My SNES troubleshooting workflow for “black screen of death” systems

SPOILER ALERT: They ALL have dead CPUs.

SPOILER ALERT: They ALL have dead CPUs.

I have dozens of these black screen systems. I have a basic flowchart for troubleshooting all SNESes in my head. It’s simple and progresses from the easiest fixes to the most difficult. But I’ll spoil it and reveal ahead of time that they almost all have dead CPUs that need to be replaced. It’s never the easy stuff.

The first steps are disassembly and cleaning the housing. Of course, the latter doesn’t fix anything, but time is money, and by cleaning the housing first I can leave it to dry while I work on the motherboard itself.

Step one is to clean the cartridge slot with a toothbrush and 91% alcohol. 99% is better but it’s more expensive and harder to find. 91% is good enough. Most folks recommend wrapping a credit card in a cloth, dipping it in alcohol, and then inserting and removing it repeatedly to clean the cartridge slot, but I’ve never understood this method at all. I don’t understand how that could possibly be very effective. A toothbrush seems like the obvious answer to me. For one thing, with the credit card and cloth method you’re only cleaning the removable top part of the connector, which is completely pointless if you don’t also clean the pins beneath it that are soldered directly to the board. For RGB, APU, and 1CHIP models I suppose the credit card method may be all right, since you can’t just lift the connector off on those. But a toothbrush just seems like a far better method to me. You need to use serious elbow grease when cleaning these things, and there’s no way to put the kind of force necessary behind your scrubbing if you’re just using a credit card wrapped in cloth.

Of course, rather than clean it, it’s faster to just grab a known working cartridge slot connector to test the system quickly. Keeping one handy saves time.

It's pointless only cleaning the removable top part of the cartridge connector if you don't also clean beneath. How would you possibly clean a system like this with the credit card method?

It’s pointless only cleaning the removable top part of the cartridge connector if you don’t also clean beneath. How on earth could you possibly clean a system like this with just the credit card method?

Cleaning beneath the connector is very important. If someone spilled something on the console long ago, you have to consider where gravity would have taken it. Soda spilled on top of the console wouldn’t have just sat on the top removable piece of the connector for all those years, so it’s rare to find much corrosion on the removable part. Any liquid spilled on top of the system would have run down through the connector and settled on the pins beneath. That’s why you tend to find rust and corrosion on these pins. Sometimes they look all green, like the Statue of Liberty. I scrub these with a brass brush to remove any corrosion, then clean them off with a different toothbrush and some cotton swabs. Deoxit is also good to use here.

Knowing how gravity works allows you to predict this before you even fully disassemble the console.

Knowing how gravity works means this kind of result is predictable.

At this point you can test the system. If it works, great. You’re done. But the premise here is that these simple things usually don’t work. Most consoles don’t have so much corrosion, so, while cleaning is always a good idea for sanitary reasons, it rarely actually fixes anything. Ordinary dust and dirt won’t stop the console from reading games. So let’s move on to the next step in my flowchart.

If you hold the reset button on a working console while powering it on with a game inserted, you get a black screen until you release the button. The idea here is that if the reset button is very dirty (again, think spilled soda) then it can be stuck in the activated position, causing the same symptoms as if it were actually being held down. I’ve never actually seen this personally, but it’s an explanation that makes a lot of sense to me, so it has a place in my flowchart and I always first try cleaning the reset button with a toothbrush and a bit of alcohol. If it seems sticky I temporarily desolder and remove it just for testing. It never turns out to be the culprit, but it’s pretty quick to remove so it’s not much of a waste of time.

C62 and the reset button.

C62 and the reset button.

C62 is a small 2.2µF capacitor right above the CIC chip, near the reset button. I’m told that if this is bad it has basically the same effect as holding the reset button down, resulting in a black screen on all games. Again, I’ve never actually come across a system where this had happened, but it’s an easy thing to replace, so I sometimes try replacing it if it looks funny. It has never fixed anything for me though.

I’ve seen this next thing once and only once. Since it happened once though, it does have a place in my flowchart, since I suppose I could come across it again.

