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Hardware Failure Thread of Inevitable Disaster

Yimothy

Yimothy

Red Plane
(he/him)
Not exactly a failure, but I got out my copy of Bangai-O Spirits recently and found it wasn’t recognised by my DS. It claimed the cart slot was empty. I thought at first maybe my DS was dying, but it didn’t show in my 3DS either. I cleaned the contacts a bit and got it to show on the console’s boot screen, but when I tried to run it it would say it couldn’t access the save data and refuse to go any further. I wound up cleaning it more thoroughly using a tissue, isopropyl alcohol, and a small flathead screwdriver and the game is now running.

I haven’t had a DS game fail like that before. I got this one second hand over ten years ago, so maybe it was poorly treated by the previous owner? They’re quite tricky to clean because of the small size of the contacts and the little bits of plastic between them.
 
ArugulaZ

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
This is interesting.


You know how joysticks for game consoles used to have little switches that let you turn on and off rapid-fire for the action buttons? There's a problem with that design. There are metal prongs under the switches that connect metal traces on the printed circuit board... pushing the switch to the right tells the joystick to turn on rapid fire for that button. Unfortunately, through frequent use, those metal prongs actually cut THROUGH the PCB and damage the traces, preventing the button from being recognized at all.

This can be repaired by bridging the traces with metal, but unfortunately, that brings you back to square one... the metal prongs can still cut through the solder or silver paint you've used to bridge the traces, if they switches are used frequently enough. I get the feeling that this is what went wrong with one of my own older joysticks.
 
muteKi

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
I picked up a SB AWE64 (ct4520) a bit before the end of last year. Sold as tested and working. Plugged it in and... Nothing
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
I guess I'm pretty fortunate that I didn't have many controllers with turbo, and didn't engage them much on the ones I did. But definitely something good to keep an eye on in the future!
 
Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
Yeah, I've never used turbo so I guess I'm fine. I do need to find where my NES Advantage went though.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
I have mine, and I've honestly never used it that much. :( Unfortunate, I know, but I always wanted that arcade feel on the buttons and stick, and it's just not really there.
 
ArugulaZ

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
What, the NES Advantage? Loved it to pieces as a kid, but now I know better. You can definitely tell that it's not using microswitches, and the damn action buttons tend to get caught around the edges of their holes. The Super NES Advantage wasn't released by Nintendo, but has the same issues. Most likely, ASCIIware designed them both, explaining the similarities.
 
Sarge

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Intriguing for sure. If I go on a heavy original hardware kick again, that would be pretty awesome. Right now I've got an AtGames Legends Gamer Mini which, while it isn't Happ/Sanwa/Seimitsu quality, still feels quite nice, and it works with the MiSTer.

I still think the Advantage's adjustable turbo dials are one of the coolest things ever, though.
 
Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
Yeah, I don't think the Advantage stands up with a Sanwa but at the time it was pretty decent. Few knew what a decent arcade stick was back then, and third party controllers were generally abominations. Might be fun to mod it if I ever find it.
 
ArugulaZ

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
Uh, Magic Trashman...?

I think Emio made an Advantage-like joystick for the NES Classic (and maybe one for the Super NES Classic too) with more arcade-like parts, but it didn't exactly get rave reviews. The people who did get them had to mod them anyway.
 
R.R. Bigman

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
My PS5 crashed while playing Elden Ring. The screen started to glitch out, then went green and shut down. It wouldn’t turn on, but after unplugging and then plugging it back in, it worked again. I took the disc out and I don’t think I’ll be using the system for a while.

What happened? I tried looking online, only to find a number of possible issues involving Rest Mode and faulty motherboards.
 
R.R. Bigman

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
I had just turned the system on a few minutes prior. I bought a small wooden table to put next to the TV stand so it would have plenty of breathing room. That shouldn’t be the issue.

I’ve come to view material possessions as much less important in the past few years, but my PS5 was a gift that cost a lot of time and money to obtain so I could have it to enjoy. I really want to figure out what the problem is and how I can fix it.
 
R.R. Bigman

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
My PS5 continues to function well enough, though now the controller is starting to mess up in a big way. The left stick is drifting like it’s trying to deliver tofu on a mountain road, and I can hear and feel the innards of the controller making crunching sounds. That’s bad, isn’t it!?
 
estragon

estragon

the SD Card on my 3DS is so corrupted/broken that it won't even reformat lol

i did not know this was even possible

i've had "won't write files post reformat" level storage problems before, but this is my first "can't even try to reformat" experience

luckily it happened right after i beat a game and not right before, i guess
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
estragon said:
the SD Card on my 3DS is so corrupted/broken that it won't even reformat lol

i did not know this was even possible

i've had "won't write files post reformat" level storage problems before, but this is my first "can't even try to reformat" experience

luckily it happened right after i beat a game and not right before, i guess
Click to expand...
Not sure what type of sd card you have, but if it's Sandisk, they have a pretty comprehensive warranty if your card isn't too old - maybe you can get a replacement at no cost. Won't replace your saves of course, and I'm sorry that happened, but it's something.
 
Becksworth

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
Yeah, Sandisk gave me a brand new 1TB card after my Steamdeck bricked the first one I bought for it, and that probably wasn't Sandisk's fault either.
 
estragon

estragon

It's not Sandisk but that's good to know, because the replacement I ordered is. Also, a 3DS sized SD card is pretty cheap now, huh.

I'm not too bothered by the lost saves. You really can't ask for a better time for your memory card to die than immediately after you beat a game and before you start a new one. If it had happened a day earlier it would have been extremely annoying, though!
 
estragon

estragon

I was somehow able to recover the data??? For some reason the card:

(1) Would no longer write saves
(2) Caused all the 3DS' internal ways to manage saves to no work
(3) Could not be reformatted

But the backup data I made before trying to reformat seems to work just fine when transferred to a new card. I kind of just figured based on the those three things that the backup data was also not going to work but couldn't test it until a new card arrived.

I guess depending on what was causing the problem using the data from the bad card on the new one like this could make the problem reoccur, but a 64GB Sandisk SD card is ~$10 now so I'm willing to kill another card to risk keeping the data.


madhair60 said:
( the game beaten was "Mordecai and Rigby in 8-bit Land" )
Click to expand...

Even more embarrassing than that, it was the Wizardry-like Elminage.
 
muteKi

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
Apparently my X360's disc drive doesn't want to read discs. Everything else on the system works and you can even hear the drive whirring a bit when it tries to do its thing, but it doesn't recognize that discs are in the drive. I think it got dropped at some point since I last used it, and while it wasn't a fall from a high height, I guess it was enough to do some damage to the drive. I have enough disc games that I think I'm going to need to figure out how/where to get this fixed.
 
Kirin

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Possible the reading lens is out of alignment? I know that’s something that wasn’t too hard to get in and mess with on some PS models, but no idea what it’s like on a 360.
 
muteKi

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
That's a possibility. There's a short and abrupt grinding noise when it tries to read discs, which makes me think something to do with the laser track. It's probably fixable, but I don't want to be the one to do it.
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
If it's grinding, it could also be a gear is out of alignment, or just straight up busted like my PC Engine CD, though that's still not working even after replacing the gear, so who knows for your 360 lol.
 
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