ByteRot :: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Controller Teardown

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Super Nintendo Entertainment System Controller Teardown

Device	Super Nintendo Entertainment System Controller
Difficulty	Moderate
Time	No estimate
Steps	10

This guide is by Foxlet on iFixit and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0. ByteRot mirrors it for non-commercial preservation: formatting changed and photos resized for old browsers; full-size photos and the text are on the FTP in /DOCS/REPAIR. Original guide >>

This time we take a look at a classic part of retro gaming; the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) Controller. Often said to be one of the best designs of Nintendo's controllers, we'll tear it down to see exactly what makes this tick.

Tools: Essential Electronics Toolkit

Step 1

• It's your classic Super Nintendo controller.
• Notably, it's a wired controller (same as most of the controllers of the era), and has a very simple layout.
• The design is often called a "dogbone", due to the shape of the lower part.

Step 2

• Nintendo, unlike the Control Deck counterpart, did not use custom screws in the controller, therefore it's very easy to open and clean.
• We remove the 5 Phillips screws on the back of the controller.

Step 3

• Open... the... controller.

Step 4

• CAUTION: There are two metal rods that we have to take care of before removing the rest, otherwise they might get lost.
• We remove the two shoulder buttons.

Step 5

• Now we can get onto the board! We first remove the cable from the slack poles.
• After that, it's only a matter of lifting the board out.

Step 6

• Onto the rubber pads that represent the buttons, we'll have to remove those too.
• CAUTION: Many of these older controllers might have delicate rubber pads, they should be handled carefully.

Step 7

• Inching closer, we get to the shoulder button's rubber pads.
• We can finally remove the remaining plastic buttons from the D-Pad and face button areas.

Step 8

• The board itself has the controller cable attached, we can remove that too.
• NOTE: Not all controllers have a removable cable. Some models, such as the SNS-102, have soldered-on cables.
• CAUTION: We make sure to pull away from the connector, and not up! It might be a little difficult depending on how long it's been attached.

Step 9

• The SNES Controller board features a number of pads as well as a chip.
• The chip on the board is a 12-bit shift register, used to multiplex all the button signals on the controller into a more budget-friendly connector.

Step 10

• Finally, we can see all the innards that make this little controller work.
• Maybe we should play a few rounds of Super Mario World...

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