A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
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A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#2Paywalled, requires a Medium upgraded account.
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#3Paywalled, requires a Medium upgraded account.
Not for me. Maybe you’ve hit your monthly “free article limit”?
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#4Oddly fascinated by the booting speed of the NES!
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#5Paywalled, requires a Medium upgraded account.
I was able to read the text of the article fine. The images didn't load, but I know what a NES looks like so that didn't rise to the level of enabling Javascript.
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#6Nicely done. I restore and 'upgrade' NES consoles as a hobby. Most of these steps feature good restoration techniques. However, for anyone here looking to do the same, please skip the polyurethane step. While it may impede corrosion, that step makes the system much harder to repair/modify in the future.
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#7Paywalled, requires a Medium upgraded account.
Open it in incognito/private mode. I use this plugin to always open medium pages in a new private tab: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#8Nicely done. I restore and 'upgrade' NES consoles as a hobby. Most of these steps feature good restoration techniques. However, for anyone here looking to do the same, please skip the polyurethane step. While it may impede corrosion, that step makes the system much harder to repair/modify in the future.
Is there — as Julian Baumgartner would say — an “archival-grade reversible isolation-layer varnish” that could be applied in place of poly sealant? Silicone, maybe?
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#9> I polished the filthy pins that connect the game cartridge to the mainboard
Does this work? I thought you might have a chance of success with bending the pins, but most of the time, replacement is the only viable option.
I did always wonder if you could electroplated the pins again in the right solution and voltage.
Re: A tale from the trenches fixing an NES
#10Oddly fascinated by the booting speed of the NES!
Instant. No OS. Whatever address word you put into the 6502 reset vector ($FFFC/$FFFD) it will happily jump to on power up or reset and start chugging right along. The PPU (aka GPU) takes roughly 2 frames (33ms) to "warm up" and receive information, so, you want to wait for that by polling PPU_STATUS ($2002) with BIT and waiting for BVS twice when NMI fires. It is a good idea to disable decimal mode, disable audio IRQs, set the stack pointer, and zero the memory in a loop. Any booting and loading speed is entirely code dependent.
https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Init_code