I flip the board upside down and do a visual and tactile check of the solder joints on the bottom of the cartridge slot. When I say “tactile” what I really mean is that I press on them one at a time with my fingers to see if they’re cracked. It doesn’t hurt to quickly reflow them all. It almost never fixes anything, but it can help you eliminate the cartridge slot completely as a possibility. If you are an insane person you can get a multimeter, connect the top removable connector, and then check each pin on the bottom of the board for continuity with the corresponding pin inside the removable connector. This is a colossal waste of time though and you should only do this if you are a masochist. Even with a third hand tool, you’ll nudge the board constantly, your hand will slip, you’ll drop one of the probes, you’ll lose count of which pin you were at and have to start over and you will want to off yourself in no time. Besides, you really don’t need to test. It’s never the cartridge slot that causes these issues. When it comes to the cartridge slot, if everything looks good, it is good. The one time I had a system where this sort of thing was an issue, the solder joint was so badly cracked on the underside of the board I could wiggle it with my finger. If something is wrong it will be obvious.

Next is to check for broken traces. There are no shortcuts here. You just need a jeweler’s loupe and a lot of time on your hands. What I’ve learned from experience though is that you shouldn’t waste your time on this step unless you have good reason to suspect there will, in fact, be some broken traces. Basically that means if you have a system that had liquid damage or was in a very damp, wet, humid, or dirty environment you may want to spend some time looking at it carefully under magnification. So if you open it up and find lots of rust or dead bugs, it may actually have some broken traces. But if you open it and it’s nice and clean, don’t waste your time. Unless, of course, someone else worked on it prior to you. If that’s the case, you should absolutely check for broken traces, scratches, lifted solder pads, and that sort of thing, since you never know what the last guy may have done to it.

If the system is an SHVC model, yes, you can try swapping out the sound module. Some games will give a black screen if the sound module is disconnected or bad. But many games actually load to the first screen and freeze when the sound module is bad or disconnected, so if you’re using a game like that and you get a black screen, don’t waste your time, since it’s not the sound module. An Everdrive will load and display the contents of your SD card even with a bad/disconnected sound module. If you try to run a ROM, it’ll freeze.

An Everdrive, by the way, is something that can be very helpful when you’re not quite sure of the extent of the problem. Some systems may give a black screen on most games, but display garbled graphics on another. Still others give a black screen on 9 out of 10 games but might play one specific game just fine. Those consoles may have hope. To help understand the extent of the problem a bit better I see if it’ll read an Everdrive. If it reads the Everdrive and loads the burn-in test rom, I run it and see what it says. These black screen systems may not read any retail games, but sometimes they do read the Everdrive, though it doesn’t always actually load up fully. It often crashes when trying to display the contents of the SD card. But if it does load and I can get the burn-in test rom to run, it usually is very straightforward and simply says, “CPU —— FAIL”. That’s about as clear-cut an answer as it gets. Almost all the failures are CPU-related, but occasionally you do see some VRAM problems. Those are nice since you can easily grab the VRAM from another console. There’s also plenty of space between the pins so soldering them in is easy. But I’ve only seen bad VRAM two or three times and those had all been worked on previously. I don’t think the VRAM is typically prone to failure. Normally it’s a CPU problem.

At this point the only thing left is to replace the CPU. That’s not as hard as it sounds if you have hot air rework equipment. It’s very easy to remove the old CPU, but you do need to be moderately good at soldering to put in the new one. I usually end up with a few solder bridges at the end that need to be fixed. The hardest part though is locating a good CPU. The reason I have dozens of dead black screen SNES boards is because I have no good CPUs to put in them. Most, I’m sure, would work fine with a new CPU, but the trouble is that there’s nowhere to get them. I found a few IC dealers online that claim to have a small quantity in stock, but they are asking such high prices it would actually be cheaper to buy working SNES consoles for the CPUs than to buy from those bloodsuckers. When I get really badly water-damaged or otherwise screwed-up boards I take the CPUs. Sometimes they’re bad, too. But occasionally they’re good and I can revive one dead system from my stack. It always feels good. Plus I end up producing some unique SNES consoles like 1990 SHVC boards equipped with the later (and much more resilient) “S-CPU B”, which was normally only found in the GPM-02, RGB, and APU motherboard revisions.

