Yesterday I brought a SNES Test cartridge burned onto an INL cart to my local retro store for some testing. We ran all the available tests on a SNES and everything passed. Less than 15 minutes later, I put Street Fighter II Turbo into the system and it would not get past the initial screen. Gradius III locked up as well. I don't think the cart hurt the SNES, but I am doubting the effectiveness of this test program. Has anyone else had issues with this or was this just some freaky bad luck?
Were all cartridges clean? Is the connector in the SNES itself clean? Is the power supply good?
It's very unlikely the test program cartridge did any harm. And keep in mind the test program is not the "ultimate" diagnostic tool. There are so many things that could be wrong with a console which a program running on the console may not be able to detect for you, atleast not in a generic test program.
It's very unlikely the test program cartridge did any harm. And keep in mind the test program is not the "ultimate" diagnostic tool. There are so many things that could be wrong with a console which a program running on the console may not be able to detect for you, atleast not in a generic test program.
If a test cart passes and a Game Pak fails, the service center would likely have swapped the Control Deck out for a refurbished one and possibly returned your old Control Deck to Nintendo for analysis.
(Just a guess; I've never worked for a local Nintendo service center.)
(Just a guess; I've never worked for a local Nintendo service center.)
Thanks for the responses. I buy a ton of games from my local retro shop and was mostly just showing off some of the flash carts I made. I found the SNES test program rom and burned it to a cart for him to test some systems and accessories mainly (Picture of the program). We just found it odd that everything was "ok" with the system and then 15 minutes later the system was having issues. I think I will try cleaning the system and carts once again and make sure it was not just a dirty connector.
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It does test a lot of things but I would doubt that it can find all problems.
It sounds like it could be a heat related issue since it only appeared after some time.
Did you test the test cartridge again after the other games started to fail?
It might be able to find the problem if you try it again when the system is warm.
It sounds like it could be a heat related issue since it only appeared after some time.
Did you test the test cartridge again after the other games started to fail?
It might be able to find the problem if you try it again when the system is warm.
Thanks again for the response. I am going to chalk this one up to the program is not 100% effective. I brought the cart back down to the shop and we tested several consoles. The console in question definitely has a sound issue and that's most likely causing the issues. Almost ironically, one SNES that failed the electronics test played perfectly fine, and one that passed all the tests had issues as well. Also some controllers that tested and passed were border line junk as well.