A friend gave me a very nice NES frontloader with a few games, 2 controllers, and even a Zapper! Nice!
Sadly, it has the red blink of death, which I thought to be either a dirty cartridge connector, a bad NES10 chip, or both! I decided to pull it apart, clean the connector, and disconnect pin 4 of the CIC/NES10/Lockout chip.
Originally, I'd wanted to desolder the whole chip, neatly bend the pin up, and solder it back in sans pin 4, but my gas-powered soldering iron just couldn't generate enough heat to wick the solder up into the braid.
Next, I tried snipping the pin... but my diagonal cutters were too big. I was able to "nick" the pin, but not cut it.
In my impatience, I used a tiny screwdriver to break the pin at the nick, but sadly the pin pulled out from the IC instead. Not proud of that, I should have waited until I had proper tools. I didn't think it would matter though, as the pin is now disconnected. Besides, I've seen way worse hackjobs on the internet, and the authors of those guides didn't indicate any issues.
When I put the NES back together, I now get no power light. There's a slight "pop" on my TV's audio when I press the power button, but nothing else. Video remains black. Did I ruin my CIC/NES10/Lockout chip? Would a ruined chip keep the console from starting? Should I desolder a NES10 chip from a game (a lame one), and solder it into my console with pin 4 neatly bent away?
Sadly, it has the red blink of death, which I thought to be either a dirty cartridge connector, a bad NES10 chip, or both! I decided to pull it apart, clean the connector, and disconnect pin 4 of the CIC/NES10/Lockout chip.
Originally, I'd wanted to desolder the whole chip, neatly bend the pin up, and solder it back in sans pin 4, but my gas-powered soldering iron just couldn't generate enough heat to wick the solder up into the braid.
Next, I tried snipping the pin... but my diagonal cutters were too big. I was able to "nick" the pin, but not cut it.
In my impatience, I used a tiny screwdriver to break the pin at the nick, but sadly the pin pulled out from the IC instead. Not proud of that, I should have waited until I had proper tools. I didn't think it would matter though, as the pin is now disconnected. Besides, I've seen way worse hackjobs on the internet, and the authors of those guides didn't indicate any issues.
When I put the NES back together, I now get no power light. There's a slight "pop" on my TV's audio when I press the power button, but nothing else. Video remains black. Did I ruin my CIC/NES10/Lockout chip? Would a ruined chip keep the console from starting? Should I desolder a NES10 chip from a game (a lame one), and solder it into my console with pin 4 neatly bent away?