Don't worry. I didn't cannibalize a working RGB board. It had been eaten up by roaches and was totally beyond repair with broken traces all over and the solder mask peeling up on the back.

Don’t worry. I didn’t cannibalize a working RGB board. It had been eaten up by roaches and was totally beyond repair with lots of broken traces and the solder mask peeling up all over the place.

103 thoughts on “My SNES troubleshooting workflow for “black screen of death” systems

  1. Hi how desolder ic cpu, how much temp in needed? For the icdont broken or burn

  2. I use a cheap hot air rework station. I set the heat gun temperature to about 350°C and point the nozzle at one corner of the chip. I then move it around the perimeter of the chip for about 45 seconds to a minute until the solder on all the legs is molten. Then I quickly lift it off the board with some tweezers while all the solder is still melted.

  3. Thanks bro, this Weekend i do these with all snes broken (all is SNS-RGB-02 Model )

  4. What would you charge to repair a SHVC-CPU-01 if I could beg you to do it? Mine I bought new back in 1992, but it started the Black Screen of Death back in 2007 and has been in a box ever since. I recently got it back out and took it apart. Everyone online said to clean the connector top and underside, I did all that with 90% rubbing alcohol, but nothing really changed. Most of the time it’s just a black screen with no audio. Sometimes I will get some graphical glitches in the way of bars, but every once in a while I get this sad song with Super Mario World. You can see it here. https://youtu.be/FBr5dJMo_dc.

    Anyway, could I beg you to fix mine. Name a fair price and I will send it to you. You seem to be the only person that actually knows how to fix this when it’s not just a dirty cart slot. Feel free to email me.

  5. Hmm… from your video and description it definitely sounds like your board has a bad CPU. I do have two or three good CPUs at the moment so I could install one in your board. But I have a few concerns. First is that it sounds like the system has some sentimental value to you. The main reason I don’t offer a repair service is because I don’t trust myself enough to work on someone else’s property. There’s always the slim risk that I could screw up and damage something.

    But in this case the main issue is that it’s not worth the money in my opinion. The way I see it, the CPU is basically worth the same as an entire console. You can get clean, undamaged boards with bad CPUs for next to nothing on eBay, but it’s very hard to get spares of the CPU itself. Usually the CPU is the only thing needed to have a complete working system. The only time I get spare CPUs is when I salvage them from motherboards with very severe liquid damage that would be too impractical to repair.

    What I think is a more affordable solution would be if you just bought a replacement SHVC-01 motherboard and installed it into your original housing. You could either get one on eBay pretty cheaply by buying a console with cracked housing or I could sell you one that I’ve tested.

    If you prefer to have your original motherboard repaired though, I’d be willing to do it but I’d have to charge around $40 since it would mean I’d have one less CPU to install into a system that I would have sold. You would pay to ship the item to me, but the return shipping would be included in the $40. I also have to warn you that if I repaired your board I’d probably have to replace your original CPU with a CPU-B from a later revision, since that’s what I have at the moment.

    If you’d like to either buy a good board or have me repair yours you can email me.

  6. Hello and good morning. Great article, this is full of great info and should be everyones “go to” site, and it definitely seems that like myself, this is something youre really passionate about. Anyway, I have acquired a really nice condition late release model 1 snes with the rgb 02 motherboard, only problem is that all i get out of it is either a black or gray plaid screen with distorted audio from a random part of the game, which i am fairly certain is a symptom of a failing cpu. Which is really a shame because like the shell, the motherboard is in fantastic cosmetic condition. And i dont have the proper equipment, skill, or parts to attempt a cpu swap. So i was thinking that in my position, an entire motherboard swap would be my most convenient fix. Only problem is that i would like to replace the board with a proper match so that i wouldnt have to make adjustments to the shell for it to fit properly, meaning that if i were to blindly buy a reliably working but damaged shelled console from ebay, i might end up with something that doesnt quite fit such as a revision with a large sound module etc. I understand from reading previous posts that you are not a repair service, but i have to ask if youd be willing to work on this console for me, or at the very least if you had a board youd be willing to sell that you know will fit my shell that i could just drop in without having to dremel and fidget with. Im not sentimentally attached to this console, the shell is what is most important to me, and if you were to agree to help out with a repair and if something went wrong and the board was left damaged i wouldnt be upset as i would still be left with a good shell and could still just replace the entire board. Whatever youd charge would be worth the risk in my opinion, im having a very hard time tracking down a proper motherboard, let alone someone willing to attempt cpu repair. Thanks for your time, hopefully this message reaches you

