So until we find out who these sellers are smuggling these things from, the gaming public will have to put up with the high prices. However, they are quite unique in the world of connectors and I (in my limited experience) know of no other device that has ever used such a component. Sellers want anywhere from $7 to $12 (!) a piece for these things, which is a lot of markup considering they’re probably being churned out by Chinese factories at a cost of a cent a piece. So about three months ago, I finally decided to buy one and try it out. The concept is this: you buy a new connector, you disassemble your NES and replace the old one, and supposedly the blinkies will be gone. But a few years ago, enterprising young lads on Ebay started selling replacement 72-pin connectors (the cartridge port on the NES has 72 pins) for afflicted front-loading NES systems. And as we all now know, recent attempts at NES replacements just don’t cut it. As a result, you get…Dum Dum Dum… The Blinkies.īack in the day, we just threw up our hands and suffered with the problem, never really thinking there could be a solution - other than buying a later model top-loading NES (released in 1993), which eschewed the high-class ZIF mechanism for a more plebeian (and low cost) approach. On top of that, you have years of dust, dirt, and corrosive build-up on both the internal connector and the game itself. And when they get slowly bent down from repeated usage, the physical contact made between the connector and the cartridge itself suffers, making it hard for the NES to read the data on the cartridge. But this delicate dance between cartridge and machine repeats it self over and over again throughout the years until the the pins in the internal connector start to lose their flexibility and springiness. This mechanism seems like a great idea on paper - there’s no brute-forcing the game in, and it’s easy to pull the game out of the slot when you’re done. Zero Insertion Force sounds like it would have been a good title for a Japanese NES game). It’s sort of like a cartridge port version of a ZIF (zero insertion force) socket (Hmm. It was designed in such a way that a game cartridge can be inserted at a slight angle with little resistance, then pushed down in the spring-and-latch loading tray inside the NES, bringing the cartridge’s contacts in full contact with the connector’s pins. The crux of this classical problem is a special connector inside the unit that wears out from repeated usage over the years. I used to impress people at parties with my NES-charming abilities, and boy did the ladies love it. It takes a lot of patience and a certain flick of the wrist. There’s a fine art to actually getting a game running on an old NES. Blast! It’s hard to remember that your NES ever worked on the first try. Then an hour into playing, you accidentally tap the console and the game freezes, forcing you to start your Metroid game all over again. Things might be a little garbled, so you hit reset and it looks OK. You blow, you sneeze, you use q-tips, cleaning kits, and wow…it works? You see the title screen, but it’s still a little flaky. Or at least, in a fight to get your NES games working on that old front-loading NES. It’s an endless struggle an epic, no-holds-barred wrestling match: Man vs.
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