/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5089762]

What are some retro video game consoles that broke easily or are susceptible to easily breaking?

We know about the 360's RRoD, but what were some retro consoles that were shit at launch with hardware issues? Thanks!

[Anonymous No.5089776]

PS1 had something like a 50% failure rate.

[Anonymous No.5089789]

[Anonymous No.5089791]

>>5089789
>>5089776
thx

A friend thinks they don't make consoles like they used to, but I'm pretty sure that's bullshit and that companies 99% of the time don't intentionally create hardware that's made to fail in order to sell more units. I just wanted some examples of retro consoles that sucked in terms of failure rates. Looks like a several atari consoles would shit the bed often.

[Anonymous No.5089792]

>>5089791
Most PS2s were broken at launch.

[Anonymous No.5089797]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41rivol-cxQ

[Anonymous No.5089946]

>>5089762
PCE/TG16 shitty capacitors on the CD models
PS1 with the laser
Dreamcast with the laser

[Anonymous No.5089954]

>>5089762
>>5089792
360 and ps2 discussion do not belong here.

[Anonymous No.5089956]

A tie between the 360 and PS2. I've had more PS2 break on me though even the slims.

[Anonymous No.5089983]

>>5089791

Older hardware was much simpler. Any modern console will encounter a hard drive failure at some point, in the least. It's also the case that you can physically see all the traces on a very old board. They were thick, are far less prone to breakage from ESD or voltage.

[Anonymous No.5089989]

This is going to be a long one, all of these are first hand experience rather than hearsay.

>>5089762
Its CD based systems that broke the most.

The Jaguar CD, know someone that has a few of them all broken, all are the fault of the manufacturing process rather than the end user, its also supposed to be an easy fix.

The Nintendo Virtual boy, its the screens on this one, or the ribbon cable that is glued onto them rather than soldered.

The Atari 2600 had a different problem, the plastic pins on the cart slot would snap off if people are careless with it, mostly because putting the game in the opposite way, meaning that games with the spring loaded dust flap could not be inserted.

Also 5200 joysticks, hate those things.

The NES also has a few, mostly the grey blinking screen due to it not reading the game, this can be mostly sorted by disabling the 10NES chip and tightening the slot

The Dreamcast has a rubbish hard soldered battery that keeps the date that has ran out in every one, its not a major issue, but it does mean you have to keep setting the date.

Current problems with some retro computers is the capacitors are starting to leak, happens a lot with Amigas.

>>5089776
The PS1 was a bad one for this, worked in an indie game store while it was still being sold (97-02/3) and it was the machine that we had repaired the most,
It was always the laser, in some cases some people got it to work if it was upside down.
Some broke it by chipping it without knowing what they are doing

>>5089791
Basically all most all cart systems are durable unless people are reckless with them.

[Anonymous No.5090031]

>>5089989
>the grey blinking screen
Mine was green. Did it show up as gray for anyone else?

[Anonymous No.5090665]

>>5089989
>It was always the laser
CD based systems fail. PSX was a "Success" in my mind. They changed the layout a few times, but in the end, a motor only has so much life, and there are at least 2 of them under the hood. The biggest point of failure was the plastics used for the laser sled, they would wear out and warp leaving the laser sagging in its position. You know you need a new laser sled when you have to put the system upside down. CDs & DVDs as a media are soon going to be a thing of the past....just like tapes and records. I have a few spare laser sleds I keep around. I figure in my lifetime if I burn through 3 of them, I would have had a good time. Still have my SCPH-1001 that I bought new, and still use and it has never been replaced. It reads backups with the help of uniROM. Knock on wood. I know its a outlier, and not the norm. I have picked up 2 more units over the years as well. Just in case.

[Anonymous No.5090698]

>>5089776
Only the 1001 and 5501 models. The 7501 and 9001 are reliable. I hear mixed things about the slim models though.