  7. Excelent article. I have a SNES with black screen problem. But it acts strangely. Neither game run, but with few exceptions.

    The flash cart from tototek display his menu when has more than 1 game installed on it. I can chose the game with gamepad but after pessing start I have a black screen or some screen flickering.

    other cartridge with strange behavior is the Satelaview cart. The program run, I have the fliping Nintendo Logo with music but I can’t start anything.

    Why these carts display something while all other game simply show black screen ?

  8. The CPU is probably failing, but maybe it’s not totally dead yet. I don’t have a Tototek flash cart, but I’ve had the same issue with an Everdrive on consoles with bad CPUs. They’ll sometimes boot to the Everdrive menu but then freeze when you try to load a game. It kind of makes sense to me, since the flash cart menu is very simple compared to a real game.

    With a bad CPU, just about anything is possible. Sometimes you’ll even find consoles that run some games perfectly, but others may not run at all or might freeze or have glitches. I once had a console that ran every game I tested perfectly except for Street Fighter II. The only problem was that hadoukens and other projectile attacks were invisible and would go right through the character without causing damage. I was reluctant to replace the CPU on that one to fix it, since it was such a funny issue. But sure, enough, after replacing the CPU it was fixed.

    Someone with more knowledge about semiconductor manufacturing might have more insight on why sometimes the CPU fails entirely, and why other times it runs some carts with glitches, but the explanation I’ve heard that seems to make sense is that the bond wires in the CPU simply break or disintegrate. So if the problem isn’t too severe yet, some games may partially run.

  9. Great workflow! I stumbled across this post while looking for answers to my SNES issue. I would be grateful for your input if you have a second to check it out. Rather than writing a novel here, I posted about it on my family blog. A description, pics, and a video of the issue are all there. Thanks again for the great article!

    Blog post: http://www.lakeviewcrew.com/?page_id=3860

  10. Wow, that’s a weird issue you’ve got there. I really don’t know what would cause it. You have CPU-B in that console and since you said there don’t seem to be any game logic problems, I’d speculate that PPU1 is bad, but that’s really just a guess. I don’t know if there’s any truth to this or not, but I find it less likely for PPU2 to fail when it’s a later revision of the chip, like S-PPU2 C. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing PPU2 rev C fail. But that could just be coincidence, since I don’t see that many failed PPU2s anyway.

  11. Thanks for checking it out. I’ll start poking around PPU1 and see if I can find anything. Hopefully just some bad traces around that area. Thanks again for the help!

  12. Took your advice on desoldering ICs from the comments above. A hot air rework station and tweezers worked like a charm. Thanks for that. Any tips or tricks on soldering in the replacements? Those pins are super small!

  13. I have a SNES PAL-version 1992 SNSP-CPU-01. I replaced the capacitors I was able to play Terranigma and surprised to see data was still intact. but when pressed reset button got some black screen with yellow distorting lines , soldered out reset button to measure it properly (it is working fine) and soldered it back on, now ignoring this just played the game a few times but black/yellow screen came at random but only with RF- cable on a CRT television, note the AV-cable from nintendo itself just give a no signal sign.
    this was at my dad’s home because he is a retired technician. Back home I use a Samsung HDTV monitor
    also only works with the RF-cable. to make sure problem was not with cartridge i started a new data file and played the game for about 30 minutes without screen crashing. Next morning i turned on SNES could see the game loading then black screen telling me weak or no signal. So back to square-one because if not capacitors I do not hope it is one of the chip-sets on the motherboard because that would mean my SNES is at his end. So do you have a clue on what is next to fix or is it just end of story for my SNES?

