Hypothetically if you couldn't swap boards you could remove the original connector traces and drill holes in the traces and down to the connector slot to run a thick gauge hammered flat copper wires with a long/short arrangement that doesn't overlap the other side of the board pins.
Do other games share a similar board? If so, transferring the chips may be a solution. sure ,second I hit enter on this comment as the vid is playing you say exactly what I suggested.
@@Tronicsfix It was a flop on release but developed a cult following that sort of misses its point. But anyway, I've played it since I was young and will tell you that intro sequence is still pretty badass even today. Great job, by the way, but I would never pay over two hundred bucks on anything that requires me to repair it. They really are reaching with those prices.
Dude you are looking better and better, I saw the "future Tronix Fix" ad segment from a different episode and it looks like your hair is coming back in great! I'm glad you are doing better!
@@Tronicsfix Thats great. I have two questions: is this game worth less with the replacement board? Also would you be interested in a sony a6300 to fix for the channel? Mines just dead and I'd give it to you.
fun fact, there are 2 solder points on the opposite sided of the board to the battery, that when tested with a multimeter, carries the power from the battery, if you solder another 3v battery to these points before removing the original battery, then continue to change the original battery. then after you remove the temporary battery, your game saves will still be on the cartridge
Seeing the blurred thumbnail I immediately knew it was Earthbound. I still have my original cart and the guidebook that came with it... I just wish I had been smart enough to keep the box when I was a kid!! Not that it matters because my cart is priceless to me. One of the save files is the first game my much-older-than-me sister and I beat when I was a kid. She passed away back in 2010, and that cart is a piece of her I have left. 💜 I'm always happy to see you upload! Love your videos and I've recced your channel to my dad who used to deal in electronics and repairing radio communication equipment. 😊
Dude you rock. I had to do chemo for 3 months myself. I always kind of took the approach that I had been sick with cancer for a long time and am just now dealing with it. Two years later and I feel better than I ever have. Keep doing your thing beother
But now you have a not so valuable game parts and you could save that too by migrating them to a brand new snes circuit board. I dont think it would devalue it anymore but it would be working.
@@lookitskazzy agreed. I have done the same thing on another valuable sega genesis game that my local video game store had. We found another donor game that had the same board that was very cheap and I swapped out the ic chips to save the other game.
Hey Steve. I am glad to see that your health is improving. I also battled and won against Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Glad to see you kicked its ass. I am in the market for this game right now and can think of no better way to get it from a trusted source than yourself. If you are interested in selling it, please let me know.
😊 nice I once beat toothache and Abbess pft you cancer victims always milk your pain, I'm joking good news I'm glad to hear you are OK and spreading love ❤
No one is ever going to need to replace that battery again. I have my original copy of Earthbound that I got on release day. Battery still works. Can not imagine someone will need to change that battery in 2055 lol.
Most people argue that it's unnecessary, but to me it seems sensible that if you already put in the effort to desolder it, you might as well install a permanent fix, even if it won't be required for the next 10 years.
@@frankruff7114 You can but it's a bodge, the original "holder" is actually contacts welded to the battery you can kind of pry them off the old one and tape a new one in between them but it's not very secure and if it looses contact there goes your saves. It's much better to actually solder a new one, or a proper holder, on instead.
Wouldn't have been a very long video if he gave up that easily. I have replaced the board because the old one had the complete insertion part was broken all the way across(mario kart). I have one that board is snapped in half (mario 64). I find the sports games make cheap donors.
making the parts not the original parts so can you REALLY sell it for $400? also bought it for $200? probably can get it off a flea market who doesn't sell it at retro gaming collectors prices
As someone who's moderately experienced in Soldering, the number of times I had seen others fail in soldering just because they used a crappy iron which doesnt heat enough is insane. Most large pads require atleast 5-10 seconds with 450 degrees on soldering iron, and many irons just cant achieve that and people end up either heating for too long and damaging the top layer of the PCB, or pulling without the solder properly melting and ripping the pads out. Also a little bit of flux usually makes the whole process way easier.
Yes! I was using a cheap ebay £20 iron and it was junk... bought a Yihua soldering station for £120, not high end by any means but its a night and day difference compared to the unbranded one.
This was my problem when I was trying to learn too. I felt like I was doing everything right and still couldn't accomplish much. I even showed the soldering iron to someone who solders for a living and they said "yeah that's fine, I use one like that too" Eventually I caved and bought a proper soldering iron & station, KSGER something, and finally I can actually solder. Some people say a bad craftsman blames his tools, but there is a line where crappy tools absolutely exist and you will have a bad time if you use them no matter how good you are.
Yes. Don't ever get that crap red weler soldering iron. The lack of feedback, it's crap design. And either burns or takes 20 years is not worth it. Get those screen soldering irons.
I always think it's funny when people complain about the magic eraser wearing away pins. You know what else wears away the pins? Plugging it into the console to play it. Removing it to play another game. Things wear out over time. That's life.
@@SBBurzmali People can do whatever they want with their games. I buy old, sealed games so I can share the experience of opening the shrink wrap, plugging in the cartridges, and playing them in the living room with my kids. If that destroys the value and somebody doesn't like it then too bad. It's mine to destroy.
@@andywest5773 Some people juggle geese, but I'd still bet a sizable amount of money that anyone paying $400 for a loose cartridge of a game available on multiple platforms for a fraction of the price, has no intention of ever plugging it into a machine.
@@andywest5773 if you want to split hairs inserting the cartridge isnt considered abrasive, magic erasers are wearing away coating faster. i prefer to use other methods before scrubbing things with what is basically 10000 grit sandpaper
I have had family dealing with similar ailme to and for u to be able to still be repairing and making videos is amazing. You are built different brother. Bless u brother
Enjoyable repair, nice save 👌 I would've loved to see the rest of that corroded board, underneath the other chips. It was in bad shape. Is there any identifiying text on the motherboard that indicates it's not the original circuit board?
I am just seeing a video for the first time in close to a year and I was devastated to learn what you're going through. I'm happy things are looking up for you and I just read through the health information on your page. I wish you the best luck on your road to recovery. Thank you for all the content that truly got me through some tough times.