I have both the USA 7501 from my childhood that still works with no issues. Also a Japanese 7500 I got 13 years ago that still works with no issues.

The reason for the lack of reliability from the 1001 and 5501 models stems from heat sensitive parts being located too close to the power source resulting in disc read failures.

[Anonymous No.5090714]

>>5089792
Yep. The reason for the high fail rate of launch model PS2s was due to the mechanism that switches between the CD laser and DVD laser breaking. So often you would end up with a PS2 that reads PS1 and music CDs, but not PS2 games and DVDs. Or vice versa.

Another problem was caused by the blue bottom PS2 discs. They were not CDs or DVDs. They were CD-ROMS which are lighter weight than a CD or DVD and require higher spin speeds. So these blue bottom discs would break the PS2 disc motor. It’s so stupid that nobody thought of this. DO NOT PUT BLUE BOTTOM DISC GAMES IN YOUR PS2. It will break it.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.5090721]

I've literally never laid eyes on one of these in working condition.

[Anonymous No.5090727]

>>5090698
>The reason for the lack of reliability from the 1001 and 5501 models stems from heat sensitive parts being located too close to the power source resulting in disc read failures.
That particular failure mode only affected the 100x. 5xxx had the laser relocated same as the 700x and 900x and in any case used a metal sled which didn't distort.

100x is absolute cancer, no doubt about that. I'd actually consider 5xxx to be the best revision from a quality standpoint.

[Anonymous No.5090730]

My PS2 from 2003 still works. Don't know what the fuck sort of shit you guys do with yours to have them break.

360 is a no brainer, worst example of all, also the PSX DVR has a really high failure rate, but those aren't /vr/.
The belt on Famicom Disk System tends to go bust, though it isn't hard to fix. Jaguar CD, first batches of PS1s are what come to mind. Iirc, the PS1 had an issue with overheating due to the internal layout, sometimes you needed to put the console upside down to get it to work.

[Anonymous No.5090738]

I can certainly tell you that my SNES and N64 still work after 20+ years of owning them

[Anonymous No.5090740]

>>5090738

So does my Master System and Mega Drive. :)

[Anonymous No.5090764]

>>5090730
Your PS2 isn’t the launch model PS2 which is why it doesn’t have problems. The SCPH-30,000 models all had the disc read error problem. You have a SCPH-50,000 or up which doesn’t have this problem.

[Anonymous No.5090772]

>>5090764
I'm pretty sure they fixed the laser in the 39000 ones

[Anonymous No.5090786]

>>5089791
>A friend thinks they don't make consoles like they used to, but I'm pretty sure that's bullshit

How do you figure it's bullshit? It goes without saying that playstations and xboxes are a lot less reliable than NES and SNES. We can't know for sure that a NES will outlast a Switch because the Switches haven't been out for decades. Obviously a big thing is the fact that any console with a laser or motor WILL give out eventually. This is just a fact of life. Having said that, I don't think there are such complaints about the Sega CD or Saturn saying they're all becoming unworkable now, while on the other hand it's insanely common for playstations or xboxes to give up after 5 years, 3 years or sometimes even a few months lol of use.

>and that companies 99% of the time don't intentionally create hardware that's made to fail in order to sell more units.

Well if that was your mindblowing reasoning behind it no wonder you came to the wrong conclusion. Console companies often don't even want you to buy more of their hardware, they make very little out of every purchase of hardware you make. Many times in the console wars they've even sold the hardware at a loss. Even if they make a small profit sometimes where they make the real money is in licencing software for their platforms. They definitely don't want their hardware to fail because that would be a clear headache for the consumer, damage their reputation and a cue for them to try another platform. However they also don't want you going back and playing old games on old consoles because this makes no money for them. Built-in obsolescence is a very real thing that has advanced over the years. It's not like they're saying at the designing stage we'll put time bomb in it to make it fail after so many years, a more likely scenario would be they choose components that are known to only work for a certain amount of time by routine.

