Haha nah, he sounded decent on the phone last night. I was just goofing and wanted to quote that on Professor NK's post but my phone was having issues with the quote/reply function.

I've done a few Craigslist transactions and have never had an issue. I just think the tone of the comment was lost via the internet. 


I'm really pumped to get this tomorrow. The photo quality wasn't the best so I'm hoping it might appear to be i a little better shape other than the missing foot and at least the game door cover. It will just have to serve me until I can find a nicer one in the future!

Sounds like a great deal! I got mine through a trade. I had moved to South Korea and someone I knew had the TV and was looking to get a Wii. Since I didn't bring the Wii with me to Korea I figured that over the following couple of years the price of the Wii would just drop anyways. So I traded him the Wii and a game or two for the TV with the remote (missing battery cover) and two black controllers and he drove a considerable distance to drop it off at my house and complete the deal with my parents, heh. The TV has all 4 of the feet, but I think its missing the door that covers the cartridge slot.

I was home over Christmas and briefly tested it, but I think I'll have to give it a good cleaning to get it 100%. It looks like I'll have to add mine to the registry as well.

Why did you keep trying to haggle him for $10 when you know he didn't have the remote? Very lucky, as most people would have been flipping you the bird at that point.

Otherwise nice find and a great addition to your collection!

I really don't know. I'm a cheap bastard I guess... lol. I really don't think he has much of an idea what he has to tell the truth.

When I was talking to him he said he has only had it for like 2 years and just never used it much. I'm kind of curious to find out where he got it from. He mentioned it used to be a rental in his craigslist post. 

Update. He was testing it this morning and got it to work with a few games but was having trouble. Offered to give me a full refund on return if I couldn't fix it up. My guess is either dirty games or dirty pin connector. I'm hoping nothing else loose inside. Really does seem like a stand up Craigslist seller though,

I can almost guarantee that it's the 72 pin. I haven't replaced the one in my Sharp NES, but I plan on doing it someday. People have said it isn't too hard, but I cant find instructions online anywhere.

The problem with it is trying to separate the NES module from the TV as a pair of wires run through a small hole in the corner back of it that feed the audio/video to the tv. Inside the tv the motherboard for it sits in a slot in the bottom and you can snap it easily as it'll bend as you slide the back of the tv away. I tried to get to it a month ago when I got mine and it freaked me out so I left it alone.

If you can get into the body though, it's a standard toaster basically. If you can fix that, you can fix the tv version.

I thought I've seen people post repair instructions on here somewhere. Ill look when I get a chance.

Transaction complete. Unit has seen ts better day but I'm going to look at it as "character". Its defiantly an 'if this thing could tell stories' piece. I was contemplating getting parts to fix what's missing but I might just keep it as is. Will post pics when I get home.

You mentioned that the seller said it used to be a rental. What is the model number of your sharp NES?

Well, finally home with the beast (weighs a ton). Kid I got it from was a good guy afterall. He said he got it from a buddy of his for FREE and only used it a few times over the past couple of years. So, I guess it was a win/win for the both of us; but he might have come out slightly better, haha. At least he threw the Skate or Die in free of charge as he had already sold the NES and games that were the other half of the lot. He also still thinks he might have the remote someplace at home and if he finds it will call me and I can have it. He also stated his buddy owns a local pawn/consignment store and often goes to storage autions and comes across older NES stuff. Was gonna save my number incase his buddy got anything good. 

As far as the rental part goes.  I think he saw the 'not for sale or pawn and assumed it came from a videostore. My guess is this was a display model or the "let your kids play videogames while you shop" machine at the local Sears. It would be cool if I could trace back to where it came from.

Yeah it has character alright, it's rough but as long as it works, whatever. Might as well go claim your first icon for your account.

Stupid question... does it have to be on a specific channel? It powers up with no static on snow... and when I try to play a game its just blinking two tone grey. The kid said it was finicky to get working but this is a little much, lol. At least he offered money back if it got over my head on a repair.

Nope. Just turn it on, put a game in, hit other power button on front for NES -- play. Get a NES cleaning kit, soak that board in it with high proof isopropyl alcohol, and give it a good firm and thorough in and out a bunch of times on it until it stops turning the white board black/gray or whatever else. It's probably just really dirty, that and well from the pics it looks like it was rode hard and put away wet. You may just need to tear it down and clean everything but that is the safest place to start.

Mine I was lucky the owner has no kids, was like 40 when he got it, rarely used the NES, and just used it as a TV to watch a little over the years so I just had to do what I said above to defunk the couple of decades of dust off the pins and it was fine.

My thought was to get a new 72 pin and see what I can do with that. maybe I'll get a hold of a cleaning kit first before I start pulling screws. 

As far as teh outside condition... I was contemplating getting a bunch of NES decals and the like and making a bit of a collage type thing on it. I'm hesitant though as it might hurt some value? Don't know how much it could really hurt though with the overall condition of it. Thoughts?

