Trying to troubleshoot an off brand snes controller that has issues recognizing button presses and occasionally won’t work. I figured the contacts needed cleaning, other than that anyone see something obviously wrong. Are the wires sticking out of the solder points at the top middle of the board a problem?
Yes! It looks like they are long enough to contact the adjacent pads, and that would cause intermittent issues like you are seeing.
Use a pair of flush cutters in the elab to clean them up.
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The membrane switch contacts look OK, but can’t speak to the conductivity of the component under the membrane. Could verify by hooking it up and bridging contacts on the PCB with a jumper, exercising caution to isolate yourself from the equation lest ESD happen.
Is it specific buttons or random that act up?
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Yay for guessing, will do.
It’s my cousin’s so I don’t have firsthand knowledge but from what they said it was pretty much random.
Thank you both. I’m going to see what clipping the excess wires do and hope that takes care of it because the less I mess with it the better. Would not want to take the chance on using a jumper as they’ve had the snes in the family decades now and knowing me I’ll find a way to screw it up. There’s some residue that’s flaking off around most of the solder points, should I take some IA to it?
As a general rule, flux removal on boards with exposed contacts is a pain and should be avoided if possible. It you see corrosion underneath or near the flux residue, then you should remove it, but most fluxes in use today are “no clean” or ones that are designed to not damage the board if left alone.
The main issue with trying to remove the stuff is IA will only dilute it, and you’ll have to dilute and scrub to remove it, any small amount on the actual contact pads will destroy the functionality of the pads. At best they will be “sticky” at worse they would fail to “press” completely.
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Alrighty, danke
Clean the metal pad contacts with a q-tip and alcohol as one of the upper buttons has gunk on the contact. After that polish them with a Pink Pearl pencil eraser and wipe clean with a lint free cloth.
Next take the rubber contact and GENTLY clean with a q-tip and alcohol. Inspect it to see if it has worn through and if it has you’ll have to add more conductive rubber material to it. Kits for that can be had a Tanner Electronics.
Reassemble and test.
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If it doesn’t fix it, but a circa (brand). Reproduction vintage controllers are notoriously garbage, but circas are pretty solid.
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