In this episode I will restore this Nintedo 64 (N64) which is very yellowed and doesn't show any picture on the TV. This model was originally transparent blue/white but now it's more transparen green/yellow. There seems to be also some damage from water or other liquid.
To open the console, I need a special tool usually called game bit. Such screws can be found in many Nintendo consoles. The N64 has a ton of different types of screws so it's especially important to make sure I know where they go once I'm putting it back together. I use an ice cube tray for this purpose as usual. I also marked different screws with different colors in the video. However screws marked with same color in different parts of the video are NOT similar.
After all the plastic parts were disassembled from around the electronics. I cleaned the plastic and used method called retrobrighting to remove the yellowing from the plastic. Tutorial to retrobrighting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWRsjnVD3s&t
Next it was time to figure out why I had no image in my TV. With older consoles not having a picture is usually much better sign than the device not powering on because I know the board is not completely fried. Both cases could still be result of major damage but from my experience that is often just a result of lack of connection at some point. If something had, shorted the console would probably not even turn on. In this case I found there to be damage dirt under the game port which could affect the console, but most likely there was a cold solder joint, which means the poer for my AV cable was not connected. I resoldered all the joints and the console started working. Often it can be enough just to melt the old solder and it's not even needed to add any new solder.
