10NES Chip Help!

Hi John, did you disable the chip or just pin 4 on the chip? Usually it would be just pin 4.

Dale W

See nes - Disabling 10NES Chip - Arqade According to article, dwinhold is correct, you should disable pin 4.

You can tell if the 10NES chip is disabled because the 10NES chip will reset the console over and over again if a valid cartridge is not inserted. If your power light doesn't blink constantly anymore when the console is empty, then you did it right

Clem

I only removed the 4th pin. And yes, it doesn't blink anymore like it used to. But now I only get a green screen! Games no longer play.

http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/nes_mod/nes_mod_en.php

"All you need to do is put both chips in key mode. When both lockout chips are in key mode, nothing happens (so no resets). To do this, you must disconnect lockout chip pin 4 from the motherboard and connect it to a ground (lockout chip pin 11,12,13,14 or 15). It will also work if pin 4 is not connected at all, so don't worry if you accidentally rip it off. Even though it works without connection pin 4 to ground, I believe it is better to do it anyway."

Sounds like you "shouldn't" have to ground after doing this, but it might not hurt.  Also, connectors cause all kinds of issues if you're using the NES-001 front loader.  If you didn't clean the NES motherboard connector (the one the 72 pin slips over) I'd break it back down and do that as well as clean all of your games.  The best way to clean the games is to use the special bit or make one as on the website above, though I personally had little luck with making one.  They are fairly cheap to buy on eBay or various websites.  Once you get the cartridge apart, it can be cleaned with a simple rubber eraser like those used to remove pencil marks.  Also, 72 pins are relatively cheap to replace if you're doing it yourself but you can follow the guides to "restore" them as in the website above.

Here is a video I made on the "take apart/eraser" method of cartridge cleaning that actually displays me cleaning a game and shows the difference in real time.  My before/after comparison was broken by the fact I tested a cart at first that was assembled with flat-blade screws and I then had to improvise on camera since I didn't have my flat blade screwdriver handy.  FYI, both games failed to work before cleaning and then did work afterwards so this method is a possible fix.  Some early NES carts left the factory with the flat blade screws (and you'll notice they are usually are held by 5 screws instead of 3), but they developed the "tamper resistant" screws fairly quickly after that so 90% of NES games you'll find use them.  https://youtu.be/Y9UmcEVJMPM

Try the pin restoration, NES motherboard edge connector cleaning (the pins which the 72 pin connects to inside the NES), and game cart edge cleaning first in my opinion.  The lockout chip really should only have to be cut on pin 4, but you might ground it for a check.  Just be sure to not short anything that shouldn't be shorted.   Using these tricks, I've never seen any condition NES fail to load games, including badly yellowed/physically damaged/child abused consoles.  They just rarely die to the point where they can't be fixed, they're incredibly reliable.  Clean games taken into account, actual NES console problems only reside with the lockout chip 1% of the time and with the 72 pin about 99% of the time.