Boiling NES 72 Pin Connector Really Work? Experiment Fixing a Blinking Nintendo Console 

I brought my NES out of retirement around 10 years ago and it had the blinking light problem. I was told about boiling the connector but thought I was getting pranked and just chucked it and bought a 3rd party connector. It worked fine for quite a few years but ended up getting replaced again but it lasted less than half as long. I replaced it again in June this year and it lasted about 3 months. Because I was tired of replacing the connectors with declining quality I bought a bulk lot of old 1st party connectors. They arrived this week and so far I've tried two of them. They were either giving grey screens, garbled screens or would only work with the cartridge up. After boiling them they worked much better, some games take a couple of goes but most work straight away. I'm a true believer now. 😁

Thank you Sir. Your videos helped me get my old NES working. I was holding out for the new NES Classic, but when they became unobtainable, I went back to the old original. Never would have guessed boiling water would solve all my problems.

As for adjustment to make the cart stay seated when you press it down? Try loosening the outer case screw on the the bottom that sits under the front/center of the console. The only screw that isn't in a corner. It should only a single turn or so. Eventually the loading tray should stay seated every time.

Maybe should have watched this before I bought a 72-pin connector, but it works fine so I'm not complaining.

Paper clips and a skewer works to suspend it. Thanks for this awesome tip!!

Well to answer your problem about the cartridge tray not staying down, when you reassembled the unit at the front do not tighten the screws all the way down. Once you've tested the tray without the cover and the cartridge stays down i would advise to back out the screws about another quarter to a half turn so that once you place the cover back on you shouldn't have any issues.

This the best NES boil video. Idk why this video isnt the first one when you search this.

Thanks for this great video! I have repaired and refurbished hundreds of NES consoles and 72 pin connectors and have many different methods which all work but after boiling a few 72 Pin connectors I have managed to salvage many of them! It really works. Now I boil all my connectors and I'm 99% on fixing them. Thank You so much. I don't know the science but I assume the boiling removes all dirt and grime and everything dirty to a polished shine. You DA MAN! Thanks!!!

Awesome video, thanks for making it! (I'm the guy on reddit who said to give it a go.)

Boiling never worked for me. It became easier to just buy a decent quality placement 72 pin.

Hey 8bitjunkie, nice video. The problem you're having with the tray not sticking is usually caused by too much or not enough tension in the front, center screw on the bottom of the NES. That's why it worked fine without the cover on. Try adjusting that screw for more consistent results. I liked the idea of gathering statistics. I think that the take-away from the statistics is that a boiled 72-pin connector will help the NES read clean cartridges more consistently, but even the cleanest 72-pin connector can't read a sufficiently dirty game.

Should I bin the pins back or forget about binding them or should I just boil the 72 pin connector ?

I have cartridges that haven't read in a decade or ever that now work first time! I say this trick works!

just a tip, I recently thought of this myself, the contact pins of the cartridges oxidise over time which is why they need to be cleaned, what I did was I went out to a local grocery store and bought some sandwich bags, now you may ask why, but think of it sandwich bags are airtight so when you put something like a game cartridge into a sandwich bag and the bag is sealed up no air can get in at the contact points to cause them to oxidise.

Guy-den. Not Gay-den. Jenny Lewis had it right all those years ago.

I've had an issue with the brown (gray, in my case) screen whenever starting Legend of Zelda through my old Game Genie. Works fine without the GG, and all other games work fine both with and without the GG, so I'm chasing connection issues. I'm fairly certain my NES, which I've rebuilt from scratch using a NESessity 1.4 and Hi-Def NES kit, still has the OEM connector since I saw no evidence of the console having been opened up in the past. So as part of my troubleshooting I'll be doing the boiling trick (seems about 30 minutes is the ideal time for the metal to "relax" back to its manufactured position the best), followed by cleaning it and all my cartridge and GG connectors with DeOxIt F5. Next step will be replacing the small caps in the LoZ cartridge, which will suck since my son will lose his game save after I've already replaced the battery, but a necessary sacrifice if he wants to use the GG......

