Curse you, blinking power light!

[hitogoroshi]

My NES does not work. It's doing that thing with the power blinking on and off (although once I was treated to a disfigured version of the SMB3 title screen.) I know, when the connectors get bent and dirty, no temporary solutions will fix it.
That being said, anyone got any temporary solutions to fix it?

[Crimson Knight]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

I loved how the graphics for games would get garbled with the NES. One time, I could play Ghosts and Goblins with a hat on, and shoot cigars!

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

Put the game in slowly all the way, then pull it out just a bit, then push it down, works wonders, and is much better than just blowing on it. My NES is almost 20 years old now and still works, almost always on the first time, though I do keep good care of my stuff, and I used to use the cleaning kit. Though really all you need is a rubbing alcohol mixed with water solution and some Q-tips to clean the NES and the cartridges, just wait like an hour after cleaning before playing, so you don't short it out. So if you do those two things it should work most of the time, unless your NES is just dead.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

I pretty much shift my games around bit by bit until I hit a sweet spot.

Hey, be careful about trying to play those battery-backed games. That problem can and does ruin the saves of a few games (I lost a few hours off of Dragon Warrior IV this way). Just make sure you're holding the reset button in when you're turning the power back off, and it'll be less likely to happen.

BTW, am I the only one that knew what this topic was going to be about just by reading the title?

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

I pretty much shift my games around bit by bit until I hit a sweet spot.

Hey, be careful about trying to play those battery-backed games. That problem can and does ruin the saves of a few games (I lost a few hours off of Dragon Warrior IV this way). Just make sure you're holding the reset button in when you're turning the power back off, and it'll be less likely to happen.

BTW, am I the only one that knew what this topic was going to be about just by reading the title?

Yeah I figured it was this, as other than the XBox no other system I know has a blinking power light.

For the battery back up thing jiggling it around can cause you to lose some saved data since anytime the conectors come all the way off the cartridge loses the power from the system to keep the saves, so basically once the battery goes you have to leave that game in the system and unplug the system it or you will lose your data. Or you can try to replace the battery which would be a pain since you have to buy a special screwdriver, or just a soldering iron, of course you'll still lose the saves currently on there unless you're super fast.

[DYRE]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

I knew what this topic was about, too. And, I hate the blinking light. The "newer" NESes are much better. Plus, you can hit them really hard while playing and totally mess up the graphics.

[DYRE]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

...Retards...

Most people are.

[Zieg Rauros]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

I'd buy it from you, I don't have one here, and both my front loaders (or all three?) are somewhere at my dad's.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

For the battery back up thing jiggling it around can cause you to lose some saved data since anytime the conectors come all the way off the cartridge loses the power from the system to keep the saves, so basically once the battery goes you have to leave that game in the system and unplug the system it or you will lose your data.

Well I do turn the system off when shifting the connectors around. But does the save battery really rely on the power the NES is recieving even when it's turned off as an alternative to using the power of the battery? That would explain why some batteries seem to last longer than others. Though I'm not entirely sure how save batteries work in the first place.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

Well that depends on how they made it, and actually explaining it would probably be beyond my knowledge of circuits. But the save battery works by being a constant power supply to the save RAM in the game. Like your computers RAM this RAM also requires constant power so it can "refresh" the data. So once it loses that power supply it slowly loses charge, which is why some of your save will still be there for an hour or so after unplugging the NES or taking out the game. Basically it has to do with keeping costs low and using DRAM does this. If you know anything about circuits, DRAM uses capacitors to store the data in them, and capacitors lose charge over time and thus must be refreshed every so often, how often depends on the capacitor used. I'm sure there might be a couple of games out there that might use something similar to flash RAM, which actually keeps it's state without power, but that is pretty expensive. So most resort to DRAM, which is also what your computer uses for BIOS, and your computer has a "save battery" on the motherboard to keep your BIOS settings. Of course that one is usually a lot easier to replace once it goes bad. Most of these save batteries have a life from 5 to maybe 20 years (basically the life of a watch battery as they are the same type of battery, Lithium Ion in most cases, and more than likely use about the same power). This is why manufactures moved to a memory card which uses the aforementioned "flash" RAM (or something similar) which keeps it's state without power, this way they save cost by using bulk (instead of a small amount on the game) and you only needing one, and you can keep your saves for longer (no storage scheme lasts forever, even harddrives they last 10 years at best). Of course really they did this because they moved to ROMs which are unmodifiable like a cartridge, but the 64 did feature both options, saving to the game itself or a memory card.

So there you have it, the pseudo-history of game saving.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

Of course really they did this because they moved to ROMs which are unmodifiable like a cartridge, but the 64 did feature both options, saving to the game itself or a memory card.

Too bad most N64 games didn't make much use of them.

[gray]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

top loader for sale?! *tackles glueme*



anyways, i have a trick for making a nes work...but it's a closely guarded secret. one other person knows, and they're dead....soon.

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Curse you, blinking power light!

Is if blowing off the inside, then blowing off the cartridge?

Cause thats like the most secret NES trick ever!