A buddy of mine got this Mach Rider game and when cleaning found this. We were just trying to figure if this was a repair or if there's some benefit we're not understanding. Kind of surprised since it's such a cheap cart to begin with. Any insight?
It's a cap right? There should be one to the right of the PRG-ROM but it looks like something else is there in your picture. Maybe the old cap died or broke off. It's definitely a repair as that shouldn't be factory work with the poor soldering. Kind of a general idea is the cap is to help smooth out the power supply I think. Without the cap it might not work or may function poorly. It may be a cheap cartridge now but maybe when the repair was done it wasn't. And even being cheap, a cap to fix it is still many times cheaper than getting another cartridge.
Thats a good point, it could have been done a long time ago. We were both thinking in the modern. So more than likely this was done to correct a power problem within the cart. Pretty self-reliant. He hasn't tried to play it, says he's worried about it messing up his NES but all things considered, he should be ok correct?
Ive seen far worse come out of the factory, so I wouldnt jump to it being an aftermarket repair straight away.
True but wouldn't the Factory just ditch a cart that didn't work? Did they do repairs back then? (I'm not being argumentative, I seriously don't know)
Yes, they do repairs. Or a board has been designed and made, then found not to work in all consoles and rather than redesign the board and trash all the made ones - they are fixed on the production line like this. If it was factory, it wouldnt have just been a one off though. Others would have the same thing until the fix was put into the design.
We looked up various board pics and none had this fix, but I get they could have been later production runs. Very interesting about this type stuff being done at factory though. Thanks.
I guess I just wouldn't expect that sloppy work from a Nintendo factory repair. But if you've seen that sort before I'd believe it. Maybe it's just that I want to expect better. But yes that cartridge should run just fine. That cap is probably between the two power planes as I said to smooth out any dips in the power supply.
