Snes Repairing

Klunt Bumskrint · 11 Jun 2026 at 19:55

Is anyone in here familiar with snes boards? or the carts
Basically I just moved house and got my snes and games out. I have about 11 games and only 1 now works. The snes didn't work but i managed to work out that the little pico fuse had gone so I replaced that and she came to life. BUT, only one game works perfectly out of 110 which is "GODS", I have others that get to the title screens but no furtherand some are just black with lines etc.

All the contacts in the cartridges and the console have been cleaned and I want to work out if it's a console issue or a games issue. Surely it's unlikely to be 9 games that coincidently stopped working?

This little ceramic resonator actually just today snapped fell off today while i was having a look, i managed to get it soldered back on but I wonder if it might be damaged but I can't test it, maybe it's cracked inside?

Any advice would be appreciated

Armageus · 11 Jun 2026 at 20:20

@Vince is probably the most knowledgeable at this point

Vince · 11 Jun 2026 at 21:39

Ohh a broken snes, assuming it's a 3 chip? Doubt that ceramic is on the video output got a pic of the board?

Not all games use all the available data pins or all functions of the available ASICS which is probably why you found one that works. Snes has a number of video modes, rendering modes etc so not all the games hit all the hardware. This says to me that vid output is fine and it's probably back at vram/ASICS.

Edit: a lot of the games on the right are special chip games, mario cart, pilot wings, starwing all have special chips of which there are like 20 or so special chips the snes uses.

Mario Kart is a DSP game and there are 4 revisions of that, Starfox is superfx, Yoshi island is a superfx gsu-2 game and so on.

If I had to guess one of it's 3 ppu's is bad. Or a bad trace, via, etc somewhere back near probably ppu2 which acts as the final gfx composer and visual effects processor, it takes data generated by ppu1 and applies all the hardware level effects before outputting the final video signal.

Obviously if it's a one chip all of the above is nonsense as that's all in, well, one chip.

Klunt Bumskrint · 12 Jun 2026 at 11:21

Had to take it apart again. Is it worth reflowing the cart connections?

lovelyhead · 12 Jun 2026 at 20:01

The capacitor C73 looks like it might have leaked and the chips on top half of the board looks stained like they have had liquid spilled on them. Probably best to try recapping the board as a first step. You can get cap kits from ebay for fairly cheap and it isnt too difficult to recap a snes if you have some basic soldering experience.

Klunt Bumskrint · 13 Jun 2026 at 06:52

I'll have a look at that and give the board a good clean

LewisRaz · 13 Jun 2026 at 09:29

reflowing everything that you are able to would be a logical next step for sure

Vince · 13 Jun 2026 at 10:15

It's a 3Chip... The area around the dsp ppu looks rough, might even be a rotten trace bottom right corner of that PPU. But yea focus around that as it looks rough IMO.

Vince · 13 Jun 2026 at 10:19

lovelyhead said:
The capacitor C73 looks like it might have leaked and the chips on top half of the board looks stained like they have had liquid spilled on them. Probably best to try recapping the board as a first step. You can get cap kits from ebay for fairly cheap and it isnt too difficult to recap a snes if you have some basic soldering experience.

I recon c73 has possibly already been changed doesnt look like factory solder at the bottom there but I could be wrong.

Klunt Bumskrint · 13 Jun 2026 at 12:05

So that photo I've put up makes the board looks really dirty. It's not as bad as it looks. I'll reflow those chips and see what happens. I don't want to stay buying caps unless I need to

Klunt Bumskrint · 13 Jun 2026 at 13:35

So I reflowed everything and now it doesn't work at all. :confused:

I'm so cool.

I checked for bridges and can't see any. This is all new to me so I might have to come back to this when I have more experience. No caps look like they've leaked, nothing looks swollen or burnt. Contacts are clean. Tomorrow If I have time I'll check no pins are moving.

Vince · 13 Jun 2026 at 16:36

Klunt Bumskrint said:
So I reflowed everything and now it doesn't work at all. I'm so cool.

I checked for bridges and can't see any. This is all new to me so I might have to come back to this when I have more experience. No caps look like they've leaked, nothing looks swollen or burnt. Contacts are clean. Tomorrow If I have time I'll check no pins are moving.

When you say reflowed what temp and what tools? These are fairly heat sensitive boards.. did you hear any popps during reflow as these (like game gears) love to pop vias.

Obviously this mainly applies to reflowing with a rework station more than just attacking it with an iron.

Klunt Bumskrint · 13 Jun 2026 at 16:52

Vince said:
When you say reflowed what temp and what tools? These are fairly heat sensitive boards.. did you hear any popps during reflow as these (like game gears) love to pop vias.

Obviously this mainly applies to reflowing with a rework station more than just attacking it with an iron.