Fixing lock out chip is only a band aid fix, and quite an invasive band aid. Boiling is easy and it works. I fixed 2 NES to both read games almost perfectly. Tip: I find NES games read better the further you have the game from the back of the NES. Anyone else notice this?

Interesting. I thought about doing this. But instead I manually pulled out the top pins and bent them down a little to increase the pressure they put down on the cart. (you can pop them out if you press on the top of them. There's a line of holes on top that show how the top pins stay in.) They flatten out over the years and can cause contact issues. It helps that you don't leave a cart inserted for an extended period of time. Pull them out when the NES isn't used and that will help it last longer. (it's also pretty important to keep the carts clean) I found my NES at a pawn shop a week or so ago for around $80 (but was able to talk them down to $70) and the Mario game I got for it refused to work. But after I did that, it worked every time I inserted it. :D There may be extreme cases where you have to fix the bottom pins to but didn't have to touch those on mine. :P The interesting thing about the NES I got at that pawn shop was that it already had the lockout chip disabled and the doofus who did it wired the controller ports backwards when he put it all back together. Player 1 port was connected to the player 2 port on the motherboard. lol. Not sure how he managed to do that when you don't really have to fully disconnect the board to do the mod. You don't even have to remove the board from NES. Just have to remove the RF shield and it's accessible from there. :P

Olson the screw under the game slot like one rotation and that will fix your problem of the slot not staying down

Boiling alone might work on a dirty connector, but in my experience it does nothing for a connector that's lost the tension in its pins. And it's mighty simple to re-tension them. I go ahead and do that, then boil. This results in working connectors 100% of the time. If I had to choose one way or the other, though, it would be re-tensioning. The cleanest, most immaculately spotless connector in the world is worthless if the pins aren't making contact with the pins of the cartridge.

clipping the lockout chip removes one hassle in the diagnostics, because even if you did everything else...how do you test the chip? clip it. after clipping and cleaning and stuff, i know mine is down to pin contacts, so time to do dentistry on the pins.

Ty so mutch!! I boiled the pin connector and it works 100% now :)

If your system is clean but your games are not what do you think is happening

The reason why your slot wont stay down is because you tighted the screws too much. Just loosten the screws a bit and it should work. Great video by the way. Super helpfull.

my nes does not work anymore. tried boiling the machine and it worked. wow!

So is it OK to just throw it in the water or do you have to build the V to get it off the bottom and sides

I've bent pins back with superior success. You don't even have to push the cart down and it reads perfectly 99% of the time. And best of all, it won't bend the pins again. Also, snip the region chip while you have it taken a part. No more blinking and no trouble loading.

I used this to fix two NES consoles, thanks!

I would stab a hobo to have my gold Zelda cart back. It seems like the second me and my brother moved out of our parents' house, my mom just put our childhood into trash bags and threw it in the dumpster... Luckily, I just so happened to be dumpster diving my own parents dumpster one day a few years ago and found an SNES, Sega, N64, 2 Game Cubes, and a NES/SNES Yobo thing - but the carts were nowhere to be found. What are the odds? I've dumpster dove them exactly one time. Also, recently, I mentioned to my cousin about wanting to reunite with my old consoles and he was like: "There's a Nintendo and a Super Nintendo just laying in my yard..." - I was like what in the holy hell... The ingrate had been shooting the SNES with a BB gun and had more-or-less destroyed it. And the NES, while unharmed by the BB gun, had eaten it pretty bad from the elements. This is the same cousin who took our grandpa's original Beatles White Album and frisbeed it off his second story balcony along with several other records, shot out the windows of some of his old antique cars, and ruined the ignition of my grandpa's baby - a 1965 Mustang - with a screwdriver while, I assume, attempting to "borrow" it.. (granted, he was super young and had scary little supervision for most of his life). And as a matter of fact, I think this cousin might have ended up with most of my old consoles as hand-me-downs as I upgraded to newer stuff.. Prob my NES and SNES in his yard lmao...The past few days, I've had the NES apart cleaning it, re-soldering all the joints, re-wiring broken wires, etc.. When I first started on it, it was full of dirt/mud, bugs, corrosion, rust, & chewed up wires - the solder was black and wouldn't melt at first and the pcb had blotches of black filth all over it... All of this highlights my level of desperation to re-acquire my old consoles. lol. Truly, 99% of people, regardless of electronic repair skill, would have considered it a lost cause - and rightfully so... Anyway, fixing said connector is what brings me here... Damn... that was a tangent... I've been typing for like an hour lol... I become very talkative and afford absurdly detailed accounts when I take my pills (which are already starting to wear off, this comment has taken so long to type..)...lmao... Oh well, all in good fun... Carry on

