Fun and Headaches with the NES: Resources

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Below are Resources to:
   1. Deal with the blinking light issue that appears randomly with every NES.
   2. Mod the NES, care for cartridges.
   3. Replace the power supply (or get one that will work).

The "Blinking Red Light" [of Death] was (and so is) a common issue that crops up with practically every NES console ever made (unfortunately): anyone who has played with an NES can tell you about it.

Seen here with an easy, but per-instance fix:


The blinking red light does not (usually) signal actual death in most cases. When this starts you may not get a video output, may get a purple (or as I have also found, red, or yellow, or blue) screen rather than the game video output, may get blinking or lines. The one case it may signal death is when the chip responsible has died (I would guess), but in any case for a permanent fix here are some good resources:

Video for disassembly and easy method to resolve blinking red light:



Guide to do the same with insructions to build-in a switch to enable and disable the chip in case of finding a rare game that relies upon the fourth pin (that the permanent fixes disable) of the security chip:

http://raphnet.net/electronique/nes_mod/nes_mod_en.php#4. This link goes to a specific section of a larger page of NES modification and care resources that are quite cool.

Be sure, however, to see his disclaimer, which also applies here! (If you follow these guides or imitate these videos, you do so at your own risk: I am simply assembling links to reading material of potential interest to NES owners, and not suggesting or recommending that you actually do any of this!)

Replacing the Power Supply: 
Of course, any plug/cord/supply must fit the NES. The official power supplies released in America for the NES that I have read:

     Input: AC120V, 60Hz, 17W
     Output: AC 9V, 1.3 A[mps]

But I have some running on adapters with as little as 600m[illi]A[mps] and experience no problems. It turns out that"the power coming from the power supply is converted to DC and lowered to 5 volts using a simple lm7805 voltage regulator" in the console itself (http://raphnet.net/electronique/nes_mod/nes_mod_en.php#5), so the raphnet author writes

"This means that giving 12 volts to the NES will not damage it (however, please note that the regulator will generate a little more heat). Since the NES expects AC, you can supply the NES with DC power without having to check the polarity."

and that, like me, he has been using a .6A supply that "[s]o far [...] has worked flawlessly with the NES." Mine is for an old cell phone, his is for an "old cable modem"!

And now you have resources to fix various problems with the NES, or NES problems, encountered frequently by people who buy and use the Super Nintendo. Have fun!

One Method of Charging a Galaxy Player that Won't Charge

This is simple, really. In my case, my Galaxy Player, a 5.0 or YP-G70, battery totally drained, and refused to charge after that. (Keywords: Battery wouldn't charge, battery won't charge.) I knew it was probably not the cable, which is not very old (I had replaced the Samsung-supplied cable, which became loose fitting whenever plugged-in to the Galaxy Player, not long ago) .

I checked on the Samsung website itself, which specified that only about .5 amps of power are drawn from a computer USB port--not even enough to keep-up with the GP being on, though not in use, in many cases (i.e. programs are still running in the background): I don't know if that's true if one has disable bluetooth, GPS, Vibration, and other such items, or when the display brightness is kept low, as it certainly seemed to always charge when those things were true, but WiFi was kept on, and even with me playing music, while plugged-in to a USB port.

Anyway, they state that the wall-adapter draws about 2 amps from a normal outlet (this is for America, the USA), and that a GP that refuses to charge should be plugged-in for at least an hour into the wall-adapter itself. This I did, and after something more than an hour I noticed it had charged more than the few rare instances it had actually gained (but then lost) in charge terms over the entire two days prior, in which I had kept it plugged-in (wherever I went) to powered USB ports.

Now it seems to charge just fine again, no matter the source, and something I learned from this: Li-ion batteries actually do better if frequently charged, even when the battery is not largely or totally drained; which, I discovered, can actually cause problems (or as other sources indicate, actually damage the battery!). Note this even for tools like the batteries used with cordless power drills: think about that the next time you have your DeWalt Drill or other cordless tool powered by a battery pack! (No wonder my last outfit had so many problems with their batteries!)

Google Play: Persistant "No Connection"

Found here, I thought I would perpetuate the answer to the following problem: one opens Google Play, encounters a  "No Connection" error, presses "Retry", gets the same; checks that wifi is on, it is, does "Retry" again, and still the same; closes out and opens the browser only to find that the connection is working just fine...

The answer there was to make sure the Android device system date and time are correctly set: in my case they weren't, due to a battery that decided to go unreliable.

An answer applicable to some others' situations can be found here, http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/20855/why-does-google-play-show-a-no-connection-retry-error.