Famicom disk system grey screen

[Howard81]

Hello, my first post here!

I have a Famicom Disk System giving me problems, it worked fine yesterday and had no issues booting up to the natty jingle with the Nintendo 'Insert Disk Card" screen.  However I plugged it in again today and I'm just greeted with a blank grey screen.  I've tried cleaning the RAM adapter with no luck.

The Famicom is the Hong Kong version (which takes NTSC-J cartridges yet outputs a PAL RF signal) and works fine with every standard Japanese game cartridge I've tried in it.

Any idea on how to troubleshoot where the problem lies?  I was wondering if the RAM adapter should boot to the BIOS screen even if it isn't connected to the disk system?

Many thanks in advance!

[P]

It should always boot to the BIOS screen even if not connected to a disk drive. It's probably just bad connections.

Take a fiberglasspen and a screwdriver, open up the RAM Adapter and polish all the cartridge pins shiny on it. Then clean them with 70%+ isopropyl alcohol. The female cartridge connector in your Famicom also needs to be clean. You can use the isopropyl-soaked T-shirt trick with a credit card, or use a thin file and carefully file on the pins.

[Howard81]

Thanks for your reply!  I've tried cleaning the cart and the slots but still no joy in getting a response from the RAM adapter.  Every cartridge I have works a treat, so it would appear my RAM adapter is indeed dead!

I'll solder in a fresh set of caps to see if that will resurrect it..