How many Famiclone Noac's get a bad rap due to bad soldering ?

[RiSXC]

Hi All just something I noticed I bought 4 Different Famiclones

1 DLK CG-2025  (keyboard type)
2 Kingston Education Computer [sic] 
3 DLK - 101 PS1 type ripoff
4 Victor VR-70  (you know the model the MIT guys rave about  (search 12$ computer ))

Here is a list of the games I tested with.(I know this list does not include all problem games
eg Legend of Zelda, etc ..but this is all I had available at the time)
Bear in mind all carts are pirate

Contra
Super Contra
Adventure Island
Road Fighter
Mappy
Legend of Kage
Mario
Pokemon Mario Hack
Gradius
Popeye
Arkanoid
Tennis
Bomberman
yie ar kung fu
Donkey Kong
Starforce
Battle City
Soccer
Tellytubby Mario Pipe hack
Field Combat
ice Climber
Golf

Pre Modification..........................

now DLK 2025 played everything I have right out of the box "Correctly"  correctly meaning no visible graphical glitches no weird sounds"     except golf (major graphical glitches) no freezes
in G-basic mode noticed not all keys functioning.

2 the kingston Initially Had problems with both Contra and Super Contra  (freezes)
    played the run of the mill stuff ok  color a bit white-ish

3 the DLK -101 ps-one rip-off ,  freezed up on just about anything 2nd control not functioning correctly

4 the Victor was just terrible freezed glitched like mad on most games not bundled
  I exchanged it for another but the the second unit was the same a shame though ,
the controllers are the best of the bunch (rated  on feel and quality)
same goes for overall plastics but the internal quality  hopeless

Post Modification.....................................(

DLK -2025
all keys functioning best color representation of the lot
unfortunately still glitches on golf  (but only golf)

Kingston  resoldered all connections.. all games now playing correctly no artifacts no freezes (color still a little white barely noticible )

DLK -101 resoldered all connections .. What a change !  all carts correctly  no artifacts no freezes (cheapest unit on test)

Victor 70 what a dog ! I cant even look to hard a a connection wire and it breaks off !!!
                 replaced all internal wiring resoldered all connections
                 still freezing on Contra and Super Contra, all other carts better but not perfect.

in my opinion ..
on first glance these noacs would be rated rubbish by a normal user,
but given a bit of work 3 of the four transformed into really good useable units.
great for casual gaming

the point of this post is just if you have a unit , that is not functioning correctly, resolder it and try again... I think a lot of the artifacting/problems seen on these cheap clones are caused by "dry joint" solder connections and not inherent incompatibility..

(Yes I know there are a few titles that do not work with a noac, but except for them)

[133MHz]

That happened to me when buying a really cheap AV switchbox. It didn't work out of the box, opened it and the soldering was terrible. I resoldered everything on the board and it worked!

Not surprising that Famiclones suffer from the same problem. If you look at the solder joints, they're not shiny, but very dull and brittle. Also as you said, the wires and interconnects are so fragile that they break just by farting on them.

[mrdomino]

4 Victor VR-70  (you know the model the MIT guys rave about  (search 12$ computer ))

i didn't know about that until just now, that's pretty interesting... apparently they've modded one of these to have flash memory and wireless network connectivity. (presumably they're not trying for actual web browsing though, on a famicom that'd be... interesting)