Has anyone tried the Nintendo NES 72 pin connector boil method to restore any other console cartridge reader?

This doesn't seem like it's any less work than just bending the pins back up with a safety pin or toothpick. That's clearly the superior fix, so I don't see why anyone would even bother with boiling it.

have you had to boil again since making this video?

I have a Gameboy game that doesn't work. Do you know if, if I'm careful, boiling the contacts on it would make it work again?

not trying to be a know it all but what I would have done although I know you said you cleaned at least some of them games before, I would have cleaned them again before re running the test after boiling the 72 pin connector. think of it if your 72 pin connector was already dirty prior to boiling wouldn't some of that dirt have already come off on your cartridge connectors in the previous test? I bought my nes on ebay last april with 11 games, when I received it all I was getting was the flashing red light and the flashing screen, after watching video tutorials on youtube I got some contact cleaner sprayed into the 72 pin connector by opening the door and pointing the straw towards the connector sprayed some of that, then I opened the games and cleaned the contacts with window cleaner, magic worked first time and I didn't even switch the system off and on 10 or 20 times. anyway good video. I have a copy of tmnt 3 manhattan project on its way to me and a copy of knight rider.

Nice video, great testing and many useful tips. Thumbs up, you've got yourself a new subscriber. ;)

What is the idea behind boiling plastic with metal?! You are lucky that this type of plastic is not melting at water's boiling point. Also, the metal+water combination sounds awful. What's the result you are expecting from that?

My 72 pin came out dirtier

hi have a fixed Red Light without cartridge in... anche guess? i m trying boiling too

I tried fixing my nes and it works perfectly everytime as long as i don't press down the game

My 72 pin connector was trashed. I had cleaned it, boiled it, boiled it again and cleaned it... Nothing worked. I finally broke down and bought a new 72 pin connector. It's crap! Holds the games so tight I have to litterly use a pair of pliers to get the game out. As you can imagine Im not using my NES anymore so I don't mess up my games.

8 year old video. Still great info

does anyone know if I can do this with a 62 Pin Connector for a supernintendo?

Why don't just throw the connector into an ultrasonic cleaner (with hot water and a ultrasonic cleaner solution) ? For sure the best method ....

time for a new connector they are cheep

There is not adjustment on the “carriage” just get it aligned correctly and you can tighten the screws all the way down. If they don’t go all the way down it’s misaligned. Ask me how I know 😅 ha ha good luck guys

bro did exactly it says not to do on the back of the zelda cartridge, it says no not power on and off rapidly lol it can break the battery in the game

Clean your games and you’ll be fine

I've done everything. Cleaned inside and games, replaced 72 pin, and removed the 10nes chip. Now all I get is a black screen.....nothing! ):

20 minutes for this? really?

can I just use 91% isopropyl alcohol to clean the pins on the motherboard?

There one problem with boiling the pins is that it advances the rust and mold in the pins,it may look cleaner but if you don't dry it well it may short out the whole nes but either way let's face it this console is more that 30 years old and the only way to make it work again is changing the pins for new ones or remove the rust of the old one.

0/10 for me >:(

try and avoid putting dirty games into your NES, especially if you just cleaned it.

what the hell?

Just buy the nes blinking light win problem solved!!

spend the 10$ and buy a new pin protector instead of boiling it... smh... the best method for cleaning pins is the eraser method.... no residue... cant tell you how many times i bought games online and it comes with a shitload of twinkle or other polish all over the place.