I don't think there's ever any need to replace an original 72-pin connector

[MaximRecoil]

I have a few of the original front-loader NES consoles, and of course they were all "blinking NES" consoles. Several years ago I bought new 72-pin connectors for them, which made them work, but I never really liked them. Their grip on the cartridge is very tight, and they'd usually only work if you didn't push the cartridge down after inserting it. I preferred the way the original ones worked when they were new, i.e., slide in easy, push down, works perfectly, first time.

I thought I'd already tried cleaning the original connectors, but I'd only tried it with rubbing alcohol, and that stuff doesn't cut the mustard. Alcohol is great for dirt and grease, but it doesn't do much, if anything, for that near invisible film of oxidation that builds up on the pins over time. You need something that will chemically break down oxidation. People say that a good contact cleaner like DeoxIT is just the ticket, and I'm sure it is, but I've never tried it (not something I could find locally, plus it is kind of expensive). So a couple years ago I thought of using Bar Keeper's Friend, as I mentioned in this thread. It is cheap, available at any grocery store, and contains oxalic acid, which cuts through oxidation like it was nothing.

 

So here's what I did to make my main NES work perfectly with its original 72-pin connector, first time, every time:

 

1. Disassemble the console.

 

2. Remove the 72-pin connector from the motherboard.

 

3. Using a thin paste of Bar Keeper's Friend plus water and a Q-tip dipped in it, clean the edge connector pins on the motherboard. I guarantee you'll see black coming of it onto the Q-tip, no matter how clean it looks to begin with. Continue, using a new Q-tip each time until it comes back clean. Then carefully rinse the BKF residue off the edge connector pins, dry with a cloth, and go over them with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol just to make sure you got all the BKF residue off.

 

4. Using an old tooth brush saturated in thin BKF paste, scrub the 72-pin connector for a few minutes, being sure to get into all the crevices, and scrubbing both the pins that connect to the motherboard and the pins that connect to the cartridge. Then rinse thoroughly. At this point I like to rinse off the tooth brush, add some dish detergent to it, and scrub the connector again, and thoroughly rinse again, just to be certain that all of the BKF residue is gone. Shake off the excess water and air dry (a hair dryer will speed things up).

 

I also have cleaned my cartridges in the same way as I described in #3 (easy to do if you disassemble the cartridge), and yes, black comes off those too, even if the pins look shiny gold to begin with.

 

The results? An NES that works like new, first time, every time, and doesn't require a death grip on the cartridges to do it.

Edited November 28, 2013 by MaximRecoil

[ApolloBoy]

and yes, black comes off those too, even if the pins look shiny gold to begin with.

You might want to be careful about that, as you're actually scrubbing the gold plating off if it's already clean.

[Austin]

A technique I learned is similar, however I prefer to file down the plastic notches between the pins. The pins get pushed down over time and as a result the notches keep the cart from touching the pins. You can bend the pins back up of course, but they will eventually become depressed again over time.

[MaximRecoil]

You might want to be careful about that, as you're actually scrubbing the gold plating off if it's already clean.

 

No. There is no gold plating at all on the motherboard's card edge pins (they appear to be tin plated), and that comes back black (when I say "black" in any of these posts, I mean "dark"; it is not like black paint on the Q-tip), though on the second time it doesn't, because it is clean at that point. If removing the plating was the cause of the black Q-tip, then the Q-tip would continue to get black on every pass, until there was no metal left whatsoever; no plating, no base metal. BKF is not even remotely that aggressive. It is very mildly abrasive, and the abrasiveness is practically non-existent when you mix it thin. Its oxalic acid is what does the work (oxalic acid is commonly used as an electrical contact cleaner).

 

If you wanted to remove gold plating, or any significant amount of metal at all, of any kind, with a thin BKF paste, I expect you'd be at it for weeks straight. It is less abrasive than a pencil eraser, and less abrasive than the metal-on-metal friction that happens every time you insert or remove the cartridge from the console as well.

 

By the way, looking clean and actually being clean aren't necessarily the same thing.

 

Either way, anyone concerned about BKF can use DeoxIT, or any other agent that cuts through oxidation. The point is that there is no need to replace anything; the relevant contacts just need a good cleaning to work perfectly again.

[MaximRecoil]

A technique I learned is similar, however I prefer to file down the plastic notches between the pins. The pins get pushed down over time and as a result the notches keep the cart from touching the pins. You can bend the pins back up of course, but they will eventually become depressed again over time.

 

In my experience, loss of tension on the pins has never been the problem. Years ago when I first tried to make a "blinking NES" work again, I tried bending the contacts up, which made the cartridges fit tight into the connector, but the results weren't that great. It did make the NES work on the first try more often than before, but it was still far from working on the first try every time. I've also tried cleaning with isopropyl alcohol, and again, the results weren't that great. At some point I discovered that using a pencil eraser on the cartridge's contacts would remove "dirt" (you'd see dark stuff transferred to the pencil eraser) even directly after "cleaning" with alcohol, which indicated that alchol isn't all it's cracked up to be when it comes to cleaning electrical contacts. There was no way to use a pencil eraser on the 72-pin connector though, which seemed to be the main source of the problem, rather than dirty cartridges.

