You monster!


You're supporting the scumbags that sell 1:1 little samson labels that way  

I know it's not for sale...but name a price. I need it. It would be a "killer" piece for my collection!!

This needs to be put in a Little Sampson case and then left on a table for someone to get greedy and steal.

I only have one thing to say: why

I want one...

Is it just me but did the sounds of that NES dying make you a little sad?

I have a defective 3rd party power cable that kills systems. It makes the capacitors go pop pop fizz fizz

I think this would be improved if it had a functional ROM with an on-screen countdown before the fireworks start.   Hey, you might even have a warning for quick readers to scramble for that power button!

"This game pak will destroy your system in 10... 9... 8... 7... ..."

Konami Code could even be a secret "ABORT!" sequence or something like hold Select + Left to suspend. Oh, what a relief it is!

I would honestly love one of these to keep on my shelf just as a cool conversation piece.

I was gonna ask "why" at first. But then I remembered something sinister I thought up a year or so ago...

I had an idea once for a literal "bomb cart." You take the flash module out of a disposable camera (do they even still make those?) and incorporate it into the cart shell. A James Bond style "this cart will self destruct..." countdown timer runs onscreen with a metronome like sound effect that gets faster as it approaches zero. At the end of the timer, the mapper activates a bankswitch which feeds a transistor inverting amp, activating a 5V relay, ultimately releasing the charge stored inside the cap.

You could install a xenon flash tube inside a clear shell and the device would be benign and completely reusable, the flash of light being symbolic of a "detonation." Or you could conceal the device in a generic gray shell and rig the super capacitor up to a blasting cap, or perhaps a payload of flash powder consealed in a pen tube, like a miniature pipe bomb small enough to fit inside the cartridge. Generic looking gray cart literally goes BOOM inside your system.  

Kevbot, feel free to use my idea...  

I want to code this!

If you wanna discharge a flash bulb, know that flash charging circuits generally run on 3V but pull a lot of current. I imagine the current draw could be safely limited by a series resistor to the charging circuit. This would make it take longer to charge the flash, but you've got your countdown timer onscreen. The Xenon tube in a clear shell would be perfectly safe and harmless way to discharge the super capacitor.

You could also use the 200VDC surge to "nuke" the NES or detonate a small explosive! Sacrifice a small value electrolytic cap to make a good snap-n-pop effect when you destroy it with reversed bias high voltage, if you need a small "bang" that won't blow the cart up. Yes, caps are designed to store energy, and will forcefully explode if their rating is greatly exceeded.  

Care must be taken to prevent the cart from "detonating" if it boots on anything but bank zero. I'm thinking the game ROM could be NROM and CNROM board used for the mapper. The greatest significant bit pin could be lifted from the board and used to activate the "detonator", but you need a filter circuit to prevent a detonation on boot. A logic gate (7400 Quad NAND makes a nice jack-of-all-trades logic chip) with a grounded cap and pullup resistor on one input would provide a small time delay at boot during which which the output state cannot change. A similar gate connected before the input on the bankswitch chip will ensure it always boots into bank zero.

 

Why would anyone in their right mind create such a cartridge?

Come on, use your creative for productive purposes not destructive purposes.

 

Wow. I don't think I've ever been told I'm contributing to the decline of civilization. WTG, K3VBOT!


edit: Wildstar, you editing bastard.  

I edited it because initial wordage was too harsh.

Well, yeah, you basically compared his one-off cartridge used on garbage NES boards as the equivalent of all of societies ills.

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend to evoke any hatred of anyone here. I was just razzing the guy making an NES cart that would destroy the NES console. We love our classic computers and consoles too much to be intentionally doing that. Right?

Therefore, I think we want to preserve the consoles for the future. At least I hope that's the goal. Aside from that, I am wondering if there is some sense of how many users of these consoles* (and emulators) are there. * = namely NES/SNES but also other consoles in the Nintendo line.

I am currently a licensed developer with Nintendo, though.

Yeah, but I thought it was a bit too harsh so I edited to retone it down thinking it is probably too excessive. It was only a few minutes after I wrote it that I edited it after thinking about it being too harsh.
Shame on me but I'm sure he's a decent fellow and probably does some good stuff as well. 

Edit: Also, there isn't really such a thing as garbage NES boards because they are spare parts board as donor parts to keep as many NES as possible. Also, sometimes, you can replace a part from one board with that part from another board because the bad parts are just different parts. So let's say you have two bad units but different parts are bad between the two. You take the parts from one of the two boards to make one of them a fully functional NES. I would intentionally kill them so they are no longer any good as spare parts boards. There is a point where you need to 'cannibalize' parts to resurrect boards so it all comes down to that at some point. I know, there is 60 Million of these units made but still, in time, you want to keep them alive as long as possible because there isn't 60 Million of them still around. You must factor in a significant percentage of them had eventually went into the dump over the years.



