphics glitch consoles. So far I've recapped two to no success. For one, I reflowed the solder on every chip. On a SNES Jr, everything works but the sound... Very infuriating.

My theory is that you have to replace the caps before they degrade enough to send through bad voltage. The chips might have been hit with higher than 5 volts. If that's the case, then there's probably no way of repairing them aside from stripping other consoles. But then, how do you know the chips you are stripping are good...?

I'm about ready to retire these, or at least harvest some common components like the lm7805.

 

Josiah, I doubt the caps are to blame for sending too high voltage. The regulator already caps it at 5V and even some jitter caused by bad caps should not induce spikes going significantly higher than 5V.
I would rather blame component age or mishangling, such as that dangling power switch that can kill consoles.

As to what component to change, this is what I would like to find out of course. Having one of those test cart could be useful. Otherwise there certainly are some symptoms that could point toward a direction or another. If we had some statistic as to what component fail the most and what type of symptom occurs, I think it could help greatly.

Seems that Wram is a common culprit, I have a console that I suspect bad WRAM and another one that I suspect bad CPU. I think I will try to transfert the Wram of one console to the other one. I have a hot air station, I will practice some on dead PC boards first.

 

Hey... just wanted to say hello and that I joined this forum specifically because Google led me here. I have four SNES consoles (model 1) with the exact same problem: black screen and no sound. However, on only ONE of those consoles, two games come on for about 2 seconds and then back to black screen of death. Would love to fix this. Replaced capacitors on one of them, still the same problem. Hmmm. Might do some chip swapping soon, but no idea which chips work.