"Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out."I remember my Nintendo Entertainment system, and after a couple years' use something messed up inside that kept the cartridges' contacts from meeting those of the console when you pushed it down. I put in some cartridges and noticed that after inserting them fully they were coming back up very slightly. Just enough, I figured, to keep the console and cartridge from connecting with each other.
So I took some springy wire from a spiral notebook, and duct-taped the ends of it to the console cover and the cartridge-holding thingy. It provided the needed pressure to get the game's contacts touching those of the console. And I never had anything go wrong with it again.
It was a problem that I took some pride in figuring out on my own, by observation and deduction. Could kids today figure it out as well? I've no doubt that they can, but they'd probably run to Google first for a quick fix. Not quite as satisfying as conjuring it up with your own gray matter :-)
2 comments:
Thanks Chris, also it was our generation that created the easy monster, that is known as yahoo and google.
Ah yes, the old "blowing out the dust" trick! I remember it well.
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