  14. Wow, I’m really sorry but I’m not sure what would cause that other than maybe some damaged traces somewhere. I’ve never seen that problem before. Sometimes I get consoles that don’t work via RF but work fine using the multi-out, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one like yours with the problem the other way around. If you don’t see any obvious broken traces, then honestly I’d probably just replace the whole motherboard if I were you.

  15. Hey I need your advice on a snes I picked up as “untested”. I plugged it in, some games worked, some games had garbled graphics or missing graphics, some games froze while playing and a few games just had a black screen, street fighter 2 being one of them. So I took the console apart tried cleaning it up and look for anything out of the ordinary such as bad traces etc. Couldn’t find anything obvious so I put it back together and test again, all I get is a black screen on every game. So I try and take it apart again to make sure it all looks right, put it back together and now it won’t even power on. I’m sure I got everything connected right I put enough of them together to know what I’m doing. Also got 2 other broken snes one that won’t power on where I tried to fix myself but couldn’t figure it out and most likely damaged the board and one where I found broken traces close to the pins. Problem is I’m not good with soldering and I had to take out the slot connector attached to the board to find those broken traces. I feel very overwhelmed with all the broken snes. I’m pretty sure at least 2 of the 3 if not all still have good cpus, I just don’t have the know how or experience to fix it.

  16. I have a SNS-CPU-GPM-02 SNES that I bought a last year. It’s in really good condition and I’ve been buying up games on eBay (over 20 so far) and they have been working perfectly fine for the most part. Unfortunately, I have found a few games that don’t work on my system. I have 1 that stops working after I get past the main menu, 1 that just plays the intro music and shows a black screen when I turn the power on, and 1 that produces nothing at all. I’ve had the chance to try these cartridges in other SNES consoles, and they all work, so I’m confident that the problem is in my SNES but I just can’t figure out the specifics. Ever encountered this sort of thing before? What could the problem be?

  17. It’s possible if just one or two pins are dirty you might have a situation where the system plays most games fine but hangs on just a few particular games. I had a system recently that worked fine with almost all of my games but would hang on the “Nintendo” logo when I tried to play Super Mario Kart. When I looked closely at the cartridge slot using a flashlight I noticed a tiny bit of green corrosion on just one pin. After scraping that away and cleaning the slot again with some isopropyl alcohol the problem was solved. If you have a known working console you could also check if the cartridge slot is the problem by swapping over the removable part of the cartridge slot from the good console to the bad one.

    Having said that, some earlier GPM-02 boards have CPU-A inside. If yours has CPU-B, then I’d assume the issue is a cartridge slot problem. But if yours has CPU-A, then it’s possible the issue could be due to a bad CPU. It’s not uncommon for systems with partially failed CPUs to play some games fine but have problems with others. That’s why I hate testing SNES systems with the older board revisions. I have to test them with about a dozen games before I can be reasonably sure the CPU is okay.

    I actually had an SHVC board once that played all games fine but the Street Fighter II Turbo title screen logo was garbled. The rest of the game played and looked fine though. I replaced both PPUs and it didn’t help. I replaced the CPU and the issue was solved. It’s amazing the variety of problems a bad CPU can cause. Everything from issues so minor you might never notice them all the way to “black screen of death”.

  18. Mine does indeed have the CPU-A chip. I was kind of afraid you would say that it might be the problem, because I am not suited or equipped at all to replacing even a normal microchip, let alone these surface-attached ones. Hopefully I can find something wrong with the connector that I can fix. Thanks for the feedback.

  19. Thanks for this helpful post. It’s most disheartening to think my childhood SNES is dead. I tested the voltage on the power supply, and it’s putting out 13v. The voltage on the power regulator is 11in and 4.9 out. I cleaned the cart connector, but overall the system is really clean. No yellowing, even. I’ll have to start looking for a system on ebay.