Looking good my man. Been watching for a few years now. You are an incredible repair man and you seem to be a genuine person as well! Congratulations on all that you have achieved!
@ 19:39 The scrambled intro got me too I thought the worst all that work for not thank goodness it was just a part of the game good job keep up the good work I hope you sold it for a lot of money.. BTW what is the most a SNES Game ever sold for?
Hey man. Thanks to your cleaning and liquid metal vids I just fixed my PS5. I'm legally blind and never even took apart a TV remote before so big thanks :3
10:18 hot air is really not ideal for removing a through-hole chip. I've killed two NES PPUs doing that, and old cheap circuit boards love to bubble and warp when you put hot air on them. I sometimes use it as a last resort if the chip legs really don't want to come unstuck but I really try every other method first. The best tool is a desoldering gun, but I know you mostly work on newer stuff where that wouldn't be useful very often. If the holes aren't plated, though, you can pretty easily just do it with solder wick!
@@rfmerrill I've been brute forcing it with a big solder sucker for a while until I updated my gear to the USBC iron with that Silver Solder sucker. I was so astounded when I pulled out two chips on a SNES cart in a fraction of the time I used to do.
I am so glad to see you are getting better man, I really enjoy watching your videos and have learned so many things from them. I worked at a retro gaming shop from 2020 up until June of this year and I cant tell you how many times I would search for one of your videos when I was in the repair room. Sadly I moved onto a better paying job but I still love to see what your breathing life into on my days off. Keep up the stellar work and keep on getting healthier brother. Much Love.
It’s been a while not YouTubing much and haven’t come across your video on my feeds until I saw a new look on you. I had no idea about your health. Long story short, I’m glad you’re getting better. The first time I came across your channel was while searching on how to clean PlayStation 5 or removing the cover etc. I’m happy to still get hints and ideas watching your videos. Thanks a lot. 👍🏼
In this case, just swapping the ROM sticks should just work, but many SNES games have a copy protection mechanism, if they detect incorrect Save RAM (The upper chip; it contains the save data), the game will activate copy protection mechanism. This was used to detect Floppy Disk copiers, which usually had a single SRAM for all games. Earthbound has an interesting copy protection, you would get more random encounters and the game would get more difficult. If you reached the final boss, the game would erase all save data. However, Earthbound and NHL97 both use 64k SRAM, so it should be fine.
@@volvo09 The Save Ram, as if the chip itself. The game checks for the exact size of the chip (64k in this case), it doesn't care whether there's an existing save in it or not.
@@tamoghnapal6619 ah ok, I misunderstood what you were getting at. Thanks! I bet that got a bunch of people back in the day wondering why the game is so crazy, I never would have expected something like that, but it's smart!
Exceptionally one of my favorite fix up videos of all time, it was great to see a complete transplant! You give me inspiration to finish my hobbies that I never finished, YOU DA MAN!
You know what I like? The fact that you aren't hiding behind the camera. Also that you give off positive energy. You have an awesome talent! Praying for ya!
This is honestly my favorite episode because I didn't know you could repair like this and I love it. I follow you on facebook and didn't know you had a youtube so ima follow this one as well just to make sure I don't miss anything. Love seeing your live as well with all the people once but didn't get to watch it all.
Battery holders are the only way to go IMO. I did all my Gameboy (and the 2 GBA games I have that have batteries), replacing them with low profile battery holders. I use emulation for the 8/16 bit conosles so I don't own any other cartridges that have batteries.
@@Tronicsfix As far as the resale value on the collector market...honestly I don't know. Some collectors are reasonable, others go absolutely nuts when everything isn't 100% original. But for the latter, I would think the act of replacing the battery or soldering in the cartridge would "destroy" it as far as those people are concerned. As somewhat of a collector myself (who likes CIB copies), I had NO issue replacing them with battery holders, and that increased the value of those cartridges to me. Because I know when the batteries die again I can pop in a new one in about 5 seconds.
Earthbound has some pretty nasty copy protection, including checking if the version of the lockout chip is the correct type, among other checks, in some cases you won't notice anything is wrong til you get to the final boss, it'll freeze and wipe your save (on purpose), don't know exactly if it's triggered by the chips on that particular game, but i really reccommend swapping the other chips as well, you don't wanna accidentallt sell someone a copy of Eathbound that might misbehave like that, swapping the other chips will definitely add to the authenticity as well, as right now this game is more NHL than Earthbound. Great fix though!! you always make it look easy, not hating just would be a bummer to have to deal with this later down the line when it could cost both your time, the buyer's time, and most importantly the buyers SAVE, Better safe than sorry! lol
I think it goes through a number of checks and gettinga bootleg version to work through to the final boss would require a bit of hacking. Also it spawns a lot of enemies so even if you did make it to the end it would notice the difficulty.
I was coming here to say this. It is one of the reasons that Earthbound costs so much - it isn't just the rarity it is also because doing board swaps are such a pain. One blown chip and it makes the other chips useless. You might be able to play the game, but not be able to actually FINISH it. Sometimes you can't even swap between different versions of EARTHBOUND boards (although sometimes you can without issue). All of that contributes to the high price from working copies.
I didn't even think about that but you're right. I wonder what Frankenstein-ing the board/chips would do, if anything, to the game. It's not immediately obvious if anything is actually wrong and it does think that you're playing a bootleg version of it... if all you're looking at is whether it starts up or not, you'd miss that completely. You actually have to know a little about the game itself to spot things that might be going wrong. Easily the most famous of them all is the game freezing on purpose before the final battle and it deletes your save game when you start it back up, but of course you have to play through the entire game to get there and find that out. It does all kinds of things before then like crashing/freezing randomly, spawning way, WAY too many enemies than what's normal in certain areas, sometimes the battle backgrounds glitch out, etc. This one's worth a play for maybe a few hours and maybe some of these will pop up... the super dedicated would have to actually play through the entire game to see if you can actually beat the game. I doubt you can concoct some set of circumstances where none of the other anti-piracy measures kick in at all except for the final boss freeze and delete, to avoid playing through the entire game just to see if you can beat it, but I don't know for sure.