[Anonymous No.5090814]

>>5090665
I did see some broken in other ways, but that was always due to the owners fault.
>"My kid put some jam (jelly) in it"
>"Someone told me if I glued the chip in place it would work"
>"I was told that if I turned a screw on the inside I could play PC games on it"
And when people tried to sell us ones that smelt of cigarettes and didn't work
>"It worked fine at home"

Also the spindle breaking due to people doing the disc swap.

It seemed to be the machine of choice for morons

[Anonymous No.5090829]

>>5090764
I have a December 2000 UK model (i.e a week after launch) and it has never skipped a beat in 18 years despite heavy use.

I didn't even clean the dust out until a couple of years ago and that was an OCD thing rather than any loss of performance.

[Anonymous No.5090846]

>>5090829
>a week after launch

You don't have a launch model. People were returning them en masse they day after launch.

[Anonymous No.5090962]

>>5090738

You're lucky, anon... My original super nintendo lasted 17+ years without ever showing signs of slowing down, then one night my house got struck by lightning and blew out the surge protector all my consoles were plugged into, every single one of them survived EXCEPT the SNES... I have a replacement now that i bought at a used game store, but it's not as reliable.

>tfw my old snes sacrificed itself to save my other consoles.

A top bro to the very end.

[Anonymous No.5090973]

>>5090962
What went wrong with it? Did you make sure it wasn't just the fuse inside the SNES?

[Anonymous No.5091001]

>>5090973

Nearly all the circuitry inside it was fried. I took it to a place where they opened it up and there was barely any green left on the board. They brought it right over to me after opening it to show it to me. it was charred/burnt to hell.

I should mention it wasn't just a light graze that hit my house. We got fucking struck full force. most of the electronic appliances and home systems got destroyed and my laptop got fucked too. frankly, im surprised only the SNES went among all the consoles. (Path of least resistance with the protector i guess.) Intense burning smell in my room for a whole month afterward with the cornet of my ceiling blackened from being hit from the outside and nearly going through.

Now you're probably wondering why the fuck i didnt unplug all of this stuff during a storm. We were out, and i was on my way up to do just that when we got home and it happened.

[Anonymous No.5091003]

>>5091001
How did your house specifically get hit by lightning. Do you live on a mountain or something.

[Anonymous No.5091013]

>that day when my 5501 PS1 died after 20 years of service

[Anonymous No.5091015]

>>5089954
Context, you autistic fuck.

[Anonymous No.5091017]

>>5091003

Lightning can strike anywhere. It doesnt need to be up high. My house was in the middle of a forest and we still got hit.

[Anonymous No.5091018]

>>5089956
Do a little research. The PS3 had more YLOD than 360's had RROD. Not a single fat console will survive, while most 08 and onward 360's should.

No retro consoles had this many issues. My vote goes for Turbo Duo. Not a single console will survive without replacing caps.

[Anonymous No.5091041]

>>5090721
Why would you want to.

[Anonymous No.5091046]

The ribbon cables connecting the displays on the virtual boy are glued on instead of soldered so they dry out and come detached.

[Anonymous No.5091056]

>>5091018
How the hell did it have more YLOD than RROD. Where did you read this

[Anonymous No.5091262]

>>5091018

What a pathetic revisionism. Fat PS3 YLODs were big but nowhere near the 360's fiasco. You're either a Microshaft rep or a fag that played Halo 3 and shat on PS3 all day.

[anus mother fucjer No.5091383]

>>5091046
Is buying a broken virtual boy where the issue is “no display but you hear sound” worth it? how hard is it to repair?

