General troubleshooting for consoles

[impossiblescissors]

Thought I'd ask the forum for general help in troubleshooting the dead components of non-working consoles. I currently have a dead SNES and I will soon receive a dead Genesis (Model 1601.)

The SNES games, with a few exceptions, don't seem to work at all on my system. "Pilotwings" starts up and the controllers appear to work fine, but the graphics past the title screen are scrambled to the point where the game is unplayable. "Super Game Boy" displays the SGB border but doesn't display game data from the inserted Game Boy cartridge.

I haven't checked out the dead Genesis yet, but the friend donating it claims that he was using an NES power supply with it for several years and suspects this is the reason why it died. I disagree with his guess, as the voltage regulation circuitry would probably compensate for any differences due to the NES power supply.

Maybe this is a very basic question, but is there a technique for using a multimeter to look at the voltage/current of each chip on the motherboard to determine if it's still good? I assume that desoldering and re-soldering chips on the SNES will be more trouble than it's worth. It might be a bit more feasible on the older Genesis Model 1601.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[bicostp]

Have you tried cleaning the cartridge slot in the SNES yet?

As for the Genesis, you'll have to try plugging it in. The voltage regulator could be bad, or maybe the years of running it off AC power (IIRC the Genesis power supply produces DC) caught up with it.

You can use a meter to check things like capacitors and resistors, but unfortunately ICs are generally to complex for them to diagnose properly. At the most, you would be able to replace the chips in the dead console with the same ones from an identical console and cross your fingers that it works, but the SNES and Genesis are so easy and cheap to find, you might as well get another (working) one and rebuild a new one using the good motherboard and whichever case parts between the two are in the best shape.

[impossiblescissors]

I have cleaned the SNES cartridge slot several times. I even bought the special bit for the SNES security screws and opened the case up to clean the port and look for anything that's out of place.