No, it doesn't "check the lockout chip" - there are two basic hardware level checks in Earthbound - the first checks the size of the SRAM and puts up a piracy screen if it's != 64 kbit and the second checks the operating mode of the PPU and puts up a "This game is not designed for your system" screen if it's not running in NTSC mode. The strange behaviour is all triggered directly or indirectly by modifying the contents of the ROM - either directly by the code failing a checksum test or indirectly by the first SRAM size check being patched out and the later ones detecting a larger SRAM. The repaired cart will operate correctly - it's using an unmodified ROM image (because it's an original mask ROM) and the SRAM size will be the correct 64 kbit since it's on the same SHVC-1J3M-20 PCB and that (as indicated by the "3" in the number) uses a 64 kbit RAM.
I'm no expert on cartridge value and I like how you are worried about the battery holder devaluing the game when you literally swapped the whole guts. Love to see you better every day.
I don’t even play videos games but I enjoyed watching the whole video. My instructor told the whole class once to learn everything even if you think you don’t enjoy it, didn’t understand him at that time but I’m glad to have remembered his lessons.
Was recently watching another youtuber and he had a cameo from Steve asking about some information on a part or another. The video in that was jarring. Had no clue about the health scare. (I'm bad at staying with youtube channels comes with adhd) Glad to see you're doing better! Hope it continues!
To the people saying no one will ever know the board was swapped..... yes they will. A true collector will spot the date stamp on the board. Changing caps is not gonna hurt the price. Changing the whole board will. Still a nice fix. But it won't bring what he paid for it.
@@vadimbellous8313 as a high end collector of SNES and SEGA I can point 3 things that are not original and an issue with the board swap but you can keep pretending that no one will ever know, its not original now period
Two things, you look great glad things are going well and random when you zoom in and out you use the robot monocular sound and it's awesome lol great vid man!
I don't remember who did it but i think i seen someone here in UA-cam replace game slot pins effortlessly. I wish i knew what we're looking at and methods on how to go about fixing it 😅. This is so satisfying to watch
If you were worried about devaluing the game with your repair, that ship basically already sailed as soon as you transplanted the ROM to another board. Because at that point, it's no longer an original. No matter though. Whatever the case may be, swapping the ROM was the smart thing to do considering the state of the original board and changing out the battery for battery holder is a nice quality-of-life improvement. The end result is a very nice, working and future-proof copy of Earthbound. Well done!
pretty weird how it's not considered "original" despite it being the same chip and same case, you could argue it's even the same board since that was a 1 to 1 identical replacement down the very serial numbers and traces, though if he was to ever re-sell it that would be a thing to mention that it was board swapped, it would be the right thing to do
Ive just found your videos recently and I have to say I have learned so much from your videos. I just fixed my first n64 thanks to your videos! Keep going strong and you have a lifetime follower now! Thanks for everything!
As a huge collector of SNES and SEGA there is no way a chip swap is original anymore. The value would be massively tarnished, you could fake most people by not telling them but I would wager that most would turn that down. I dont think you could even get your $250 back.
@@mewinthedark8513 You keep things original thats what collectors want, adding things doesnt make something better you are clueless. Also you dont know how to read at all from what I wrote he takes the earthbound chip and puts it on a NHL pcb that is what massively devalues the game. The battery holder devalues it also so yea stop acting kid I have batterys that are 30+ years old still going in my carts its not needed.
@@nogon1382 you getting offended really shows your character. You know when the copper is broken on the game pins and the board is so neglected he did the best choice for repair to preserve the game. He will have to add more of the chips to prevent the last boss battle from not working.
@@nogon1382 the carts are a fairly standard design, the game is the game. What you really want is another copy taken out of circulation to raise the value more.
Looking good brother. Cause of you I got into electronics repaired. I still remember messaging you and you actually took the time to help me with my questions. thank you. You look great, keep strong brother.
so glad you just went for the chip swap, seen so many channels doing videos like this and making janky ass fixes with jumper wires all over the place, reflowing chips etc, im always so annoyed thinking "dude, just buy a $2 donor game and swap the ROM chip" 100x faster and a 100x better more reliable job, especially if they are planning to resell the game
You are one of few youtube channel i really like! you making videos that easy for us to learn, follow and actually bring something back to life! God bless you man!!
Great save! And Great game. I've have never seen those replacement pads! I've used copper tape in the past with some solder mask to protect it a bit. Glad to see you're recovering my friend!
Hey brother, I used to watch your vids when ps5 released and UA-cam just brought you up again and I was like something is wrong then I did my research, you are an absolute warrior and I wish you all the health in the world!
A few years ago, I bought a Open Box listing of Earthbound. It's complete, so complete the guide is still in the plastic. I was so lucky to get it for $250, it's worth 1k now lol.
Future you is looking fantastic! I got my hair back after chemo in February this year. I know the feeling. Hope all is well and you can get that port removed sometime soon too!
you look very good! My wife and I were cheering you to get back to full health and I can see that everything is starting to get better! Greetings from Poland :)
It's truly amazing how we have all this knowledge and tools to restore old games and technology. Back when I was a kid no one would have had a clue on how to fix something like this and probably would have thrown the game away.
Steve your looking better! That's great news. Normally people buy these old games to update them and sell them so I'm pretty sure the battery replacement won't turn off anyone.
Just want to say I found your channel like 3 years ago to clean my ps4 heat sink (I was terrified) I was able to fix it fan didn’t sound like a helicopter anymore… anyways just wanna say you’re inspiring to say the least I’m glad I found your channel and I hope you’re doing well.
I used to fix a lot of arcade game and pinball boards. I used deoxit on the edge connectors religiously and I used to use a pencil eraser to clean them up. (Before Magic Erasers existed) I replaced the battery on my original Zelda cartridge for the NES with a CR2032 battery holder like that.
