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Comment by opan | Hacker News Reader

>I’m using a US-market Super Game Boy. This is well-known to run fast as-is.

Sounds like the author knows, but for those unaware, the first SGB ran at the wrong speed and has no link cable port. Japan got a Super Game Boy 2 that runs at the proper speed and does have a link cable port. You can pick one up on eBay and use it with your SNES if you modify the plastic around the inside of the cartridge slot to fit SFC games. You can also just take the top off and it'll fit.

I recommend picking up a fiberglass pen if you get a Super Game Boy 2 or other SNES/SFC games. Often the pins are pretty dirty and the games will only work one out of every few inserts, if at all. Give them a good rubbing with the pen, quick clean with isopropyl alcohol to get rid of the dust, and you can get them working totally reliably. Works on GB/GBC/GBA games as well.

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i have my original NES and dozens of games from my childhood, and i have found that it is difficult to get them to run. thanks for the advice, i will give this a try!

You can also replace the socket on the NES itself for relatively little, it took me about 20 minutes a couple of years ago and it made it much more reliable.

I did that this weekend. New connector cost me ~ $15 AUD off an ebay store.

Took me a bit longer than you but I was being super cautious having never opened a console before.

Highly recommend for anyone else with a broken NES lying around. Good chance the 72pin connector is at fault.

You can also put the 72 pin connector in boiling water for like 30 mins, take it out and let it cool. That should reset the pins back to "factory condition"

If your socket is the unreliable part, I've found that getting a game fairly wet on the contacts with isopropyl alcohol and then repeatedly inserting/removing it will get the slot nice and clean inside. I usually blow it out with compressed air after that.

I would recommend trying to clean them with some rubbing alcohol first, using abrasives will only work so many times

I've found at times that starting with isopropyl alcohol doesn't get enough of the oxidation off for it to keep working normally more than a day or two, while the fiberglass pen being used once feels like a more permanent fix. (Maybe after 10 years it will have issues again, but it at least for sure keeps working for weeks or months). I had an issue of this sort really bad with a GBA power switch. You can try to get a little alcohol in from the outside and move it back and forth and maybe it seems to work for 1-3 days, but then it would be intermittent again. The proper fix was to desolder the shielding on the power switch to get inside, and then clean off the oxidation from the contacts inside.

I should've also mentioned this in my first comment, but I recommend opening up the cartridges before cleaning them. I don't think you can get at the whole contact properly while the shell is on, and it's easier to do an even up and down motion along the each contact when the shell is out of the way. I go back and forth for a couple seconds on each one until it looks shiny. As a bonus you can possibly find out if your game is genuine or counterfeit while it's open and the chips are visible.

You could also read the article.

ETA: No, really guys, this is literally the article.

HN guidelines:

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

The article mentions the Super Game Boy 2, but only in an "Aside" box.

The main point is that the original Game Boy runs at 4.19 MHz, while the Super Game Boy 1 runs at 4.30 MHz, or 5.12 MHz if the game calls an undocumented API. (At least I think that's the main point of the article; it's only stated implicitly in the numbers.)

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