I'm sure it still would hurt the value some. It's ugly, but it's not so bad you need to hide it by any means. I remember someone on the site thinks they found a place that sells replacement parts. May be in your interests if such a place exists to at the least replace the 2 missing doors. The feet are more of a pain as it's all just one giant mold for the bottom part of the tv into the nes part of the body. The circles on the feet themselves are just detachable with a screw but the rest annoyingly is molded into the body itself.

Like I said before, if you can do it and you're careful, open it up. Just be aware there's a plastic slot, a bracket, that the main board for the tv itself sits in and as you pull the back of the tv away it pulls on the board. If you aren't sure you can get it out straight w/out snapping the board don't try it. I tried once and it started to bend a I don't have a good environment to pry it open in currently so I left it alone. You'll have to do this, or at least pull it enough away to find where the 2 wires that lead out of the NES jack into the tv to unplug it so you can work on the Nintendo itself. Once you're in there, from what I can see in diagrams (there's a service manual for it in PDF online) it's pretty standard stuff with the pins.

I did see the manual via PDF, they did not make it seem like the board was an issue. Thanks for the heads up.

I got impatient and took it apart. If you play with it long enough that small board will slide free from the back. Not surprisingly it was FILTHY inside. I managed to get the old 72-pin off and cleaned it some. Got it all back together and after 2 or 3 tries it fired right up. Waiting for the fresh 72-pin to get here

Well maybe I approached it badly trying to slide it out while the tv was sitting up in the normal position. I didn't want to risk having it glass down and possibly not seeing some wire being tugged and snapped.

If there's a good way into it without bending things and breaking them I'd love to know as I'd still love to get in there on mine and just deep scrub the pins and use a safety pin on any I feel maybe a little flat from use/age.

If you're looking the TV from the back, after you remove the 6 screws holding the back panel on..... In the bottom right hand corner the smaller board with the Focus and Horizontal control fits into 2 small slots on the back cover of the TV. If you pull the cover straight back, you shouldn't bend the board. It took me a bit of shimmying to loosen the board from the grooves so it wanted to come out nicely but it will come off. At first the board wanted to slide off with the back cover. You just have to have a little patience with it and don't force anything. 

Again, maybe I got lucky but it worked for me. It was a little tedious getting the back off, unplugging the NES connections from the TV board, and then taking all the other screws to get to the 72-pin connector. I'm not excited to do it again, but this thing still takes a lot of work to get a cart to play, I'm just glad to know that it most likely is the 72-pin connector and not something else. Was able to get a nice picture adjustment with the back cover off as well. Can't believe how good the NES can look!

UPDATE: Finally installed the new 72-pin connector last night. I put Castlevania in and it worked first try! Tanooki, as an aside. Once you get that back panel off the first time, it seems to be a lot easier of a process after that. All I have left to do now is fine-tune some color adjustments (easy to find) and work on the screen horiz/vert position. Seems the image sits a little 'high' on the screen. I haven't found those adjustment knobs yet. Anyone know where they are?

Dude, that's sick you got it for $75/85. Also, the guy who sold it to you seemed cool as hell. I'd shoot him a text/e-mail with what you did to let him know that you got it working - he might appreciate knowing that you're happy with it. God I want one of these things.

That was my plan, I just don't know if I have his text in my phone anymore. Never emailed with him. He was a good kid... probably mid 20's. Best part was he said he was going to keep my number in case he comes across anything else good. His buddy owns a local thrift/pawn and cleans out storage units a lot! Fun to make connections.

WHoa nice! Which way did you set the TV down to safely get the back off? I just don't want to snap the board, the rest really is all a matter of time. My pins are solid but I would like to give it a cleaning.

Also I need to look into the horizontal/vertical on the inside as mine sits high too. The curtain on SMB3 you can barely see any of the red of it, just the bottom row and a little of the second run of red toward the center. It causes some games to get a little cut off at the top/corners like Castlevania which sucks.

When I took the back off I had the TV resting normally, on its feet. I just made real sure I was pulling straight back and not lifting up on it. It took quite a bit of wiggling side to side to finally free that smaller board on the right (looking at it from the back). As long as you don't put any 'lift' on it I think you should be O.K. Once the back is off, you can connect the pins for the NES unit below. Then you can carefully rotate the unit to rest on its top, and remove the screws from there to access the bottom portion housing the NES guts.

I used a few cans of compressed air to really blow out a lot of the crud that accumulated over the past 23 years. I don't know too much about the boards and whatnot to go too crazy.

When I was on the Castlevania title screen you could barely see parts of the top grey bar and the Castlevania logo might have been slightly to the right of the screen. I need to look at tht PDF. that was posted here to see if I can find those controls. I did not see where they were inside the housing.

Yeah I have that PDF too and I didn't seem to find that internal adjustment when I last looked at it. I'll have to read around it again and see if I can figure it out. Sure there's dust in there, but I'm not going to risk jacking it up until I'm motivated enough to know exactly how to tweak the vertical on that screen. Mine I believe is centered just fine, but that other is stretched a little more than I'd like it to be.

When I started doing it that one time I did as you did from it being on the feet and it got stuck, and as I pulled as it has some weight to it I saw the board start to bed so I panicked and just closed it back up as I didn't want to snap it.