In Hardware

so after fighting with the Micro Machines cart mentioned in another post. I decided to disable the lockout chip in my spare NES. it works beautifully, now I need some PAL games to mess with

Has anyone else done this? share your stories here.

Update: I think I'm going to see about wiring a switch for the lockout chip. Just in case I find some cool games that need it.

If you develop a good switch for it, post up a tut on how to do it if you could. I have a Moon Ranger cart from Bunch Games (Color Dreams) that I can't play, and would like to play it. It'd really help a bunch (pun intended)!

Well, the switch should be simple enough. just solder a wire to the trace where the pin was, and solder a wire to what remains of the pin on the chip. Shove a switch in between, and mount it on the bottom of the NES in one of those recessed areas so that it doesn't get flipped while in use and asplode my NES.


Then for the overclock...

i have had problems in the past with the nes and its lockout deVice. the lockout deVice is a patented 4 bit microprocessor. the rights are owned by nintendo of america of coarse. there is a lockout chip inside every nes system exept the top loader. each region has a different lockout chip. this is why different region games won't work on a US nes. there is also a lockout chip inside every licensed cartridge. the two chips communicate with each other.different region cartridges have different lockout chips. back when camerica,color dreams,etc started selling there carts,they all found a way around nintendos lockout deVice....or so they thought. on the first generation nes (nes-cpu-07)they all work fine. nintendo soon found out and revised there lockout chip on all nes systems after the first generation(nes-cpu-09) (nes-cpu-11) so these games no longer worked. there are 2 ways that i know of to get around the lockout chip. the first is to buy an adapter to play all regions on a US nes. the second is to modify your lockout chip to play all regions and all unlicensed games. you can do this by locating the lockout chip inside your nes. its marked on the circuit board as U10 CIC. if you know enough about electronics then just locate pin 4 on the chip and unsolder it and carefully lift it off the board and connect it to ground(pin 11-15 on the chip are ground). you can also toggle from locked and unlocked using a DPST switch. wire it so that in one position it's locked and as it was stock and the other unlocked and able to play all regions and unlicensed carts. for a more detailed description about modifying the lockout chip go to

Nice link! I remember reading somewhere that you should ground it somewhere between pin 11-15. I think I found it at nesplayer.

By the way, I think this:



...should be this:

sorry roth. the link you said is correct.

that would explain why my Micro Machines cart doesn't work on my NESes (both the 11 ones) but work on my cousin's and friend's NES. I have since done the clip (reason this thread exists) and now I can play it. I'll note that you don't have to ground it, but it's good practice to do so.

So is it possible that your NES could fry if you don't ground it? Also, are the pins numbered, so you don't clip the wrong one?

they're not numbered. but the guide I read on doing it had images so I knew which pin. I don't think the NES will burn up or anything, I've been running mine ungrounded. I plan to ground it when I install the switch for it though.

Ah... do you know where that image is, so we can draw an icon for the 'locked forums?'

There is the better of the guides I've read. and the one I used for disabling mine. the images are hand drawn though, not the real chip.

Yeah, that's the one that I found. I didn't really want to E-Mail the webmaster to ask permission to grab it and resize it and everything. Do you think you could draw one, based off of what you've seen in the NES itself?

if someone can suggest a basic MS-Paint like app for the Mac I'd be more than happy to draw one up as accurately as possible.


EDIT: I guess I should have said this in the original, but I've looked, and can't find anything.

See if you can use any of these:

See if you can use any of these:



unfortunately those are either for Mac OS 9, or Mac OS 10.3, and I'm using 10.2, I'll look around some more, or maybe I'll have to go use one of the siblings machines to make the image.

i know people who have modified there nes and accidently in the process broke pin 4 completely off the lockout chip and thus not able to ground it and it still works fine. it is a good idea to ground it so it removes the discharge build up, but it will work fine it you dont. also an easy way to find pin 1 on any chip including the nes lockout chip is to look for a small U shape on one end of the chip. then look for a small dot above the first leg of the chip. this is pin one. then you could count carefully from left to right and find pin 4 or any pin in that row. on the lockout chip for example there are 8 pins in the first row. the first is pin 1 and 2 3 4 5 6 7 and the last leg in the row is pin 8. then for the above row of pins,pin 9 is above pin 1. then count from left to right and the last pin would be pin 16.

Okay, so if I'm going to ground, are there certain sides to the pin that I should fix to certain ones in 11-15, or does it matter? Also, do you recommend a certain kind of solder for electronics like this?

you have to unsolder pin 4 and lift it out of the hole then solder one end of a wire to the lifted leg then solder the other end to ground.
it would be easier to ground it to the bottom of the board since it is the side the pins are soldered to. or you could just carefully solder it to pin 11 on top but that would look silly i think but thats my opinion

I didn't desolder it at all, I just clipped it off I know, that's the sloppy way to do it. but it works. Being that I don't have a desoldering iron that was my only real option. I did it to my spare NES that I'll be trying all the mods I can find on, then when I feel I know what I'm doing with them. I'll mod one for full use.

I'm still wondering what kind of solder and wire to use. I know there are different kinds, and I don't really trust salesmen at stores (half the time, they don't even know what they're talking about!)

pretty much any wire would do it I would assume, as for solder, there are only two kinds that I know of. Electronics solder, and pipe solder. but I'm not the expert on that, so don't go by what I said...