Hi Steve, I only just realised that your were dealing with cancer. I've been watching your videos for a while, and they helped me while my wife dealt with cancer. She passed away this year, I'm praying for your success.
Been watching you for years and you helped me to fix my stuff countless of times. I dint know and im really saddened by this but im going to pray for you and hope all gets better for you sir.
I took a year off from youtube and the first channel i seqrched into was tronix and man alot of things have changed. Lets hope for the better future and nice fixings.
Hey, buddy, you're looking a lot better. I'm glad to see it. I hadn't watched any videos in a while, and then i saw one and thought, what is going on? something dont seem right, and then i went and looked up old videos and found out. Im glad to see tour looking happy and healthy again.
Good to see you, best regards Steve, the people from Brazil send you good energy, and I hope you and your team can see the people from Brazil, who also fix the consoles and games, have you had a look?
Awesome repair! I will say though, there are a lot of antipiracy checks in the game, in particular quite a few SRAM checks. In theory if it boots it should be fine, since there is an SRAM check at startup, but you may want to guarantee by checking the chip codes on the donor board.
Steve, You pretty much restored that to like new, Incredible work bro anyone that buys that is a lucky soul. I much prefer your board swap method rather than playing around with the pins as you say yourself you just cant predict how long the repair will last. I think you did everything at the best level here looks so clean and i like the battery replacement method. top marks ^5
For everyone doing board swaps - look for the version of CIC lockout chip. SNES had a few of them, and games can recognize which is installed on board.
Best wishes on your continued recovery. NW Repair did a video on a simple way to replate contacts recently. While that cartridge would have been too much work it might be a useful method on a future repair.
I would love a GameCube video Steve. I couldn’t find any from you and those consoles must be dying on people, mine is. 😅 Great to see you doing better. Take care.
We started a Discord! Come hang out: discord.gg/FE3Q3GFn
@@Tronicsfix you are the best
Hypothetically if you couldn't swap boards you could remove the original connector traces and drill holes in the traces and down to the connector slot to run a thick gauge hammered flat copper wires with a long/short arrangement that doesn't overlap the other side of the board pins.
Great work Steve, you are amazing!! Keep at it.
I want to buy that game
Do other games share a similar board? If so, transferring the chips may be a solution. sure ,second I hit enter on this comment as the vid is playing you say exactly what I suggested.
Good Lord, I had no idea you were battling cancer...its a damn good thing to read the comments and see you doing better, brother!
19:36 "Annnd.... that's pretty scrambled. Oop- that's just part of the game." As a Mother fan, you had me rolling on the floor 😂😂
Lol, I thought for sure it wasn't fixed when I first saw that on the screen.
😂 I was like well that’s rough it’s not going work after all that.
Hell, I played the game and under the current circumstances I still thought, "oh no"
@@Tronicsfix It was a flop on release but developed a cult following that sort of misses its point. But anyway, I've played it since I was young and will tell you that intro sequence is still pretty badass even today.
Great job, by the way, but I would never pay over two hundred bucks on anything that requires me to repair it. They really are reaching with those prices.
• You cannot grasp the true form
of Earthbound's start up screen!
Dude you are looking better and better, I saw the "future Tronix Fix" ad segment from a different episode and it looks like your hair is coming back in great! I'm glad you are doing better!
Yep. I'm doing much better.
@@Tronicsfix Thats great. I have two questions: is this game worth less with the replacement board? Also would you be interested in a sony a6300 to fix for the channel? Mines just dead and I'd give it to you.
@@Tronicsfix I'm so glad your doing well. 👍.
Ngl. Im going to miss having *CALIBAN* fix broken stuff very very much.
@@Tronicsfix
fun fact, there are 2 solder points on the opposite sided of the board to the battery, that when tested with a multimeter, carries the power from the battery, if you solder another 3v battery to these points before removing the original battery, then continue to change the original battery. then after you remove the temporary battery, your game saves will still be on the cartridge
nice information...
or solder it while it's powered up. or just back the saves up if you have dumping hardware
simple logic
Just like what a mechanic does when they replace your battery
@@fastinradfordable with a dead battery? 😂
Seeing the blurred thumbnail I immediately knew it was Earthbound. I still have my original cart and the guidebook that came with it... I just wish I had been smart enough to keep the box when I was a kid!!
Not that it matters because my cart is priceless to me. One of the save files is the first game my much-older-than-me sister and I beat when I was a kid. She passed away back in 2010, and that cart is a piece of her I have left. 💜
I'm always happy to see you upload! Love your videos and I've recced your channel to my dad who used to deal in electronics and repairing radio communication equipment. 😊
Wow, that's quite a story about your game. Definitely priceless.
So glad you're enjoying my videos!
Use a Cardtridge Reader with a Program and you can Backup your Save File
@@jebadaiah1228 I'm looking into getting a cart reader to rip and save the file before the battery dies.
I wish I had my DKC2 cart, I had a save there of a play through I did with my sister in coop mode when we were kids, she also passed away in 2010
What is valuable about the game? Is it super rare?
Dude you rock. I had to do chemo for 3 months myself. I always kind of took the approach that I had been sick with cancer for a long time and am just now dealing with it. Two years later and I feel better than I ever have. Keep doing your thing beother
Glad YOU are ok too! Keep on rolling man.
As soon as i ssw that wrecked edge connector I was saying to myself, "just swap the ROM to another board", glad that's how it played out!
Yep, those edge connectors are very difficult to repair.
But now you have a not so valuable game parts and you could save that too by migrating them to a brand new snes circuit board. I dont think it would devalue it anymore but it would be working.
@@lookitskazzy is there a way you can flash that chip ie so you can put that rom onto other chips?
@@lookitskazzy agreed. I have done the same thing on another valuable sega genesis game that my local video game store had. We found another donor game that had the same board that was very cheap and I swapped out the ic chips to save the other game.
@@Chris-h3f5u No, NES games used non-rewriteable mask ROMs. You could switch the ROM chip out for a programmable eeprom though.
Hey Steve. I am glad to see that your health is improving. I also battled and won against Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Glad to see you kicked its ass.
