Famicom power on issues

[klasikrkade]

I purchased a mint in box famicom from japan. I am using the original power adapter included in the box, an nes RF switch and a step down converter. When I power on the system with no cartridge I get a yellow screen. Sometimes I get varying shades of grey as well. Today I received a Japanese super mario brothers cartridge and when I insert it I get the same colored screens. I have my tv set to 95.



My question is is this normal for the system to display these colors with no cartridge? I don't know If the system is broken or perhaps the cartridge is broken as I have no other cartridges to test with. Any help would be appreciated.



I bought it from ebay seller hit-japan whom I have bought other things from and had no issues at all.

[Frank_fjs]

Sounds normal to me, try giving the cart a good clean - bet you it works fine after that.

[80sFREAK]

"Mint" does not mean, that there is no oxidation in the slot. I doubt, that big ebay sellers even testing systems.
Clean both slot and cart.

[klasikrkade]

From what I understand I should use 90% isopropyl alcholhol on the cartridge contacts with a qtip. How would I go about cleaning the actual famicom slot however?
Post Merge: November 24, 2012, 07:47:13 pm
What does a normal famicom show on the screen with no cartridge inserted? Does it show the random solid color like mine does. I'll power it on and I see a solid yellow screen. Then I power it off and on again and then I see dark grey etc.

[Frank_fjs]

Your Famicom is behaving normally. Just clean the cart contacts and you will be good to go.

[RetroHacker]

As others have said, clean the contacts on the cartridges with 91% isopropyl alcohol and q-tips (both available from any corner drug store).  Just wet the q-tip with the alcohol and clean the contacts, repeat until the q-tip comes out clean.

To clean the contacts on the console, wrap a piece of clean white paper around the end of a credit card (preferably something like a gift card or hotel key, without raised numbers), wet the paper with isopropyl alcohol, and insert it straight into the Famicom slot, and pull it straight back out. You can also just fold up some paper to the correct thickness, or similar. But I've found a credit card to work nicely. You can even cut one down to be the exact length of the slot, and make a useful little cleaning tool. Hint - a credit card is also the *perfect* size to fit into a GameBoy... Do not scrub the card side to side, you risk bending the pins. Just put it straight in, pull it straight out. Repeat with clean paper until you no longer get black lines on it.

The grey screen you get is normal if no cartridge is inserted. The NES gives you the same grey screen when it can't read the cartridge - it just blinks because the lockout chip resetting the console. The Famicom has no such lockout chip, so, no blinking.

-Ian

[klasikrkade]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I have just tried using the 91% on the cart itself and I get the same result. I will try the famicom slot slot cleaning next. I also have another cart in transit. If I still have no luck I will try the new cart and see what happens.

Thanks

[Megami]

Yeah, it sounds like the cart is bad. Always test a system with more than one cart  otherwise you may get false results