Nintendo 64 Mystery Problem is Solved!

Performa

Member
Many moons ago, a good friend of mine at work passed an old Nintendo 64 console my way, and I've used it intermittently over the years. I grew up in a Sega and later PlayStation household, so I didn't have one of these growing up. It is a neat machine, and I was looking forward to breaking it out for Evercon- when i discovered it didn't work. It would send out a video signal, but that was about it.



Not great! So after a few failed attempts to get it working myself, I reached out to @PS2it who found time to recap it for us (mad props again sir!) but the system still wasn't working properly. In defeat, I took it to the wizards over at Gaming Generations in Stevens Point, who agreed to take a look at it. While they only work on video game consoles (oh how I wish I could drop an Amiga or Macintosh off for recapping!) this has saved my bacon many a time before, and this time was no exception!



So, what was wrong? We're still not quite sure. A few of the carts I was using had some corrosion on the pins- otherwise they weren't able to find a problem with it. I have no idea why it stopped working, nor did they find any reason that it wouldn't work fine. I'd start to think that I was crazy if not for PS2it confirming that it wasn't working for him either. Just plain weird!

On the upswing, when I get my tax return, I think I'm going to splurge on an EverDrive USB adapter cartridge, so we can play a wider range of games than the smattering I have now. Some N64 games are kinda crazy priced now, and many of them are considered the best, so that'll make that feasible for events going forward. :D
 
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