I am in the market for this game right now and can think of no better way to get it from a trusted source than yourself. If you are interested in selling it, please let me know.
Sorry to hear you have been so poorly Steve. I absolutely love watching your videos. So educational and interesting. I can tell you love what you do!
😊 nice I once beat toothache and Abbess pft you cancer victims always milk your pain, I'm joking good news I'm glad to hear you are OK and spreading love ❤
Good to see future Steve is getting better man.
Thanks! It feels amazing to get doing better.
@@Tronicsfix what was wrong?
@@Dana__black He was suffering from somme type of major cancer and went into chemo. Notice his bald head? he got that shaved for the chemo.
@@wanderingsoul621 oh damn I had no idea. Thanks for the response broZ
Future Steve is a blast from the past! Looking good, man! Hope your recovery has been going well.
Finally, someone installs a battery holder inside the cartridge to make it easier to swap in future 👏🏻
No one is ever going to need to replace that battery again. I have my original copy of Earthbound that I got on release day. Battery still works. Can not imagine someone will need to change that battery in 2055 lol.
Most people argue that it's unnecessary, but to me it seems sensible that if you already put in the effort to desolder it, you might as well install a permanent fix, even if it won't be required for the next 10 years.
@@Sepioth Its more to safeguard against a leaking battery damaging the board
I’m so confused. I swear I’ve taken batteries out of those original holders plenty of times.
@@frankruff7114 You can but it's a bodge, the original "holder" is actually contacts welded to the battery you can kind of pry them off the old one and tape a new one in between them but it's not very secure and if it looses contact there goes your saves. It's much better to actually solder a new one, or a proper holder, on instead.
Glad to see you're still putting out the positive energy no matter what! I beat thyroid cancer 10 years ago. Keep it up! You're amazing!
As soon as I saw the condition of the old board I thought this would be a good candidate for a board swap.
You were right!
I thought the same thing
Wouldn't have been a very long video if he gave up that easily. I have replaced the board because the old one had the complete insertion part was broken all the way across(mario kart). I have one that board is snapped in half (mario 64). I find the sports games make cheap donors.
Same
making the parts not the original parts so can you REALLY sell it for $400? also bought it for $200? probably can get it off a flea market who doesn't sell it at retro gaming collectors prices
As someone who's moderately experienced in Soldering, the number of times I had seen others fail in soldering just because they used a crappy iron which doesnt heat enough is insane. Most large pads require atleast 5-10 seconds with 450 degrees on soldering iron, and many irons just cant achieve that and people end up either heating for too long and damaging the top layer of the PCB, or pulling without the solder properly melting and ripping the pads out. Also a little bit of flux usually makes the whole process way easier.
Yep. I think this is probably the number 1 problem when people first learn to solder. A cheap iron makes soldering WAY more difficult
Yes! I was using a cheap ebay £20 iron and it was junk... bought a Yihua soldering station for £120, not high end by any means but its a night and day difference compared to the unbranded one.
This was my problem when I was trying to learn too. I felt like I was doing everything right and still couldn't accomplish much. I even showed the soldering iron to someone who solders for a living and they said "yeah that's fine, I use one like that too"
Eventually I caved and bought a proper soldering iron & station, KSGER something, and finally I can actually solder. Some people say a bad craftsman blames his tools, but there is a line where crappy tools absolutely exist and you will have a bad time if you use them no matter how good you are.
Yes. Don't ever get that crap red weler soldering iron. The lack of feedback, it's crap design. And either burns or takes 20 years is not worth it. Get those screen soldering irons.
I'm so glad you're health is improving. Been watching for a couple years now and using your advice to fix quite a few things.
Im glad you're looking better! I pray for your speedy recovery man! You actually inspired me to do solder and modify some of older electronics!
I always think it's funny when people complain about the magic eraser wearing away pins. You know what else wears away the pins? Plugging it into the console to play it. Removing it to play another game. Things wear out over time. That's life.
Lol, so true!
Once the game is a collector's item, why would you ever plug it in again? This game is destined to sit on a shelf for the rest of its existence.
@@SBBurzmali People can do whatever they want with their games. I buy old, sealed games so I can share the experience of opening the shrink wrap, plugging in the cartridges, and playing them in the living room with my kids. If that destroys the value and somebody doesn't like it then too bad. It's mine to destroy.
@@andywest5773 Some people juggle geese, but I'd still bet a sizable amount of money that anyone paying $400 for a loose cartridge of a game available on multiple platforms for a fraction of the price, has no intention of ever plugging it into a machine.
@@andywest5773 if you want to split hairs inserting the cartridge isnt considered abrasive, magic erasers are wearing away coating faster. i prefer to use other methods before scrubbing things with what is basically 10000 grit sandpaper
I have had family dealing with similar ailme to and for u to be able to still be repairing and making videos is amazing. You are built different brother. Bless u brother
Enjoyable repair, nice save 👌
I would've loved to see the rest of that corroded board, underneath the other chips. It was in bad shape.
Is there any identifiying text on the motherboard that indicates it's not the original circuit board?
I am just seeing a video for the first time in close to a year and I was devastated to learn what you're going through. I'm happy things are looking up for you and I just read through the health information on your page. I wish you the best luck on your road to recovery. Thank you for all the content that truly got me through some tough times.
Mr. Steve getting out of his comfort zone again. Always love that! Good job, stay safe and happy Friday!
Yeah, this was a fun one.
Looking good my man. Been watching for a few years now. You are an incredible repair man and you seem to be a genuine person as well! Congratulations on all that you have achieved!
Hell yeah! Got your hair back. That's great to see man, keep cranking out these awesome videos.
@ 19:39 The scrambled intro got me too I thought the worst all that work for not thank goodness it was just a part of the game good job keep up the good work I hope you sold it for a lot of money.. BTW what is the most a SNES Game ever sold for?
wwpwowwowowoowo YOU LOOK SO MUCH BETTER IN THE AD SEGMENT. CHEERS MAN, KEEP UP! SO GOOD TO KNOW YOU ARE BETTER
Happy to see you better and better! I’m glad to see the progress. God bless you! 🎉❤
Glad to see you getting better Steve
Hey man. Thanks to your cleaning and liquid metal vids I just fixed my PS5.
