racketboy.com

So I recently replaced the pin's in my Nes, and I discovered later-on that I no longer have to push down on the tray to play my games. Whats up with that?

The reason why you have to push down the cart is that so all the pins make contact. The thing about the replacement pin connectors for the NES is that they're so freaking tight (death grip) that they can usually make good contact without having to push the cart down.

Pushing down ruins the pins faster, don't do it if you can. And in my years of messing with NES's though, if you have to push them down anyway, they have ALOT more tendency to not work/fail in gameplay and need replaced anyway.

The original toaster NES pin connector was made in such a way that all the pins didn't make contact until the cart was pushed down.

The NES 2 had a connector that was found in other consoles where they made contact as soon as the cart was inserted.
Replacement connectors are based off of that model and make contact as soon as the cart gets inserted.

So my system should be fine then? What do Nes 2 pins look like?

Curious, are the carts hard to remove on those tight pins? Seems okay to leave the cart up as long as it works, to avoid eventually bending the pins. Pushing down the tray unlikely to fail unless you are constantly swapping game carts. Questionable if the marginal contact in up position may cause problems other then a game lockup after playing a few hours of you favorite RPG.

CRTGAMER wrote:Curious, are the carts hard to remove on those tight pins?

YES!

Those replacement pin connectors have such a tight grip. It's pretty hard to remove carts some times, you really have to put some effort into it. I wouldn't worry about wearing them out, in fact, they can stand to be worn a little so that removing carts isn't so hard. Mine worn to a point where it still has a tight grip, but it's not too hard to remove the carts anymore.

And I wouldn't worry about wearing them out anyway. It'll take a long time to wear a new connector out to the point that it needs to be replaced, and in that event, it's a $5 part and only requires a philips head and about 10 minutes.

Don't use a game genie and you'll be good for a long time, Game Genie boards are too thick and ruin connectors in only a couple uses. -.- Learned that the hard way.

I'm still rocking my original NES connector. I just eased up the pins several years ago and it's still going strong. Well, it worked the last time I tried it 6 months ago... It sucks not having a TV to play retro games on, emulators will have to do.

http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/ninte ... inking.htm

I put a new pin connector in my friend's NES (which had it's original connector) a few months back. It was the worst I've ever seen. Carts just slipped right in with out any resistance at all.