 

I had some Bar Keepers Friend for cleaning stainless steel pots and pans, and it worked great for that. When cooking something like rice in a stainless steel pan you end up with a hazy whitish film on the pan that is very difficult to remove. Steel wool will remove it, but a green Scotch-Brite scouring pad won't (at least not quickly/easily). Bar Keepers Friend removes it almost instantly, with very little effort, even easier than with steel wool, so I knew it had to be doing it chemically, because there was no way that a thin solution of BKF was more abrasive than a Scotch-Brite or steel wool. So I checked online and found that:

 

 

 

Unlike similar abrasive cleaning products, such as Comet and Ajax, Bar Keepers Friend uses oxalic acid as its active ingredient.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Keepers_Friend

 

And oxalic acid is commonly used as an electrical contact cleaner. So I dug through my drawer and found an original 72-pin connector that I'd replaced with a death-grip aftermarket one, and made sure it was one of the ones I'd never messed with by bending the contacts out or anything, and I scrubbed it with a toothbrush and Bar Keepers Friend for about a minute, and reinstalled it in my main NES. That was a couple/few years ago, and it still works the first time, every time.

[Austin]

 

In my experience, loss of tension on the pins has never been the problem.

 

It's not "the" problem, of course--dirty contacts on both the connector and the cartridge arguably play the biggest roles in this--but in my experience I have found the tabs to be an issue as well. All it takes is breaking out the connector, taking a look at the pins in relation to the notches, and the conclusion should seem pretty obvious. I definitely recommend doing everything you have suggested (it's standard procedure for cleaning these things in this day and age, to be honest), but as an extra layer of precaution, I recommend filing down the black tabs as well.

[ITAdvantage]

I thought that disabling the NES10 chip fixed the blinking issue more than anything. Is that just a myth then?

[Austin]

I thought that disabling the NES10 chip fixed the blinking issue more than anything. Is that just a myth then?

 

I believe--and someone correct me if I'm wrong--it just corrects the blinking aspect of it. Games will still not load/give solid colored screens if proper contact isn't met.

[ITAdvantage]

 

I believe--and someone correct me if I'm wrong--it just corrects the blinking aspect of it. Games will still not load/give solid colored screens if proper contact isn't met.

That makes sense. However I've replaced some 72-pin connectors, and not 5 games later I'm having the same blinking/not playing issue. I figured that the NES10 chip was the issue but I just bought a Retron3 instead of messing with it and just put the NES on my shelf for decoration.

Edited November 29, 2013 by ITAdvantage

[Austin]

That makes sense. However I've replaced some 72-pin connectors, and not 5 games later I'm having the same blinking/not playing issue. I figured that the NES10 chip was the issue but I just bought a Retron3 instead of messing with it and just put the NES on my shelf for decoration.

 

I get the same problem with my replacement connector (didn't have a choice on it, it was in the system when I got it), even with new PCBs (like my PowerPak).

[MaximRecoil]

 

I believe--and someone correct me if I'm wrong--it just corrects the blinking aspect of it. Games will still not load/give solid colored screens if proper contact isn't met.

 

That's correct. Disabling the lockout chip isn't a bad idea, as it is one less pin to worry about getting good contact, and if by coincidence, that was the only pin that wasn't getting good contact, the NES would work simply by disabling the lockout chip. However, if there are other pins that aren't getting good contact, you won't getting the blinking issue, but you'll just get a blank colored (e.g. green) screen.

 

To the people who have had trouble with the aftermarket death grip connectors: I've found that those work best if you just slide the cartridge in until it is fully seated in the tight pins and don't push it down. I had a few aftermarket connectors that would only work that way; if you pushed the cartridge down like you are supposed to, they wouldn't work.

 

I prefer the original quasi "zero insertion force" (ZIF) connector along with the standard procedure of pushing/locking the cartridge down; works great as long as everything is very clean (and don't forget to clean the card edge pins on the motherboard that the 72-pin connector slides onto).

[Asaki]

I'll have to keep this in mind. I tried the boiling method and it worked perfectly, but I gave that NES away, since I have a top loader, so I don't know if it holds up over time. Mixing both methods might not be a bad idea, either.

 

And yes, disabling that chip only stops it from blinking. It only helps a tiny bit, but it's so easy to do that I just snip it anyway. Top loader doesn't have the chip.

[MaximRecoil]

I'll have to keep this in mind. I tried the boiling method and it worked perfectly, but I gave that NES away, since I have a top loader, so I don't know if it holds up over time. Mixing both methods might not be a bad idea, either.

 

And yes, disabling that chip only stops it from blinking. It only helps a tiny bit, but it's so easy to do that I just snip it anyway. Top loader doesn't have the chip.

 

I have a toploader, but I rarely use it. It is 100% reliable, but I hate the picture quality of it, i.e., only RF and the faint vertical lines across the screen. One of those factory replacement toploader NESs with the SNES-style AV out multiport would be nice to have, but they are pretty rare:

 

 

It is a non-issue for me now though, since my standard frontloader NES with perfect picture quality and AV outputs is 100% reliable since it was thoroughly cleaned (and has remained that way for a couple/few years). Plus the original frontloaders have nostalgic value for me, while the toploaders don't, and they are just plain weird looking, and the cartridge looks comically disproportionately large and ungainly sticking out of the top of one of them. It looks like a kludge because it is; i.e., if NES cartridges had been designed with a toploader in mind, they wouldn't look the way they do; they would look like Famicom cartridges.