I'm legally blind and never even took apart a TV remote before so big thanks :3
10:18 hot air is really not ideal for removing a through-hole chip. I've killed two NES PPUs doing that, and old cheap circuit boards love to bubble and warp when you put hot air on them. I sometimes use it as a last resort if the chip legs really don't want to come unstuck but I really try every other method first. The best tool is a desoldering gun, but I know you mostly work on newer stuff where that wouldn't be useful very often. If the holes aren't plated, though, you can pretty easily just do it with solder wick!
@@rfmerrill I've been brute forcing it with a big solder sucker for a while until I updated my gear to the USBC iron with that Silver Solder sucker. I was so astounded when I pulled out two chips on a SNES cart in a fraction of the time I used to do.
you did an amazing job of fixing that!
Hey thanks! I enjoyed this one
@@Tronicsfixwe all look at this as a fun hobby or even a job/career but it's also preserving history.
I am so glad to see you are getting better man, I really enjoy watching your videos and have learned so many things from them. I worked at a retro gaming shop from 2020 up until June of this year and I cant tell you how many times I would search for one of your videos when I was in the repair room. Sadly I moved onto a better paying job but I still love to see what your breathing life into on my days off. Keep up the stellar work and keep on getting healthier brother. Much Love.
It’s been a while not YouTubing much and haven’t come across your video on my feeds until I saw a new look on you. I had no idea about your health. Long story short, I’m glad you’re getting better. The first time I came across your channel was while searching on how to clean PlayStation 5 or removing the cover etc. I’m happy to still get hints and ideas watching your videos. Thanks a lot. 👍🏼
glad u are doing better. you are the only repair channel i like to watch.
Master plumber here. Which means I am not remotely qualified to critique your work. But your solder joints are pristine. Lovely work.
In this case, just swapping the ROM sticks should just work, but many SNES games have a copy protection mechanism, if they detect incorrect Save RAM (The upper chip; it contains the save data), the game will activate copy protection mechanism. This was used to detect Floppy Disk copiers, which usually had a single SRAM for all games. Earthbound has an interesting copy protection, you would get more random encounters and the game would get more difficult. If you reached the final boss, the game would erase all save data. However, Earthbound and NHL97 both use 64k SRAM, so it should be fine.
Wouldn't the save ram be gone because the battery was pulled?
@@volvo09 The Save Ram, as if the chip itself. The game checks for the exact size of the chip (64k in this case), it doesn't care whether there's an existing save in it or not.
@@tamoghnapal6619 ah ok, I misunderstood what you were getting at. Thanks!
I bet that got a bunch of people back in the day wondering why the game is so crazy, I never would have expected something like that, but it's smart!
could you also swap the sram to avoid this problem?
@@oni2662 Yeah it would be absolutely fine.
Exceptionally one of my favorite fix up videos of all time, it was great to see a complete transplant! You give me inspiration to finish my hobbies that I never finished, YOU DA MAN!
You know what I like? The fact that you aren't hiding behind the camera. Also that you give off positive energy. You have an awesome talent! Praying for ya!
This is honestly my favorite episode because I didn't know you could repair like this and I love it. I follow you on facebook and didn't know you had a youtube so ima follow this one as well just to make sure I don't miss anything. Love seeing your live as well with all the people once but didn't get to watch it all.
Battery holders are the only way to go IMO. I did all my Gameboy (and the 2 GBA games I have that have batteries), replacing them with low profile battery holders. I use emulation for the 8/16 bit conosles so I don't own any other cartridges that have batteries.
Yeah, I wasn't sure if that will increase the value or decrease it.
@@Tronicsfix As far as the resale value on the collector market...honestly I don't know. Some collectors are reasonable, others go absolutely nuts when everything isn't 100% original. But for the latter, I would think the act of replacing the battery or soldering in the cartridge would "destroy" it as far as those people are concerned. As somewhat of a collector myself (who likes CIB copies), I had NO issue replacing them with battery holders, and that increased the value of those cartridges to me. Because I know when the batteries die again I can pop in a new one in about 5 seconds.
@@StormsparkPegasusPragmatic conservation. I like how you think.
@@Tronicsfix Value shouldn't be the deciding factor in this case I feel. Better have a solid working rare than no rare at all. Well done!
What battery holder fits inside a GBA cart. Cause the batteries themselves barley even fit over the MX chip.
I used your tutorial to fix my ps5 controller a few days ago
I hope you get well
I'm rooting for your improvement from Egypt 🇪🇬
God bless you 🙏
Earthbound has some pretty nasty copy protection, including checking if the version of the lockout chip is the correct type, among other checks, in some cases you won't notice anything is wrong til you get to the final boss, it'll freeze and wipe your save (on purpose), don't know exactly if it's triggered by the chips on that particular game, but i really reccommend swapping the other chips as well, you don't wanna accidentallt sell someone a copy of Eathbound that might misbehave like that, swapping the other chips will definitely add to the authenticity as well, as right now this game is more NHL than Earthbound.
Great fix though!! you always make it look easy, not hating just would be a bummer to have to deal with this later down the line when it could cost both your time, the buyer's time, and most importantly the buyers SAVE, Better safe than sorry! lol
Interesting. Good to know. Thanks for the comment
I think it goes through a number of checks and gettinga bootleg version to work through to the final boss would require a bit of hacking. Also it spawns a lot of enemies so even if you did make it to the end it would notice the difficulty.
I was coming here to say this. It is one of the reasons that Earthbound costs so much - it isn't just the rarity it is also because doing board swaps are such a pain. One blown chip and it makes the other chips useless. You might be able to play the game, but not be able to actually FINISH it. Sometimes you can't even swap between different versions of EARTHBOUND boards (although sometimes you can without issue). All of that contributes to the high price from working copies.
