NESp troubleshooting help needed

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 10:37 pm

I am building the hand built NES from Ben's book. I am to the part where you finally get to test everything for the first time. First I had no vol, brightness. Reconnected cable and wala they show. Now I can see something - what looks like a bunch of the screen all smoshed together, other games show nothing at all. I tried recleaning and re-prying everything as in the preping the NES section for the pin connector. Could this be a wiring problem?

Any help as to what to look at would be greatly appreciated. Man i am so close I can taste it!!!

Thanks!

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 10:57 pm

Look for bridged and cold solder points.

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 8:48 am

What is a cold solder point mean? Remember this is my first project.

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 1:29 pm

It is when the solder doesn't make proper connection between the wire(or pin) and the board.

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 11:02 pm

Well I double checked everything and I can't find any problems. I followed every troubleshooting idea in the book. My screen powers on, the multimeter shows the proper voltage at all points. I can see the brightness and volume bars as I adjust them. Most games show white/grey blinking. I recleaned the connector (all the games play on my top loader nes no problem), pulled the pins out farther and nothing on all games except Mrs. pacman. On this game I see the garbled up screen information and I can even hear 1 beep when I push a button (as if to start the game) then nothing.

Is it possible I could have done somehting to screw up just the NES board? Or possibly the connector?

I am super lost here??

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 11:03 pm

Also on the Mrs. pacman garbled up info it's like it's all smooshed into about 1/2 of an inch and spilt in half. If theat info helps at all?

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 11:08 pm

i also tried replacing the 2N4401 Transistor (In case I fried the other one with too much heat). I used the clips on each lead to help dissapate heat and it felt pretty cool to the touch after soldering the new one.

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 12:51 am

Interesting Note: I was once again retesting everything with the meter when i accidentally touched the aluminum side and to my surprise the sound started playing. The picture seemed farther along in that you could actually see it. Still messed up and all though.

the was on the left board rear side while touching the lower left most lead to the IC from NES controler (rememer rear side).

maybe that will help. I immeadiately thought it to be a grounding issue so I redid the grounding connections but no go.

nos_slived · Post by **nos_slived** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 1:06 am

Do you have AV ground connected? I didn't want to ask this, because I just stopped you before a quintuple post.

egomine · Post by **egomine** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:49 am

Yeah sorry about the extra post thing. I just kept thinking of other information that I thought may be helpful in helping me out.

As far as grounding everything seems to be grounded (by grounding I mean there are wires with solder points that appear to be good).

By AV you mean the Left board right? My PSOne screen is definitely connected to the ground one the PSOne screen as shown on the book. The Book shows it soldered to the left of the screen on that little metal patch. Do I need to link that ground back to the NES board as well?

I went back last night and noticed there was one ground spot on the left board diagram that I didn't have so I added that one. When I did this though the screen just displays like a grid (the volume & brightness still work). Pulling it back of and touching that one lead to the sidewall lets the sound play flawlessly though. The screen shows all scrambled although not in a smooshed up little line anymore. Werid thing is it only seems to like to work with Mrs. Pacman. Everything else gets blank grey & no sound.

Btw just noticed the edit button (will use it in the future)