Hey there.
So i recently bought an nes powerpak from retrousb.com and was extremely excited to get it. I bought a new 4gig lexar compact flash card to use with it, which i formatted to fat32.
So I put the POWERPAK directory on the root of the flash card, pop it in the Powerpak and put it into my top loader. Turn on the power and...wait. The power does not turn on, but stays off. So i take it out, put it back in and try again. Flip the power switch, still no power.
Then I take the Powerpak out, put an officially licensed copy of smb 3 in and the system turns on fine and i can play that game. wtf?
So then I think it's the top loader itself. So i switch to my front loader nes and the same friggin thing happens.
Is there something I'm missing here? Or is it just that I got a bad Powerpak unit, you think?
Any help is appreciated.
thanks
Do you have a multimeter? If you do, check for continuity between VCC and GND - it's unlikely, but it sounds like something isn't electrically sound here, as there aren't many reasons for an NES to actually lose power from a cartridge.
It's also possible that the Ciclone isn't functioning properly, though that would not explain the toploader having issues.
I don't have a multimeter. But if I did, is that something I would test on the Powerpak?
Yeah I'm at a loss for words too. At first I thought it was short on my modded top loader. But after trying it in my front loader I figured the system couldn't be the problem.
It's got to be the Powerpak right?
I have never heard of anything like this... Maybe it would be better to just send the PowerPak back so bunnyboy can take a look at it, instead of tinkering with it yourself.
Don't mess up the warranty, contact Bunnyboy.
So the power light on the NES just never turns on?
The only thing I can think of is that Vcc is shorted to ground. Like mikejmoffitt said there really isn't anything else that could cause that, especially if other games work fine.
I would suggest taking the CF card out and trying it incase the short were there somehow. Even with the CF card removed the NES power light should atleast turn on. I'd be cautious though, shorting out Vcc to GND can damage the power supply on your NES. In the end you're probably best to just stop testing it all together to prevent risking breaking your NES, just send it back.
How many amps is your ac adaptor capable of putting out? If it's too low that might be why. (higher current draw from powerpak than a real game)
Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure about the amps. But i shall check it tomorrow. I do have an alternate nintendo power supply I have with my other system. I shall try that.
If that doesn't work, i'll also post a video tomorrow showing how it does what it does so everyone can see it in it's mystifying action.
In the front-loader, the LED is lit by the (buffered) output of the CIC; if it's staying off it implies the CIC itself isn't running and something is pulling the line low. The only way I could see that happening is either something funny is shorting it out so it crashes in a no-execute mode.
Since this is also happening with your top loader, it's not exclusively that, and I think it's far more likely that it's a short between power and ground.
If you smell burning dust, hot components, or chemicals from it while the powerpak is in, the latter is almost certainly the case, and you should not attempt to fix it with a larger power supply (especially if you are already using the original nintendo one). Just contact bunnyboy.
I uploaded 2 videos of my issues with the Powerpak for both my modded top loader nes and my regular front loader nes.
Top loader nes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov1xy0T_dwQ
Front loader nes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNgZf3zhjWA
As you can see I am using a 1st party nes power supply.
Perhaps the power supply has some issues?
I have contacted bunnyboy? from retrousb.com about this issue, so hopefully will have some resolution soon
Don't push the game down in a toaster, it only hurts your connector.
Unless you rebent your connector (which you should) most nesses wont work if you DONT push it down.
Anyway ya that looks like a gnd/pwr short. Stop trying it and contact bunnyboy/retrousb. DO NOT try to experiment.
Jeroen wrote:
most nesses wont work if you DONT push it down.
With the original connector, none of mine do. I did get a replacement connector that is tight enough for carts to work without being pushed down though.