Nintendo quietly fixed the issue later in the N64's life according to Wikipedia. I've noticed that newer controllers seem to not fail, and from what I've learned from pulling them apart, the newer sticks have grease inside them. Bravo Nintendo.
How did your analog sticks wear out? A friend of mine wore off the top layers on his controller until some kind of white powder started coming out. Incidentally this was just after the 2001 Anthrax scare so my friend started joking around that his controller was laced with anthrax.
sounds like the lube dried up n he was grinding plastic and rubber the madcatz dreamcast analogue sticks do that too they eat their own insides lol
They wear out when the stick itself rubs on the internals, wearing away the bottom part of it which causes it to no longer stand firm (now that's a sentence that's impossible to word without it sounding dirty!). That white power is the worn away thumbstick by the way. The original design didn't have any grease, which was a bit of an oversight since the thumbstick's design involves plastic rubbing on plastic.
