A Question About the NES Cartridge Connector

[PortableNintendo]

Hello, here's what's up... I hacked up the NES board & that went ok. I did scratch the board up good tho' when desoldering the RF unit with my shaking hands and 40-watt desoldering iron. Anyway, that's probably cool. The little electolyic capacitor, however... I burned the edge of it turning it sideways... I think it'll be fine... what is it anyway, in case I do need a new one, a 47or something of whatever it is that measures a capacitors capacity of its functioning capabilities??? Somewhere between 10 and 100 I think? Well, if there were only some way to test my hacked up NES board? Hmmm... I will just have to finish building. OK, so that's all cool. My problem is this: I destroyed the 72-pin connector to my NES by *cough* gently *cough* prying the pins completely off the thing while trying to make the sucker completely "blink-free" at the end of chapter 6. In addition, knowing that I could buy one for an easy ten dollars and have it within a week wasn't good enough for me. That is once I got to eyeing up my Game Genie (5$). I said to myself:

"Self, I wonder if the connector in that Game Genie is anything that could suffice as a new, better, connector for my NES board?"

So I impatiently snapped the plastic off of the Game Genie with a real big flat-head screwdriver only to discover that there are screws under the label after I scratched up the innards(Game Genie circuit boards) worse than my NES board ever got scratched. Bet it still works. I will test it. My question is can I desodler the connector from a Game Genie to an NES board and have it function as a new and improved 72-pin cartridge connector or is there more to it than that people have done it? Do I just line it up? Or should I give it up and spring 10$ for a new connector (and 5$ for a Game Genie). ?

[arfink]

Well, yes and no. The game genie connector would need to be modified to make it work because it is not a ZIF connector like the normal NES hardware is. So, you would have to mount it so that the connetor can turn with the cartridge. Also you would need to hand wire it. Probably cheaper and better to get a replacement, personally.

[Indigno]

It would be way easier to get a new one, but another thing you could to is wire one up from some old floppy disk ribbon cables.

[PortableNintendo]

OK, so check this out I DID try to use the game genie and instead of hand wiring it I soldered each pin onto a respective metal connector on the NES board edge that looks like the part of the chip that sticks out of an NES game. SO, Here's my next question should I just desolder all of that game genie crap and try again or can I use the connection? I cannot test it with out an RF beccause I damaged it upon removal... Live and learn right? oh well, so has anyone tested this? I will try it once before removing it I think.

[arfink]

Well, if that is what you did it should work just fine, but the connector is facing the wrong way to use it in a normal NES case, but I think you already knew that. I was assuming you wanted to keep your origional case. Just make sure to figure out which way the cartridge should face, with the label up or down. Just look at the old connector you pulled out and figure out which way it should go. Yeah, I did that one time too, but I wanted the connector someplace else later and rewired it with longer leads.