This story begins when my friend Rob Ivy, you may know him as the Obsolete Geek on Youtube,
posted this on facebook. Basically, he says he saw an original NES sitting on the shoulder of a major
freeway in Irving, Texas. He even made a little map for anyone that wanted to go pick it up.
This is highway 121 in the general vicinity where the NES was found. As you can see,
a very odd place indeed to find an NES from the 1980s just sitting on the side of the road.
Well, some time passes and either nobody believed him, or nobody wanted to go pick
it up. So he eventually went back and picked it up himself, and then made this post on facebook.
So, I chatted with him and said I’d like to have a look at it, so he brought it
over to my place in his Japanese imported, right-hand-drive Toyota Crown that he likes to
drive around on the weekend. And yes, I know, my lawn was in terrible need of mowing. Don’t worry,
it got mowed the next day. Anyway, he said the right hand drive actually made it easier to
pick up the NES since it was safer for him to get out of his car on the shoulder of a busy freeway.
And here it is. Is that tire marks on the side? I mean, considering the circumstances, I’d say
it’s actually in remarkable condition. These feet definitely need replacing. This area here seems
to be the only actual crack in the plastic. Surprisingly the tray door is still intact.
So, to be honest, if this had just come from some stranger on the internet,
I’d have probably thought it was staged. You know, like they were just making it up to see
if they could get me to show it on the 8-Bit Guy. But, this obviously comes from somebody I trust,
and plus I saw the developing story on this as it came along. So, the question is now, what on
earth was it doing on the side of the freeway? I mean, who would throw something like this out
of the window? Or, you know, maybe somebody was moving and it just wasn’t packed well and it fell
off the back of a pickup truck or something you know, maybe? I don’t know. In fact, this almost
looks like tire marks, like maybe it was hit by a tire or something. I don’t really know.
Did an angry girlfriend through their gamer’s Nintendo out the window or something like that?
I don’t know, anyway, what we’re going to do next, is we’re going to take it apart. Because,
I’m too afraid to plug it In right now, so we’re going to take it apart and see what’s inside.
And before we start, I thought I’d mention the serial number, which is a bit on the low side,
but probably nothing terribly collectible. Anyway, let’s get started unscrewing this
thing. I noticed it was completely missing the screws for the controller ports.
I think it is safe to say somebody has taken this apart before.
Also these are just regular Philips screws. I know some used security screws.
And here we go. Haha. Well, I can see the RF shield took a beating. And considering how
thick this Shield is, it may have prevented further damage to the rest of the system.
Well, let’s go ahead and remove this thing. You know, I think it would have taken
some serious impact to do this. Either that, or somebody ran over this thing.
Anyway, now that I can see there is no major destruction, or hidden bombs inside.
I’m going to try plugging it in to an official NES power supply and see what happens. I’ll use the
original duck hunt Super Mario combo. And now I see problem number two. The tray won’t stay down.
Well, I’ll just hold it down manually and see what happens.
Hmmmm. Well, that’s good and bad news. The flashing screen usually means bad contact
with the cartridge. But it does mean the CPU is actually working. So, I’ll give it some deoxit
and try to clean the contacts some. And for the second try, I get exactly the same thing.
Well, I went ahead and ordered one of these 72-pin connectors on Amazon.
The fact that these are even available is a testament to how often they fail.
So, let’s go ahead and pull this board out and have a look at it.
In order to remove that socket, I have to remove the entire loading tray, which isn’t a big deal,
it just snaps out like so. And one thing I noticed right away was that there was significant
corrosion on this expansion port, which could certainly be causing a problem. So, I’ll just
pour some alcohol on the board and then go to down with a brush and see if I can get it cleaned off.
Now I’ll attach my brand new connector. And now to do another test. I’ll just have to hold the
cartridge by hand again. And look at that! It appears the board actually works for the most
part. But for all of the good it does if I can’t get this tray fixed. Unfortunately, this is NOT
a part I can just buy an amazon. The problem appears to be here in this latch mechanism.
