In Hardware

With my recent purchase of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer and games, I was very excited to play them. I got all the games out of the wrapping (I buy to play, not look at a game), put the connector to a cart, and threw the game in there. Once I hit POWer, guess what happens? Yep, the game would boot for a second, and flash back off. Right away I knew it was the lock-out chip from a similar experience with my Moon Ranger game. I HAD to play these games. It was time to "clip the chip."

Now, I've never been any kind of technical hardware guru... in fact, when I look at specs for most systems, I honestly don't know what some of them mean. So being new to this kind of thing, I was genuinely a little nervous about opening my NES and cutting a pin from a chip. I broke out a book I had just recently purchased called . It's a bit on the pricey side, but it's interesting stuff. It describes hacks from the Atari 2600 to the Xbox.

I opened up to the NES section to get a look at exactly where the regional lock-out was located, and began opening my NES. I was on AIM at the same time with NES-Luke (who had already clipped his), and he gave me various tips at the same time (he also got one of his NESs out and clipped at the same time... he was much faster than I! ) When I looked at what I had to cut, man... it was a bit scary. It's WAY smaller than it looks in all the pictures, and there are other various pieces that block the way. I had to push a couple of items aside, and began working at the tiny area. After so long, I felt a little bit of give, and had finished it! When I clipped it, I was sure to leave enough room on the top and bottom of the pin. This way, when I get more comfortable with soldering I can go back and place the ground on the proper points. So, at the adVice of Luke, I tested it before reassembling, and it worked! I put it back together, and started testing all the games I had gotten. Now, here's the interesting part.

After having done this, every game I have boots up IMMEDIATELY! Of course, I now see there are games that I need to clean, so those were a bit more stubborn. I had to try those only two or three times to get them to work. There is no "blowing" in the games necessary! None at all! This is amazing to me. All of my games that are cleaned properly booted up with NO effort, BUT... prior to clipping the chip, these same games had problems getting started. Hmmmm....

This leads me to wonder if after all these years, the lock-out might read games a bit funny, even if they are licensed for use. I've known people who kept their carts in great shape, and still had to do ritualistic things to get them to work (i.e. wiggle the games, pull them slightly out, etc.).

Does anybody know exactly how the chip reads games? I'm trying to figure out why cutting the connection to one pin makes all games boot so easily now. Any info is appreciated! Thanks!

EDIT: Fixed the link to the book I mentioned.

My understanding is that the carts have a chip in them as well, the chips communicate, and when they "shake hands" the console allows the game to finish booting.

From a quick look at the NES board it looks like Pin 4 on the CIC (lockout) is POWer, so severing the POWer input to the chip disallows it any control over the console. thankfully for us Nintendo didn't have any additional circuitry to check that the lockout was functional.

Also, earlier board revisions such as NES-CPU-07 won't exibit the same problems as you had with the Aladdin, the lockout was revised for the CPU-11 boards to render a lot of the methods unlicensed developers ued to bypass it useless. Which is why you'll find Micro Machines carts and others by Camerica with a small switch on them, these were released after the CPU-11 revision. as I understand it some of the Aladdin enhancers had a switch as well.

Congrats to your first successful "surgery".

NES-Luke: After my collection gets a little bigger, maybe I'll have to look into finding the Aladdin Enhancer with the switch. I want to concentrate on the library of games first. That's certainly interesting. Was the last CPU for the NES a revision 11? Does the Aladdin Enhancer with the switch work around the lock-out on a revision 11? If so, that would most likely mean that it was designed later than the final NES was, or Nintendo never found a way around the switch.


Manuel: Thanks man! I was definitely nervous while performing the "operation!"

from what I've read, yes the Aladdin with the switch works around the CPU-11 board revision. I know that was the case with my Micro Machines cart with no switch. It refused to boot on my CPU-11 NES.