  20. I’m sorry to hear about your SNES 🙁

    I didn’t get an SNES until after the N64 had already come out, so my first one was an SNES Mini. It’s ironic that even though it was made to cut costs it ended up being longer lasting and having better video output than many of the older models.

    As for your system, if you get any sort of graphics at all—even just some blocky or glitchy garbage—then it’s almost definitely the CPU. If you get solid black on every single game, then it’s still probably the CPU, but it doesn’t rule out other possibilities that are preventing the game from loading, like a broken trace somewhere or a cartridge slot issue. Sounds though like you’ve eliminated the cartridge slot as a possibility and as long as the system was never in a wet or flooded environment, then it’s probably not a broken trace.

  21. hai im from Malaysian. i have 1 SNES year 1997..the problem is black screen..i already clean the pin slot but still have black screen..sometime my TV cant detect connection whit the console.just see blue screen (no signal)..there have crack at capacitor power.do capacitor power is the main cause of it..but LED power on.. please help me…thank you

  22. I’m really sorry, but I don’t know what might cause that problem. I’ve had a few systems like yours where the TV won’t even detect a signal. The motherboards looked pristine but wouldn’t even show a black screen. I have no idea what causes that.

    All I can say is that it’s probably not caused by a bad CPU. Even if you desolder and remove the CPU the system still outputs a solid black screen. So even if the CPU were totally dead, the TV would still detect a signal.

    The only two issues I know of that cause the system not to even output a signal would be a bad cartridge slot or a bad reset button.

    If the system doesn’t detect a game cartridge you’ll get no signal, but if the cartridge slot looks good, then unfortunately it sounds like it’s probably some other issue.

    If the reset button is jammed you also get no signal. Usually it’s pretty obvious though if the reset button is the issue, since it would have to be extremely dirty or rusty in order to be permanently activated. But if you have a soldering iron you might want to try desoldering the reset button and testing the console without it. If it works without the reset button, then the button is bad. If it still doesn’t work then you can reinstall it since the issue must be something else.

    I did once have a system that gave no signal due to a bad video encoder, but in that instance the cause of the issue was obvious because the encoder was actually visibly burnt.

  23. encoder?witch part..can u give a pic…coz i found of slot ic beside resert button have some burn..thnak you for info itry to resolder the reset button first

  24. now i see the problem…encoder problem because have some burn on it…how i can get the spare part encoder?or there any idea to resolve it without replacing it…thanks very much

  25. Honestly I’d say it’s probably easier to replace the whole motherboard. Unfortunately, I don’t know where you could buy a replacement encoder. I was only able to fix the system I had with a bad video encoder because I happened to have a water-damaged motherboard that I salvaged a replacement from.

  26. Any idea what’s wrong when there’s a gameplay issue? Like Donkey Kong works fine until you jump in a barrel and skips you all the way to the end of the level, or super Mario world plays fine in levels but at the map screen Mario glitches out and gets stuck when turning a corner, or nhl 93 the game starts fine but at face off the puck keeps flying out of bounds automatically, some games graphics don’t look right at all either. Some games run and then just stop responding. They don’t freeze though

  27. That’s definitely a bad CPU. Any time the game logic is screwed up it’s the CPU. A bad PPU can cause graphical problems, but the gameplay itself would still work normally (though it might be hard to tell if the graphics are garbled or missing).

  28. Hello from Croatia, a have Snes but Europe edition, six games. I cleaned them, and only one is working, and that one is working just intro logo and then Black screen. Why is that so? Thank you

  29. Hi,
    That issue can happen for a few reasons. Often it’s related to problems with the Sony S-SMP sound chip. But it could also be a bad CPU.

    Does the console have an SHVC-CPU-01 motherboard? If so, it’s easy to replace the entire sound module. It’s the big square part that plugs into the board near the upper right corner. You just need to remove the two screws holding it down and then you can lift it straight up to remove it. If you have another console you can try temporarily swapping the sound module over to the broken console to see if that fixes the issue.