I think this side is the part that is actually broken, so I’m going to pull that out. And yep,
I think there’s supposed to be a little metal post that sticks out, which has apparently broken off.
I’m kind of thinking I could fix this myself. It looks like there’s just a
little piece of metal in there. So this is the piece that is actually broken. I think I can
fabricate a replacement out of my favorite thing, a paperclip. This one is basically
the same diameter as the other part. So I’ll just cut it to the correct length.
And here’s the original part next to the new one. So I’ll just poke that right in there.
And what do you know, I think that will work. Now I’ll just reassemble the rest of it.
And now to try it out. I think that’s going to work!
So now I’m going to get to work on this RF shield. I’m pretty sure I can get this back into shape.
Or at least close enough. Some people would say I don’t even need the RF shield,
but in this case I think we can safely say this thing helped protect the motherboard and
really the whole console from being crushed. So, I think we should keep it.
And well, here we go. Ok, it’s not perfect. But I think it’s good enough.
Next, I’d like to clean the dirt out of this thing. It’s a bit hard to see on camera, but
it’s actually pretty dirty inside. I think that worked pretty well. I’ll try it dry it out a bit.
And now I’d like to try cleaning this top piece. And this is where I need to explain something.
As you can see, it’s really hard to do this with it apart. So, I’ll wait until it is put
back together to tackle this. However, I do want to rinse these little vents out really well.
OK, yeah, those are much cleaner. And you know what? Looking at this,
I think I can pop this back into place. Haha, yep. It’s almost like
setting a broken bone or something. Yeah, that looks a little better.
At this point, I’m going to start re-assembling everything.
So, what about these missing screws? Well, I took my good Nintendo and removed one of the screws
from it. Then I took it down to the hardware store and looked at a million screws. And I found these.
I think these will work. I mean, they aren’t exactly the same, but I think close enough.
OK, before I completely put this thing back together, I want to do another test. And
yep, everything is still working.
And here we are back to cleaning the top. People often criticize me for cleaning things like this
when they are put together. But honestly, it makes it a LOT easier. I have to scrub these things
really hard and you need the object to be heavy, larger so it’s easier to get ahold of,
and rigid so it doesn’t bend. As I’d hoped, alcohol is removing the tire marks.
And here we go. It’s not perfect, of course. But not too bad for being found on the side of
the road. But I still want to take care of these feet. It’s funny, the circles around the feet are
worn down. I think maybe it actually slid along the concrete at high speed for some time after
being thrown out and the concrete was like a grinder or something, just grinding it away.
Anyway, I’ll put some WD-40 in here and let it sit for a while.
And here we are about an hour later and let’s see if the remnants of these feet will come out.
And sure enough, no problem. I’ll follow that up with some alcohol. All right, so when I was at the
hardware store I also picked up some rubber feet. Hopefully one of these will work. And yeah, I
think these will work pretty well. Wrong color of course, but nobody will see on the bottom anyway.
OK, so now that it’s finished, it’s time for one final test. And I have a little teaser surprise
for you guys. Here’s Petscii Robots for Nintendo. The game isn’t finished yet, but it’s coming along
really well. In fact, there are currently 7 different ports of Petscii Robots in progress.
The next video on the channel will give you an update on some of those ports.
It’s crazy to think that a huge portion of the code running here
is actually still the same 6502 code originally written for the PET version.
So, this was actually a good bit easier to repair than I was expecting. I mean, I think most of the
problems it had were not a direct result of being thrown out of a car. It looks like the main issues
were that 72 pin connector, maybe a little but of the corrosion on the back, and the fact that
the tray wouldn’t stay down. So, you know, maybe that’s why somebody threw it out because it wasn’t
working in the fist place. But the motherboard was actually perfectly fine. I guess it will just
be a mystery as to why it was on the side of the road. I suppose if anyone ever comes forward with
an explanation about how it got there, then I’ll update the video description with that information
so you can look down below. But that’s it for this episode, so as always, thanks for watching!