Awhile back I had started a couple of threads showing pictures of the insides of games or devices I had taken apart. Unfortunately those threads were lost in battle. See, back in early 2012 RFGeneration was in a large battle, I think it was mostly ninjas, but there may have been pirate aliens too. Some of our youngest and best threads were lost. But RFGeners stayed strong and started making new content quickly. I am doing my part by bringing back the "whats inside?" sort of pictures, this time in Blog form!
Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing. The first copy I bought was several years ago, it seems like it was part of a larger group of games bought on one day. This has been the only NES game I have never gotten to work. No amount of cleaning, blowing, wishing or blue potion's were able to bring this cartridge to life. There was no apparent reason for this, although far from a mint example, nothing seemed to be wrong....well, there was one thing. This cart was also the only one I've had which has a rattle when shook.
Fast forward to a month ago when I found another copy of Turbo Racing. The first thing I did when I picked it up was shake it. It rattles too! How strange is that? Would it work? I really was wondering about this until I got home. At the risk of ruining the suspense this is bringing my two readers, yes, the new copy worked. But why do both carts rattle? It's never taken much of an excuse for me to open things up....
In this first picture you can see both games. The one on the left is the newer one which works. There is no difference in what these carts look like other than what age brings. It's nice to see someone thought this was worth $18. I wonder how long ago that was? The reason the triangle looks different is simply a reflection from my cameras flash.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7238/7317576024_d8d9293647_c.jpg[/img]Here we can see that both games look the same on the back. If you are going to write your name in permanent marker on a game, I suppose this is the way to do it, tiny little letters on the back, thanks Zac! It looks like he probably wrote the $18 on the front too. What did Zac do with his new found fortune?
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7235/7317574966_a08e1acc3e_c.jpg[/img]So here we can see what turned both of these racing games into baby distractors. Each of them somehow had a broken plastic support. Weird. That hasn't happened to me before, and for them both to be on the same game? This doesn't explain the one game not working though.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7073/7317575238_9b8659e1a9_c.jpg[/img]Here is what you see when opening up the back. Both circuit boards look pretty much the same. The one on the right is a bit more vibrant green but maybe that is simply a sign of being stored in different climates.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7091/7317574844_fcfabfe4b1_c.jpg[/img]When you look at the other side there is a different story to be told. The design of the circuit boards seems to be identical but all of the parts are different. The IC's (the black rectangles) all have different writing on them, one battery is Sony the other a Panasonic, the clips that hold the batteries in are different, the molding sprue (green arrows) is not the same, and I circled some of the resistors that changed. All this also makes it seem that the difference in greenness from one board to the other is not from age, but because it is simply a different part. The board on the bottom is the one that was on the right in earlier pictures.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8028/7317575100_7931a03716_c.jpg[/img]Did I figure out why the one game doesn't work? Nope. I checked both batteries and the one on the dead game actually had a little bit more juice.
So what does the difference in parts mean? Does it mean I have a super rare version that makes the NWC Gold cart look common? Does it mean another game for the variant collectors to search out and have to physically open to see the difference? Does it mean Zac built his very own Al Unser Jr Turbo Racing from scratch? Probably not.
I think it means I had fun opening this up and seeing what was inside. It was kinda fun to see the two different sets of parts. I hope you all had fun looking at the pictures.
There are scans I made of either side of each board, they are not necessarily clearer then the pictures but if you really want to look I included them below.
[img width=618 height=800]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7214/7317575886_02565ae3f5_c.jpg[/img][img width=622 height=800]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7212/7317575570_97c47880c5_c.jpg[/img]If you were wondering how I was able to open the funny looking screws Nintendo used, here is a picture of the tool I made. Ignore the hole near the end, that just happened to be there. I filed down this piece of steel leaving two prongs at the end. Those prongs fit into two opposite slots on either side of the screw. Because the screw is only in plastic, this works out alright. I made a different size one on the other end of that piece of steel for the other size screw with the same head. A person can buy the actual screwdriver, or bit, that will fit these screws better. I know Amazon has them. I choose to made my own because it was free, and it's neat to make your own stuff sometimes.
[img width=700 height=525]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7097/7317576362_2d00f62919_c.jpg[/img]Link to RFGeneration's entry on Al Unser Jr Turbo Racing:
http://www.rfgeneration.c...nfo.pl?ID=U-027-S-00280-A
