I recently found my Super Nintendo (SNES) in my garage. I had no power supply, aerial lead or joypad, so I got onto Ebay and bought the required parts. When they arrived I eagerly plugged them in and turned on the console. Nothing. No lights lit up, no buzzing, not even a puff of smoke to tell me anything was happening inside the grey casing.
I went and asked the question in The Retro Video Gamer forum as to what was a common problem in the SNES. The reply came back almost at once “the Fuse” included was a link to the fuse and a tool to open the case of the Nintendo SNES. So Ebay once again and ordered the special screwdriver bit and a fuse. Both of these arrived tonight so I set about the SNES with the screwdriver.
Once the top pulled off the bottom I had this in front of me
The fuse is under the black and red wires which go to the switch. I tested the fuse with my trusty multimeter and found it was blown.
Then armed with a hot soldering iron, solder and a new fuse I took out the old one and fitted a new one in its place
Then refitted the switch plug and the top cover and plugged it in again. While the top cover was off I noticed the ingenious lever assembly which stops you pulling out the cartridge when the SNES is switched on. Simple but it works. Anyway I plugged in the console and got a glowing red light on the front of it.
But when I plugged it into my PC’s TV tuner card nothing showed. I then tried a multi out lead into my PC Video capture USB stick. Black screen was all there was to see. In desperation I tried another cartridge I got from Ebay when they gave out a £5 gift voucher recently, and then there was pictures, and sound and a smile on my face once more. I had fixed the SNES and it worked again. Now to get some games for it…