    On later motherboard revisions the sound chips are soldered onto the motherboard, so it may not be worth trying to fix it unless you have the ability to replace it and also happen to have a donor board from which you can take a replacement chip.

    It’s also possible the issue could be due to a bad CPU. I’ve seen that a few times. If the motherboard has the S-CPU or CPU-A revisions it’s possible it could be bad.

  30. I guess i have a bad cpu aswell, i bought a really clean snes from a local game store and it loads only a black screen with one exception, when i put in the gameboy player cartridge, it will sometimes load the gameboy border but never load a game. note it likes to load the border after multiple resets, not from a first power up. Fortunately, they are repairing or replacing the system.

  31. Got a SNES console, originally it booted on with just a black screen. No sound, no picture. So I checked some forums out and a bunch of them said to deep-clean the console because it might just be a bad pin connection. Opened up the console, revealed the pin connector, cleaned it out with 99% isopropyl alcohol (Costco, 10$ gets you 4 good-sized bottles of the stuff,) as well as the contacts on the board where the Pin connector joins in. Turns out there was all sorts of dust and bits of debris in there, and once I cleaned it all up.. It turns on and boots the game!

  32. Hello!!! my problem I have a Snes that does not recognize the control number 1, I thought it would be the control but when connecting it to player number 2 if it works, I already use several controls and they only work on the second player … I do not know why it does not work on the First, I hope you can give me a solution, thanks!

  33. Hi,
    Sadly, this could be due to a bad CPU. I’ve definitely had a few consoles where the controls didn’t work due to a bad CPU.

    To confirm you should first check the area around the connector for the controller port flex cable for any obvious damage like scratched traces or damaged components. If it all looks good then you can try temporarily swapping over a set of control ports from a working console. Or you can buy replacement controller ports on eBay for about $10 to $15 if you don’t have another SNES. If the controls still don’t work after swapping over the ports from a good console, then it’s probably a bad CPU.

  34. I have a SNES from my grandparents that is a original SHVC-CPU-01 main board. It has no video and doesn’t seem to “Play” any games that I put into it, Though I do get audio from Killer Instinct. Oddly enough I played it once before I got my newer SNES, the next time I bring one of my games and BOOM, None of the games work, There was someone that did cable work (It was fed through on a RF Switch), Could it be possible it fried the Video chip ? or do you think its the CPU ?

  35. I have a SNES from my grandparents that is a original SHVC-CPU-01 main board. It has no video and doesn’t seem to “Play” any games that I put into it, Though I do get audio from Killer Instinct. Oddly enough I played it once before I got my newer SNES, the next time I bring one of my games and BOOM, None of the games work, There was someone that did cable work (It was fed through on a RF Switch), Could it be possible it fried the Video chip ? or do you think its the CPU ?.

  36. Unfortunately it sounds like the CPU is bad. I don’t know exactly what causes them to fail, but it seems to be something that just happens eventually as time passes. I doubt the RF adapter or any other cables would have caused it. If one of the PPUs had failed then you’d still at least see some distorted video on the screen. But if the screen is just blank, then it’s probably a bad CPU (assuming the cartridge slot is clean, the games are good, and the video cables are all hooked up).

  37. Is there a way I can send you photos for your opinion ?, Also I tried probing with a Oscilloscope (I just got it) and I am seeing (what I assume are signals) from the CPU to the PPU though I don’t know what I’m really looking at when it comes signals but I do see some activity. The cartridge connector doesn’t look bad at all really. I would like to get it working due to it being the SNES I played growing up.

  38. I’m really sorry, but I honestly know next to nothing about electronics. So I hate to say it, but even if you sent me graphs from the oscilloscope I wouldn’t be able to help, since I don’t think I’d be able to make heads or tails of them. I used to fix SNES consoles regularly and still do occasionally, but I just learned these things through trial and error over the years, not really because I know much of anything about electronics.

    Do you have any kind of flash cart for the SNES? Sometimes a system with a bad CPU will load the main menu of an Everdrive and then freeze. If it does that, then you know it’s almost definitely the CPU, not the cartridge slot or some other issue.