[Anonymous No.5091398]

>>5089762
Sega CD model 1

[Anonymous No.5091476]

>>5091018
>>5091056
>>5091262
https://consumerist.com/2009/08/17/xbox-360-failure-rate-is-542-percent-game-informer-finds/

54% failure rate for 360 and 10% for ps3. The article is outdated but a quick google search gives me this

https://www.gamesradar.com/xbox-failure-rates-are-reportedly-down-ps3-failure-rates-just-generation-comes-to-a-close/

This newer article says the 360 failure rate got better over time and only became the same as the ps3. But at no time was the ps3 rate significantly higher than the 360. I want more better sources but I can't find any as most of them are just rehashing what an older article says so new information is hard to come by

[Anonymous No.5091607]

>>5090846
They must have kept it very quiet then because I heard nothing about it and considering I was paying £300 for the thing (as were a lot of my friends) there would be a certain amount of interest shown in early impressions don'tchathink?

The (relatively scarce) failures started appearing quite a bit later in my experience but mine was never one of them.

[Anonymous No.5091623]

I bought a 3DO FZ-10 recently, and the laser sled has a broken gear. After a bit of googling, it seems to be a common problem with these systems.

[Anonymous No.5091675]

>>5091607
You could always just google "PS2 failure rate"

[Anonymous No.5091682]

>>5091607
Skip to 3:25

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR1A_FF7WNY

[Anonymous No.5091765]

>>5091675
>>5091682
I don't need some zoomers' interpretations of the past.

I was there, an adult. I lived it.

[Anonymous No.5091767]

>>5090031
Mine was gray. A good solution was to wriggle it around the slot with a finger on each side until the blinking went from being a solid color to the title screen, the resetting the console.

[Anonymous No.5091769]

>>5091056
For the sake of backward compatibility early PS3s had entire PS2s inside, which had entire PSones, inside. There was a lot of stuff which could go wrong.

[Anonymous No.5091792]

>>5089983
True. No matter how fucked up those things got, the most you had to do was buy a few dirt cheap voltage regulators or caps or something to fix up the mobo. AFAIK situations like the processor going bust and needing to be replaced were very rare, only exception I can think of it is the atari

[Anonymous No.5091823]

>>5089791
not retro but xbox had a 90 day warranty. not building tons of confidence in their initial foray into home consoles

[Anonymous No.5091840]

>>5090714
c'mon man wasn't it refuted those were cdroms with cool colors to make them seem next gen? i feel like that's disinfo now. blue back ps2 games are just ps2 cdroms, not dvds

[Anonymous No.5091856]

>>5090786
>It's not like they're saying at the designing stage we'll put time bomb in it to make it fail after so many years
This is exactly what they do with $1000 smart phones, why wouldn't the same be true for $300 consoles?

[Anonymous No.5091862]

gamecube would be the most reliable disc based one

[Anonymous No.5091874]

Original versions of the famicom had a high fail rate. It was enough that the president issued a recall that cost Nintendo a ton of money.

[Anonymous No.5091897]

>>5091765
Sounds more like you're a child defending his favourite toy. Here's people in 2003 talking about the PS2's massive failure rate.

https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?18874-PS2-failure-rate

[Anonymous No.5091907]

>>5090665
>..just like tapes and records
Have you been living under a rock for the past 8 years?

[Anonymous No.5091908]

As far as reliability goes, the Colecovision is the worst major console of the cartridge era. They have loads of problems with PSU and RAM failures. Most reliable is the woodgrain Atari 2600 and the Genesis.

[Anonymous No.5091921]

>>5091907
That post you're replying to is Youtube comment section pasta.

[Anonymous No.5091926]

>>5089946
>Dreamcast with the laser
This is the only console I recall having serious issues with, aside from the connectors with the NES. I've gone through at least 5 Dreamcasts in the past 15 years, a couple of them only months apart. All used, of course..

[Anonymous No.5091931]

>>5091003
I'm in a valley in Ohio and stuff gets hit with lightning constantly. In the past 3 years I can recall 2 trees getting hit and causing damage to the cars below them, both within 5 houses of mine. Stuff gets struck everywhere all the time.