I didn't even think about that but you're right. I wonder what Frankenstein-ing the board/chips would do, if anything, to the game. It's not immediately obvious if anything is actually wrong and it does think that you're playing a bootleg version of it... if all you're looking at is whether it starts up or not, you'd miss that completely. You actually have to know a little about the game itself to spot things that might be going wrong. Easily the most famous of them all is the game freezing on purpose before the final battle and it deletes your save game when you start it back up, but of course you have to play through the entire game to get there and find that out. It does all kinds of things before then like crashing/freezing randomly, spawning way, WAY too many enemies than what's normal in certain areas, sometimes the battle backgrounds glitch out, etc. This one's worth a play for maybe a few hours and maybe some of these will pop up... the super dedicated would have to actually play through the entire game to see if you can actually beat the game. I doubt you can concoct some set of circumstances where none of the other anti-piracy measures kick in at all except for the final boss freeze and delete, to avoid playing through the entire game just to see if you can beat it, but I don't know for sure.
No, it doesn't "check the lockout chip" - there are two basic hardware level checks in Earthbound - the first checks the size of the SRAM and puts up a piracy screen if it's != 64 kbit and the second checks the operating mode of the PPU and puts up a "This game is not designed for your system" screen if it's not running in NTSC mode. The strange behaviour is all triggered directly or indirectly by modifying the contents of the ROM - either directly by the code failing a checksum test or indirectly by the first SRAM size check being patched out and the later ones detecting a larger SRAM. The repaired cart will operate correctly - it's using an unmodified ROM image (because it's an original mask ROM) and the SRAM size will be the correct 64 kbit since it's on the same SHVC-1J3M-20 PCB and that (as indicated by the "3" in the number) uses a 64 kbit RAM.
What an awesome repair! This was one of my favorite games growing up and has such a unique soundtrack and playthrough.
I'm no expert on cartridge value and I like how you are worried about the battery holder devaluing the game when you literally swapped the whole guts. Love to see you better every day.
this is probubly why its worth so much
I don’t even play videos games but I enjoyed watching the whole video. My instructor told the whole class once to learn everything even if you think you don’t enjoy it, didn’t understand him at that time but I’m glad to have remembered his lessons.
4:16 Damn, that folding effect scared me like an jumpscare! I thought half the circuit had broken and fallen down 🤣
I cant believe you paid 250 Dollars for that. Looks like someone found the PCB at the bottom of the ocean.
Lol, could have happened!
@@Tronicsfix Sure🤣
agree 110%. that game was worth little to nothing dead, which it was. could have probably gotten $50 for it.
Pretty easy fix. I’d pay 200 for it.
@@triforcelink i would count my blessings getting 200 for a PCB thats basically dissolving
Perfect video for Mother 2's 30th anniversary. Nice job and I learned something new today.
0:05 "only" 250 basketball fields. Jeez..
Was recently watching another youtuber and he had a cameo from Steve asking about some information on a part or another. The video in that was jarring. Had no clue about the health scare. (I'm bad at staying with youtube channels comes with adhd) Glad to see you're doing better! Hope it continues!
To the people saying no one will ever know the board was swapped..... yes they will. A true collector will spot the date stamp on the board. Changing caps is not gonna hurt the price. Changing the whole board will. Still a nice fix. But it won't bring what he paid for it.
Yes. It should be disclosed that there was a board swap when it is sold on.
Same date stamp. And no, no one will ever know
@@vadimbellous8313 as a high end collector of SNES and SEGA I can point 3 things that are not original and an issue with the board swap but you can keep pretending that no one will ever know, its not original now period
Two things, you look great glad things are going well and random when you zoom in and out you use the robot monocular sound and it's awesome lol great vid man!
I must be a turbonerd because even with the blur on the thumbnail I said "that's Earthbound"
Lol, it's not a super strong blur but that's still pretty impressive
I don't remember who did it but i think i seen someone here in UA-cam replace game slot pins effortlessly. I wish i knew what we're looking at and methods on how to go about fixing it 😅.
This is so satisfying to watch
If you were worried about devaluing the game with your repair, that ship basically already sailed as soon as you transplanted the ROM to another board. Because at that point, it's no longer an original. No matter though. Whatever the case may be, swapping the ROM was the smart thing to do considering the state of the original board and changing out the battery for battery holder is a nice quality-of-life improvement. The end result is a very nice, working and future-proof copy of Earthbound. Well done!
Came to say this, its not the original board so any value is out of the question
@@Neopumper666 99% of people won’t know the difference. I’ve seen the stupid clone cartridges that sell like crazy.
To me its as original as its ever going to be. Using identical original circuit board.
Doesn't matter, nobody will ever know
pretty weird how it's not considered "original" despite it being the same chip and same case, you could argue it's even the same board since that was a 1 to 1 identical replacement down the very serial numbers and traces, though if he was to ever re-sell it that would be a thing to mention that it was board swapped, it would be the right thing to do
Ive just found your videos recently and I have to say I have learned so much from your videos. I just fixed my first n64 thanks to your videos! Keep going strong and you have a lifetime follower now! Thanks for everything!
As a huge collector of SNES and SEGA there is no way a chip swap is original anymore. The value would be massively tarnished, you could fake most people by not telling them but I would wager that most would turn that down. I dont think you could even get your $250 back.
if your a collector then you would know most people prefer the battery holder cause its only a matter of time till the battery goes out.
@@mewinthedark8513 You keep things original thats what collectors want, adding things doesnt make something better you are clueless. Also you dont know how to read at all from what I wrote he takes the earthbound chip and puts it on a NHL pcb that is what massively devalues the game. The battery holder devalues it also so yea stop acting kid I have batterys that are 30+ years old still going in my carts its not needed.
@@nogon1382 you getting offended really shows your character. You know when the copper is broken on the game pins and the board is so neglected he did the best choice for repair to preserve the game. He will have to add more of the chips to prevent the last boss battle from not working.
@@nogon1382 the carts are a fairly standard design, the game is the game. What you really want is another copy taken out of circulation to raise the value more.
This man is a component level repair MACHINE!
I must have missed something. What happened to my boy's hair?