    Another way to try to confirm that it’s the CPU is to keep trying different games to see if you can find one that displays ANY type of image at all. It could be a solid screen, garbled graphics, or just totally random garbage. It doesn’t matter what. If you can find a game that shows any kind of image on the screen at all, rather than total blackness, then you know it’s the CPU. For me, Shaq Fu would sometimes work for this test. It occasionally shows some garbage graphics on consoles that show a black screen on everything else.

    Also, you say that you can hear audio with Killer Instinct, but no video, right? What happens if you try to start a fight? Does it sound like it’s actually working? Or does it freeze or hang? If it sounds like it’s freezing or glitching out in some way, then you can be pretty sure the CPU is the problem.

    If you think it’s the CPU then there’s not really any good way to fix it. The only place to get another CPU is from another SNES. Of course, it would be a shame to take a CPU from a working console to fix a non-working one, so it’s not a repair that makes much sense unless the donor console is broken in some irreparable way. Plus there’s always the danger of killing the donor CPU by overheating it during removal. So even if you’ve got the soldering skill to replace the CPU, it still often makes more sense to simply replace the entire motherboard with one from a working console with shattered housing. Sadly there are a lot of those, since way too many people on eBay don’t bother to ship things properly.

    When I was fixing SNES consoles almost every day I would take CPUs from water-damaged donor boards that were totally beyond repair to fix consoles like yours that were in otherwise good condition but just needed a CPU. But even when I was doing this regularly I still never had enough donor boards with good CPUs to fix all the boards with bad CPUs. I would always have 10 to 20 SHVC and GPM-01 boards that were in great shape but just needed a CPU.

  39. Only things that seems to work is the menu music for killer instinct, the Controller does nothing. I even tried removing the sound module which didn’t affect the results

  40. I hate to say it, but if the controller does nothing, then that sounds like a bad CPU to me. That’s a common issue as well when the CPU fails.

  41. Oh, but one thing I forgot to mention is that most games won’t boot without the sound module connected. Most will show just a black screen, even on a working console. Others will boot to the first screen and freeze (eg. Mario Kart freezes on the “Nintendo” logo). Your sound module is probably fine though, since if it was bad you wouldn’t have heard any audio at all with Killer Instinct. Actually, it probably wouldn’t have even loaded as far as it did if the sound module was bad.

  42. I hate to keep filling up the comment section. What would you suggest, I currently dont have a hot air rework station although I have been wanting to get one. I will come back tomorrow as it is time for bed where I am at.

  43. I totally understand wanting to get your childhood SNES working again—I’ve still got mine from when I was a kid and would be really sad if it stopped working—but I’d suggest just replacing the motherboard with a working one. It takes just 5 or 10 minutes to swap boards and there’s pretty much zero risk of damaging anything, since all you have to do is unscrew the old one and screw in the new one. I’m pretty sure I’ve actually got a spare SHVC board or two, so if you’re in the U.S. and want to buy one just let me know and I can send you an email.

  44. It wouldn’t have to be a SHVC Board, How much would one cost ? I am in the U.S. . Would the boards have the newer B revision chip or would they still have the A one ?, I really hate that the only took a dump like it did, It went from completely working to pretty much nothing within 2-3 weeks. The fact that I got my Newer SNES (1CHIP) was pure luck. also, the bottom half of the case is yellowed pretty bad, is there anything you recommend for that ?.

  45. Would the Replacement boards have the Rev. B chips or the Rev. A ones ?. It wouldn’t have to be a SHVC board. I find it just luck that I got my SNES (1CHIP) right before the old one died. It seemed kinda strange how it went from working perfectly to not working in a matter of 2-3 weeks. I live in the U.S. so that’s no problem. The bottom half of the old case is yellowed, is there anything you recommend to fix the case? How much would those boards cost?

  46. I’m going to send you an email. I don’t want to talk prices on here just because I don’t want anyone else to get the idea that I normally have spare boards for sale. It just so happens that I have one now, but it’s not something I usually sell.

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