[Anonymous No.5091932]

>>5091383
Basically the ribbon cable has about ten (maybe more cant be bothered to check) very small connections that need to be soldered directly to the PCB.
Reflowing them will give mixed results

[Anonymous No.5091939]

>>5089989
>Current problems with some retro computers is the capacitors are starting to leak, happens a lot with Amigas.

Electrolytic caps tend to dislike being powered off for too long. They do like having some residual current in them. Of course the storage conditions also matter.

[Anonymous No.5092060]

>>5091840
That’s literally what that anon said, did you not read what he wrote? Ever find it weird why PS2 makes a grinding noise when you run blue discs?

[Anonymous No.5092119]

>>5091897
No, that's people talking about a poll.

Polls are generally skewed one way or another depending on the question asked. In this case the respondents were asked if they'd experienced failure. Those whose position agrees with the poll subject are far more likely to respond than those who are in opposition, ask any statistician.

I'll propose a different poll with equally valid results:

Have you owned a PS2 from launch and not experienced a single read issue?

Myself and half a dozen friends could answer this affirmatively. Nobody I know with a launch model PS2 has ever had a problem with it.

[Anonymous No.5092195]

>>5089762
dsl. it came out before most of neo/v/ was born so according to the rules of snowflakedom it must be retro. amirite?
But seriously, anything made in those few years of shit caps that started the recap meme.

[Anonymous No.5092243]

>>5089989
>The Jaguar CD,

>hey, let's use a custom optical media format with pretty much zero error-correction, what could possibly go wrong

[Anonymous No.5092246]

>>5092060
>Ever find it weird why PS2 makes a grinding noise when you run blue discs?
dont two strips of tape around the hole fix that?

[Anonymous No.5092251]

>>5090764
>You have a SCPH-50,000 or up which doesn’t have this problem.
instead their drive-controller-chip is driven with too high voltage (8 instead of 5v) (LA-fix)
scph-70000 (v12) have shitty laser-regulation, eventually burning out the coils. (summ0ne's fix anyone)?

[Anonymous No.5092368]

>>5089954
>>5091015
Also we can't forget that usually when later gen consoles are discussed here we usually talk more about using them for their backwards compatibility or ability to run emulators. Discussions of maintenance and reliability of such consoles is very relevant to this board.

[Anonymous No.5092648]

l>>5092368
How does 360 compatability fit in when it's backwards compatability is limited to a non /vr/ console? Retard.

[Anonymous No.5092713]

>>5092648
JTAG it and you can play emulators on it.

[Anonymous No.5093018]

>>5089762
of the systems I've seen, the worst are PS2s, xboxes, and PSPs

ps2s will have their disk drives shit the bed no matter what if they're fats, PSPs are ticking time bombs and if something doesn't go wrong, the analog stick will start drifting, and xboxes are actual ticking time bombs because of the clock capacitor, and that's IF the disk drive doesn't go

but none of those are /vr/

[Anonymous No.5093317]

>>5091856

Every single smart phone I've had has broken after like 4-5 years without me trying to break it

they make em break because after like 2012 there's diminishing returns on a what phone can do besides video games , youtube and w/e shitty apps are enough for most people

Consoles are obsolete within a few years by themselves , no hardware failure needed, the average buyer isn't going to stick with their ps3 when they see how good uncharted 4 and GOW look, so they'll pony up the cash for a new system eventually

[Anonymous No.5093328]

>>5089762
From my years of experience the Atari Jaguar is the biggest fail rate of all time. It magically did not have a dust cover and most units I encounter today won’t even work. Out of three I have bought, only one is functional and this only if I turn the unit upside down and get it in just the right spot. Fuck the jaguar and fuck Atari

[Anonymous No.5093364]

>>5092713
It's more trouble than it's worth to JTAG a 360. There are much more reliable consoles out there which are easier to mod

[Anonymous No.5093412]

>>5089989
On the Amiga computers, your best bet is to stick with an A500. They had higher quality capacitors that are all mostly fine to this day, and no clock battery to leak all over the motherboard.