NES 72-pin Connector Replacement

I replaced the 72-pin connector in my original Nintendo Entertainment System (Of the over 60 million produced, mine was one of the first million) today with much success.

I’d always had issues with the “Blinking Red Light of Doom” only recently (past year or 2) its gotten a lot worse and finally stopped playing games all together.  I came upon a solution by accident this week however while surfing the net.  It turns out that replacing the 72-pin connector that the cartridges slide into resolves the problem in a good portion of original NES units.

I grabbed the connector from Amazon, of all places.  That paired with a simple set of instructions I found online, I was able to quickly disassemble my original NES, replace the connector, and reassemble it in under an hour.  I’ve put links at the bottom of this post to both the 72-pin connector and to the instructions I used.

Sources:

• New 72-pin connector – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A3IA0Y
• Instructions – http://www.jandar.net/nes72pin/ or @ The Wayback Machine http://web.archive.org/web/20101115125632/http://www.jandar.net/nes72pin/

Note:

• I deviated from the instructions slightly.  I found that removing the screws in Figure 6  prior to removing the cartridge housing in Figure 5 made the process of getting the cartridge housing out a little bit easier.

Edit:  The original reference site is no longer available… I’ve added a the link to the wayback machine.