I had cancer, got treatment and now I'm in remission.
@@Tronicsfix I figured but wasn't sure. You got this! I will pray for you.
Looking good brother. Cause of you I got into electronics repaired. I still remember messaging you and you actually took the time to help me with my questions. thank you. You look great, keep strong brother.
I'm glad you're doing better, I'm more of a casual viewer and was getting a bit worried with all the "extended" videos.
That was such a creative approach to fixing that cartridge. Is there a list of compatible game boards somewhere or are they all mostly the same?
so glad you just went for the chip swap, seen so many channels doing videos like this and making janky ass fixes with jumper wires all over the place, reflowing chips etc, im always so annoyed thinking "dude, just buy a $2 donor game and swap the ROM chip" 100x faster and a 100x better more reliable job, especially if they are planning to resell the game
You are one of few youtube channel i really like! you making videos that easy for us to learn, follow and actually bring something back to life!
God bless you man!!
Great save! And Great game. I've have never seen those replacement pads! I've used copper tape in the past with some solder mask to protect it a bit.
Glad to see you're recovering my friend!
Hey brother, I used to watch your vids when ps5 released and UA-cam just brought you up again and I was like something is wrong then I did my research, you are an absolute warrior and I wish you all the health in the world!
A few years ago, I bought a Open Box listing of Earthbound. It's complete, so complete the guide is still in the plastic. I was so lucky to get it for $250, it's worth 1k now lol.
Future you is looking fantastic! I got my hair back after chemo in February this year. I know the feeling. Hope all is well and you can get that port removed sometime soon too!
Port has been removed! Congrats on finishing chemo!
Hey man, used to watch your videos on my train down to london at like, 6am. Found you / videos to be really soothing! I do wish you all the best man.
Praying for your healthy Bounce Bak Brother. The world needs u. Ive learned a good Bit from you myself, & i look forward to learning more.
I just wanna say I hope you get well soon and thank you for everything you've caught and continue to teach us
you look very good! My wife and I were cheering you to get back to full health and I can see that everything is starting to get better! Greetings from Poland :)
It's truly amazing how we have all this knowledge and tools to restore old games and technology. Back when I was a kid no one would have had a clue on how to fix something like this and probably would have thrown the game away.
Your looking better in every video dude, Hope your well and stay strong man.. much love from London uk
Fantastic job moving those chips over! Definitely not an easy task. And adding the cmos/game save swappable battery was the icing on the cake!
Steve your looking better! That's great news. Normally people buy these old games to update them and sell them so I'm pretty sure the battery replacement won't turn off anyone.
Just want to say I found your channel like 3 years ago to clean my ps4 heat sink (I was terrified) I was able to fix it fan didn’t sound like a helicopter anymore… anyways just wanna say you’re inspiring to say the least I’m glad I found your channel and I hope you’re doing well.
I used to fix a lot of arcade game and pinball boards. I used deoxit on the edge connectors religiously and I used to use a pencil eraser to clean them up. (Before Magic Erasers existed) I replaced the battery on my original Zelda cartridge for the NES with a CR2032 battery holder like that.
Hi Steve, I only just realised that your were dealing with cancer. I've been watching your videos for a while, and they helped me while my wife dealt with cancer. She passed away this year, I'm praying for your success.
@@mikehibbett3301 Well, that’s depressing.
Been watching you for years and you helped me to fix my stuff countless of times. I dint know and im really saddened by this but im going to pray for you and hope all gets better for you sir.
Dude is good to see you doing so well I hope you kicked cancer’s butt and I learn so much from you thank you for what you do
Yet another skilled fix Steve! Saw parts of the livestream with your wife and friends. Very nice to hear you are doing great.
I took a year off from youtube and the first channel i seqrched into was tronix and man alot of things have changed. Lets hope for the better future and nice fixings.
Hey, buddy, you're looking a lot better. I'm glad to see it. I hadn't watched any videos in a while, and then i saw one and thought, what is going on? something dont seem right, and then i went and looked up old videos and found out. Im glad to see tour looking happy and healthy again.
Sooo happy to see you’re doing and hopefully feeling much better!
Hye, hoping nothing but good health. Love your videos. Please keep bringing back old tech to life.
Good to see you, best regards Steve, the people from Brazil send you good energy, and I hope you and your team can see the people from Brazil, who also fix the consoles and games, have you had a look?
Awesome repair! I will say though, there are a lot of antipiracy checks in the game, in particular quite a few SRAM checks. In theory if it boots it should be fine, since there is an SRAM check at startup, but you may want to guarantee by checking the chip codes on the donor board.
I’m glad you are doing better Steve! I hope the best for you and your family. You give us good content! I love watching your videos
Still love seeing old Nintendo classics being brought back to life keep up the good work gaming history needs to be preserved
Steve, You pretty much restored that to like new, Incredible work bro anyone that buys that is a lucky soul. I much prefer your board swap method rather than playing around with the pins as you say yourself you just cant predict how long the repair will last. I think you did everything at the best level here looks so clean and i like the battery replacement method. top marks ^5
Another great fix. So glad to see you are doing better. Best wishes from Virginia.
Nice transplant surgery. I never knew this about SNES games. Always enjoy your content. Thanks for sharing with everyone. Hope you're keeping up well.
Sometimes you gotta knock it down and replace it. Excellent video about knowing when to cut your losses. Nice one :)
Glad to see you looking healthier! Glad to see the treatment and prayers working!!
Thanks for the tool kit reminder. I was just looking for that last night. I definitely picked up one from you. Thanks man!
For everyone doing board swaps - look for the version of CIC lockout chip. SNES had a few of them, and games can recognize which is installed on board.
Best wishes on your continued recovery. NW Repair did a video on a simple way to replate contacts recently. While that cartridge would have been too much work it might be a useful method on a future repair.
I would love a GameCube video Steve. I couldn’t find any from you and those consoles must be dying on people, mine is. 😅
Great to see you doing better. Take care.
Back in the day when I used to repair NES consoles and games we used to use crocus cloth to polish the contacts. Worked great for me.