 

I'm aware of that, but these were boards that were literally in the garbage. His words.

And no tears shed over the death of the Retron 1? It was in working order.  

Happens but they were fully functional, right. So why destroy a rescued board. If he salvaged it and it was for some luck of fate of something that it wasn't destroyed and in the landfill but something that was just recent put into someone's trashcan and was able to clean it up from whatever gunk and it was functional then why destroy it.

There's a thing called restoring. In my opinion, he had a perfectly functional NES in working order. A little bit of restoration and it would have been salvaged and at least be a spare motherboard for the other NES units he had so he can have an NES motherboard that he could use in case one of his other NES units fail.

Remember, the two custom 65c02 based chips are no longer produced. They were proprietary custom chips made strictly for the Nintendo. You can't replace them with just a 65c02. Especially the PPU. It has a special video component that is no longer manufactured and it would cost you millions of dollars just to make one PPU because of minimum set up costs whether you produce one PPU or few thousand PPUs. Oh wait, does he have a photolithograph mask plates to make the chip? Nope. The only available options are FPGA based solutions.

As for the Retron 1, I'm not aware of being destroyed. Now, is the Retron 1 being manufactured? I have less concerns for something still being produced vs something that is no longer made.

EDIT: Now I saw that video.... poor little ol' RetroN 1. What did it do to deserve death.   

Just like the sad death of the NES.....  
                     

 

Restoration is boring. This was fun.  

I understand that they could have been reused, etc., but K3VBOT was arguably furthering his knowledge of the inner workings of the NES and what could cause harm to it. Perhaps the info he gleaned by sacrificing a board or two could resurrect more consoles than the one or two he might have restored.

Added that a member here recently created an NES compatible FPGA based console capable of actually playing well with HDTVs, I don't see us running out of NES hardware any time soon. Might not be the original chips, but it proves we can duplicate the hardware in some form. Plus, composite output sucks.  

As for the Retron, I've owned quite a few of those NOAC clones that died on their own, and I actually tried to take care of them. They're the carnival goldfish of retro gaming.  

To be fair, I have no qualms over this device being used to destroy an NOAC clone system, but please do not use this on vintage hardware. The clones are cheap trash anyway.

I have considered retiring my Yobo clone by deliberate destruction. Perhaps solder the input and output pins of the 7805 together so that the VCC and GND rails are directly connected to the adapter jack, then cut the adapter plug and feed it mains AC. Obviously perform this risky stunt outside so it won't burn the house down, and the worst that could happen is it goes up in smoke and trips the breaker box.

Another idea I had was to destroy it by fire while it was running. I was to go outside and turn it on with a shit game connected to a CRT, pour lighter fluid on the Yobo clone while game is running in attract mode, light it, and see how long the system burns before the AV signal goes black.

Capture the whole thing on video...  

I get that people are put off by this, but that's freaking awesome that you were able to make something like this.

How long does it take to work? I notice you leave them in the consoles for ~10 seconds or so in the videos. Is it an instant death and you're just making sure, or does it take some time to burn it all up?

P.S. You are hearby banned from my game room  

These parts are CMOS parts. If you look at the spec sheet from WDC about the 65c02, it doesn't take long to realize that you are nuking the chip by supplying too high of voltage level to the input lines. If you use a step up transformer, ramping the 5v up to 10v and send that back at the chips down any of the lines to the PPU and CPU, you'll be bound the fry something. Hell, if you stepped it up to 50v and let that load build up into a 50v tolerant capacitor and let that reach up to sufficient amperage level and release that charge at say 15 times a second, while it would take maybe 1 whole second to charge the capacitor to capacity. The built up charge would the let go of that current. Essentially, if you build a circuit much like that used in those hand held electrozappers that uses maybe a 9v battery or four AA batteries, and connected the electro zappers to any of those lines on the cartridge port, you are bound to fry stuff. If you took any of those handheld zappers to the NES cartridge port lines, it's guaranteed that the NES on board chips are going to fry before long. 

CMOS chips ARE sensitive to static electricity because the voltage and subsequent current can be too high and cause damage to the CMOS parts. 

 

It's pretty much instant death. 
Honestly 2 dead broken front loader NES units out of how many still exist is an infinitesimally small amount of the total population so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