Ok, so I turned on the NES I just won from ebay, and it's just blinking at me! I know this is a common problem with the system, and know it is fixable, but DON'T know how, or if it is worth it! Can any of you guys help me out?? Or am I better off just getting another one? Either post here or PM me if you can help, i'll be logged on for the next few hours! Thanks!

LOL!  I might go with the hammer option!!! Although that may be cruelty to NES's...... so on second thoughts I might go with the connector!!

Ok, I'll give it a go, thanks!!

There could be another problem I don't see mentioned a lot. Sometimes the connector pins no longer make full contact with the carts because they're pushed away from the pins on the cart. It's common with the consoles I've gotten -- putting in, pulling out and sliding the carts around inside the console causes it. All you have to do is open up the system and take a needle to each pin, prying them back into position ever so carefully, so that each pin is is closer to the center insert where the cart's board is inserted. That sometimes works.

changed the connector for a new one, put it all back together, was very careful! The stupid thing's still blinking at me with evey game!  I think it looks like I'm just going to be playing my games on the retrocon unless anyone knows any other common problems that can be fixed relatively easily!?

Yeah, I'm gonna do that tomorrow on my day off, but I still think there's something else wrong - I tried a couple of games that are virtually brand new, in immaculate condition and it didn't even think of loading them, just straight on with the blinking! It's all very depressing! Ah well, we'll see what happens tomorrow, and as I said, at least I've got the retrocon, so I don't have to be entirely NES-less! 

Yeah, they're all UK PAL, as is the system. I'll give that a try though on my next day off, thanks!!

Aha! A good topic to make my post.

ThaDuke wrote on 09. Oct 2006 at 20:02:

Probably 98% of them; there are differences between PAL & NTSC TV signals.*

Anyway, even though I have a Toploader, I decided to hook up my toaster & see what games worked with it:

-Leon's homebrewn SMB2J worked as expected
-A Famicom converter with a Famicom game didn't work as I believe it's for PAL
-Surprisingly an HES Silent Assault with no game in the piggyback slot worked fine (but started up weird ).

What I noticed was not only the crisp, lack of lines across the screen with the toaster, but the colors are brighter as well (the toploader's graphics seem faded in some way).

Since I had two toasters, & since it seemed so easy, I decided to disable the lockout chip on my non-childhood one (the one I got from a friend back in middle school).  The only tricky part was finding something small enough to cut the pin.

Hooray! Now I can play Banana Prince in all its prime.  No blink screen either; that's reason enough to cut the darn thing.

You know how you're playing & sometimes it will just start blinking in the middle of a game, causing you grief?  Is this caused by the lockout chip or bad pins or what?  Basically, will it still get messed up in the middle of a game without the blinking?

*http://www.nesworld.com/unines2.htm