Broken SNES Games

[darthmunky]

On the back view, the first pin for the chip form the top left. The solder joind looks a bit funky, but it could just be a bunch of leftover flux. I'll pull out my SoM and look when I can in a bit. The contacts do look like they could use a bit more cleaning, but they don't look bad. The silver parts of the edge connector just mean this cart had been used a lot over its lifetime and the golden coating has worn off.

THANKS! This is one game I'm not gonna give up on.

[Hobie-wan]

Well, other than perhaps that one joint, everything looks ok as far as I can tell from the pictures.

[darthmunky]

Thank you for looking. Any idea what I could possibly do to that pin to get it working?

[Hobie-wan]

Well, if it really is a bad joint on that spot, it would just be a quick touch up with a soldering iron and adding a little solder from the bottom. This is one of those aggravating situations where I want to look at it in person, but you're not here.

I'm only guessing because that one joint looks brown instead of silver. But as I said, it could just extra leftover flux. Nothing jumps out me in those pictures as obvious. Ziggy needs to poke in here, he's gonna be more knowledgeable since he's actually making repros.

[Ziggy]

Hmm, nothing really jumps out at me as obvious either. That one solder joint, almost looks like corrosion. Take an old toothbrush to it and see what happens. Looks like the corrosion (or whatever) is spreading to the contact next to it. Clean that off. If it doesn't come off easy, you can use a little bit of rubbing alcohol but just a little. Make sure you dry it completely afterward. If you have a solder iron, it's very simple to redo that joint. Just touch the tip of the iron to that pin (on the bottom side). Wait until the solder melts, than take away the iron.

Although it is worth investigating, I don't believe that is your problem. That's just the SRAM chip, and theoretically should not prevent the game from booting up even if it was missing. All it does is hold the save data (which doesn't need to be accessed to boot the game). I looked up that pin and it happens to be the ground. So if that contact was completely bad, the chip wouldn't even work.

I was more interested in the contacts. It's hard to tell from the shine on the pics, but it looks like the contacts could be cleaned a little more, notably the ones on the top side on the right.

But Hobie-wan is right, this is the kind of thing you wanna look at in person. If you still can't get it to work, I'll look at it if you pay to ship it here and back. I'm not sure how much postage is to Hell, but if you're in the USA it should be rather cheap.

[Hobie-wan]

I believe he's in Canadia.

I was going to suggest sending it for a look too. I noticed it was the ground connection too, but yeah.

[darthmunky]

Too bad I only have the cold heat soldering iron... I can prob send it to ya, but I'm gonna have to check on the shipping, and there's a store around here that might do repairs so I'm gonna check that out first.

[Ziggy]

OK. If it turns out you wanna send it my way, drop me a PM.

[jtsuprastar92]

hi i have a broken yoshis island cart inside the cart there is a plastic like piece and next to it on the board is labled x-1 that plastic piece is bent and cracked also the battery was bouncing around in there whic i will be saudering back into place. any ideas on how to replace that plastic piece? i really want to play this game.

[Hobie-wan]

Can you post pictures?