General Specifications

Console Variants - There are only two known console variants, the NES-001, released in 1985, and discontinued in 1995 when it was replaced by the NES-101 unit, also known as the "Top Loader" style NES.

Back in the olden days, when we were kids, we would blow on the NES games and do weird little tricks like sliding the "butt" of the cartridge against the floor of the console's cartridge port as we pressed it down to make sure it would make good contact, and to blow out the dust. Let's explain why both of these worked, and why the first one is really, really bad.

Blowing on the Cartridges is a HUGE NONO! - What's really happening when you blow on a Nintendo cartridge, is the humidity from your breath, even at a microscopic level, is creating a "filler" for that gap between the bent-up pins on the 72 pin connector, and the cartridge. This causes the game to work for awhile, and then as your breath evaporates - due to the dry warm air inside the Nintendo as it's played, these contacts get severed, and while in the case of the 10NES chip, nothing matters now, the authentication process has already taken place and the game is okayed, this wreaks havoc on your games WHILE you play them. These problems manifest such as suddenly crashing/hanging mid-game, to just minor graphics glitches or weird flukes of logic that might be hardly noticeable to the average player. The worse part though is the long term effect of this on the cartridge's contact pads, it causes them to corrode, and sometimes, this can lead to either a short, or complete wearing away of the pad, ruining the cartridge. It's rare, but I had an old copy of "Blades of Steel" that fell prey to this. Thankfully it was not Dragon Warrior IV.

Weird Mechanical Saeances.... - ie sliding the butt of the cartridge in, jiggling the cartridge that's already in, these work, but what you are doing, is basically repositioning the cartridge so the weaker contacts inside the system will make contact with the pads on your cartridge, and sometimes, this too does not last as long and does the same thing the blowing on cartridge trick does, except as the heat inside the NES might microscopically cause the contacts to pull away. Resulting in the same goofiness as your evaporating breath.

There are two fixes to this, one temporary, one is far more permanant.

Temporary Fix - 72 pin Connector - the primary culprit in all this is the 72 pin connector and that wonky mechanism, with the 10NES chip being the secondary in it all. The problem with this connector is that it moves the pins in a way to clamp down on the cartridge when the cartridge is pressed down, this puts force on these pins that are all technically bent in a "U" shape. For this problem, you have three options: cheap (but tedious), fast (technically), and reliable (but expensive).

CHEAP - If you're cheap, like me, you'll just re-bend the pins. THis can be done easily by bending a paperclip into an "L" shape, or using a tiny eyeglass screwdriver to reach UNDER the pins, and bend them upward. You want to do all 72 pins and this can take some time, probably a good time to slap on a TV program and get something to drink, or sit outside and enjoy the sunshine and some tea.

FAST - This is replacing the 72 pin connector. It takes only about 15 minutes and requires nothing more than a philips head screwdriver. You can order new or refurbished connectors online at various places such as Amazon, E-bay, and other places. However, some of these refurbished connectors might not be that great, and some of the Chinese remakes might be questionable too.

RELIABLE - aka EXPENSIVE and HARD TO FIND apparently as I dug around for it for awhile and could not find it anywhere now. So maybe it no longer exists. PIsses me off because I bumped into a sex site while looking for this f***ing thing (time to fire up the anti-malware). Anyway, around 2014, there was some guy who was doing a new startup company that was 3D-printing out new carrier trays for the NES 72 pin connector, that did away with the push-down mechanimsm, turning into just a regular right-angle connector. I can't find the d*** thing anywhere now, but it was a huge buzz at the time. Anyway, you might be able to find it or even make it yourself, but...naah. IIRC it was stupid expensive too. So much so I thought "nah, I'd rather just keep bending pins". So that's what I did. And even then, maybe it was pulled because it's only reliable in theory - who knows. I'm still mad though that Google-website redirects still exist. Yeah, I'm a bit pissed about that site redirect.

But the real culprit is the 10NES Lockout Chip - this is a eight pin IC located on the component side of the motherboard, marked a copyright date and Nintendo on it. It taps into two of the end-pins of the 72 pin connector and is the true reason for all this madness. Likely this is because it was an afterthought because the 10NES did not exist in Japan, all the Japanese companies used their own cartridge shells, their own PCBs, and the Family computer had no lockout chip in it. SO when the 72 pin connector was added to the NES, the 10NES makes use of some outer pins that lose their connection worse than the others, causing the NES not to start, even when an official Nintendo seal of quality game is put in. However, disabling it is easy.

Basically, all you need to do is desolder/snip/detach pin#4 - that's it, that's all I did to mine (actually pin #4 just broke off). Since then, I've not had any problems getting games to start with any regularity, only once in a blue moon when the connector is getting loose. About 99.9% of the time though, it always works on the first try, like my 43 year old Atari. Why Nintendo did nothing about this - well, they kinda' sorta did, they released the NES-101 (but then removed the A/V jacks - argh!), is likely because they wanted people to *think* their NES was dead, and therefore go out and buy the latest and greatest product. Isn't Capitalism fun boy's and girls!?!?