PART 9: Never give up, never surrender...It's VE Day B!t@hes!
I am happy to report victory has been achieved!
Thanks to a post on the SHMUPS forum I swapped the SuperCICs from my broken 1-chip and a working SNS-CPU-RGB-02. I mentioned that one of my goals was to use hot air to work off a chip with many fine pitch pins. This was my first try and it went well, thanks to a proper rework station, good flux, and solid pair of course. Well, the result was a proper boot up! No reset button needed. the game started up first try! To confirm the CIC was bad, I then tried the donor board. Weird thing was it too booted up fine. So the only explanation is a cold solder joint. I thought I reflowed all the chips on the board, but I must have missed that one. The CIC was fine.
So that concludes it. I learned a lot about the SNES and had a bunch of fun trying to figure this one out. Ultimately it proved beyond me and I had to consult those with more experience than me. They came through and I'm the better for it. I pushed my soldering and reworking ability. It was close, but I'm glad I didn't give up. I feel nice bit of pride for seeing this one to the end. Moreover, the world has one fewer 1-chip SNES's going to the landfill. Actually, I bought 2 broken SNES's and both work now. That's awesome to me. That an otherwise novice can resurrect a busted console and keep it going on into the future. Yes! To put it simply...