I mean I heard slight movement crack as the solder melted and I moved the pin so slightly. Just used the iron at 400

Vince · 13 Jun 2026 at 21:51

Klunt Bumskrint said:
I mean I heard slight movement crack as the solder melted and I moved the pin so slightly. Just used the iron at 400

Iron at 400 isnt too bad, certainly not like hitting the board with air at 480 so you should be fine. On old stuff like this you should be more than good at 360 ish with the iron as generally the stuff already on the board is leaded anyway. probably some sort of short or something on the board now, might be tough to find if you literally reflowed everything. Got a scope to really get in close and inspect?

lovelyhead · 14 Jun 2026 at 06:55

I would just buy a cap kit on eBay for £7 and start there. If that doesn't fix the problem then it is probably something more serious and more difficult / expensive to fix. At this point in time everyone should be looking to change the capacitors in their SNES consoles anyway.

Vince · 14 Jun 2026 at 14:23

lovelyhead said:
I would just buy a cap kit on eBay for £7 and start there. If that doesn't fix the problem then it is probably something more serious and more difficult / expensive to fix. At this point in time everyone should be looking to change the capacitors in their SNES consoles anyway.

Honestly I don't see many snes systems with cap issues. I've taken a lot of these off and tested them and generally they are within spec. There are exceptions but overall snes caps are pretty good.

Systems I see dodgey caps in all the time are like PSOne (the small one not the big one) game gear, 32x/mega cd. Amiga cd32, ataris.. pretty much any atari minus the 2600. All suffer plus a few more...

The MK1 mega drive that uses the nichicon caps I never bother recapping anymore as every single one I tested when recapping several of them was within spec. Nintendo systems rarely use bad caps honestly and not all caps are bad. There is 60 year old audio equipment out there with caps that are still within or better than rated specs so why do we always assume a console needs a recap?

Not shooting you down at all and it may well have dodgey caps but yea I've seen more snes systems than most and caps are not something I tend to go straight for when a dodgey snes comes in.

Klunt Bumskrint · 14 Jun 2026 at 15:35

Vince said:
Honestly I don't see many snes systems with cap issues. I've taken a lot of these off and tested them and generally they are within spec. There are exceptions but overall snes caps are pretty good.

Systems I see dodgey caps in all the time are like PSOne (the small one not the big one) game gear, 32x/mega cd. Amiga cd32, ataris.. pretty much any atari minus the 2600. All suffer plus a few more...

The MK1 mega drive that uses the nichicon caps I never bother recapping anymore as every single one I tested when recapping several of them was within spec. Nintendo systems rarely use bad caps honestly and not all caps are bad. There is 60 year old audio equipment out there with caps that are still within or better than rated specs so why do we always assume a console needs a recap?

Not shooting you down at all and it may well have dodgey caps but yea I've seen more snes systems than most and caps are not something I tend to go straight for when a dodgey snes comes in.

SO today I've checked every single pin that I flowed and they all were ....SOLID. But I did add more solder to the cart connector pins and some of the caps and my one game that worked perfectly is now working again. Gods works every time. Pilotwings still crashes on title screen some wont load at all, NBA Jam gets to title then does nothing. SO should I buy new caps? They all look good to me bearing in mind all I know is that they swell and leak, honestly they all look in good condition. Can't find any corrosion, broken traces or bridges so surely it must be a chip?

Vince · 14 Jun 2026 at 17:52

Klunt Bumskrint said:
SO today I've checked every single pin that I flowed and they all were ....SOLID. But I did add more solder to the cart connector pins and some of the caps and my one game that worked perfectly is now working again. Gods works every time. Pilotwings still crashes on title screen some wont load at all, NBA Jam gets to title then does nothing. SO should I buy new caps? They all look good to me bearing in mind all I know is that they swell and leak, honestly they all look in good condition. Can't find any corrosion, broken traces or bridges so surely it must be a chip?

My bet is still ppu2.

Edit: if you have a flash cart I have a test rom that hits and tests all the hardware. Should tell you what's most likely the issue.

lovelyhead · 14 Jun 2026 at 18:29

Vince said:
My bet is still ppu2.

Edit: if you have a flash cart I have a test rom that hits and tests all the hardware. Should tell you what's most likely the issue.

Yeah you could be right. That is often the cause of graphical corruption. Not an easy problem to fix unless you have a known good PPU to replace it with and are fairly skilled at soldering. That's why I suggested starting with a cap kit because if that doesn't solve the problem you will know it is most likely something more difficult to fix i.e. one of the PPU's. It is also a good test of your soldering skills to see if you are able to tackle the more difficult soldering work. I've done a few mods on SNES consoles and the PPU pins are tiny and easily bridged.

Klunt Bumskrint · 14 Jun 2026 at 20:27

No flash cart here. Maybe it'll be time to get a faulty snes to cannibalise