Up next is Super Nintendo number two, serial UP15971140, and this one has some rather impressive video distortion. It was originally reported as having no power, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. It actually turns on and produces a purple screen, which is more than I was expecting!

With John Madden Football ‘93 running, there’s sound coming through, so at least part of the console is doing its job. The picture, however, is another story entirely. Sometimes it disappears, sometimes it flickers, and when we do get an image the text appears to be backwards or upside down. Poor John Madden!

The television also seems rather confused about the video signal, occasionally detecting SECAM instead of PAL. I tried connecting the console through RF as well, but the picture still dropped out, so changing the connection hasn’t magically fixed anything.

Inside the console I’ve found quite a bit of corrosion, including some damaged-looking traces around one of the chips. There are also electrolytic capacitors that appear to have leaked onto the board. Not exactly what you want to find when you open one of these things up.

This is an older motherboard rather than a 1CHIP model, and the capacitors are arranged differently from the other SNES consoles I’ve been looking at. I’m going to give the board a good clean and start replacing the electrolytic capacitors, then see whether that improves anything.

At this stage I’m not entirely sure what’s causing the distortion. The corrosion is certainly suspicious, but we’ll have to investigate further before declaring anything fixed.