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Nintendo 64 Teardown

Device	Nintendo 64
Difficulty	Moderate
Time	30 minutes - 1 hour
Steps	9

This guide is by Christian Marmolejos 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 >>

In honor of the 20th anniversary of its release, I decided to give the Nintendo 64 a proper teardown, and take a look inside the legendary console that defined a generation.

Tools: Pro Tech Toolkit; Magnetic Project Mat

Step 1 :: Nintendo 64 Overview

• The Nintendo 64 was Nintendo's third home console. Released in 1996 for the US and Japan, the N64 boasted 64-bit graphics for the most realistic gaming experience ever made to date. The N64 was co-developed by Nintendo and Silicon Graphics.
    • NEC VR4300 64-bit CPU, running at 93.75 Mhz
    • Silicon Graphics Reality Coprocessor (RCP) GPU
    • 576i (720×576) Composite output
    • Support for up to 4 players

Step 2

• Let's take a look at the I/O, shall we?
    • 4 N64 controller ports
    • Nintendo 64 Game Pak slot
    • Composite video cable port
    • N64 power supply port (12V/3.3V DC switching)

Step 3

• Let's begin by removing the top cover.
• Remove the 6 Gamebit 4.5mm screws found at the 4 corners and near the top-middle and bottom-middle.
• Using a metal spudger, take out the Jumper Pak from its slot and set it aside.

Step 4

• Flip the console upright, and the top cover just comes right off.
• Remove the 10 crossbar screws using a Philips #2 screwdriver.
• Take out the 2 screws holding in one piece of the expansion slot shield, also with a Philips #2
• The 2 black screws and the one at the bottom left of the expansion slot shield are easily removed with a Philips #2.
• Finally, remove the 2 long screws from the 2 ends of the slot with a Philips #0.

Step 5

• Remove the 3 pieces of the expansion slot shield.
• CAUTION: Make sure to remove these pieces BEFORE removing the heatsink crossbar.

Step 6

• The heatsink crossbar comes right off, which gives us access to the motherboard shield.
• The 5 screws on the two sides of the shield are swiftly removed with a Philips #2
• The 2 screws on each side of the Game Pak slot are quite long, and are removed with a Philips #2.
• With that, the shield slips right off, letting us gaze at the Nintendo 64's source of power.

Step 7

• On the motherboard are 3 very pronounced steel blocks, which indicates that the important stuff is under there. But before removing these, it's best to take the motherboard out of the bottom case.
• In order to remove the motherboard, unscrew the 4 Philips #2 screws from the two back I/O ports, allowing extraction of the motherboard.

Step 8

• Using a Jimmy, pry off each chip's heatsink, revealing the console's processing units.
    • Nintendo CPU-NUS-A
    • Nintendo RCP-NUS
    • Nintendo RDRAM18-NUS-B (2x2MB modules)

Step 9

• And thus concludes a successful teardown of one of the greatest consoles of all time.

Credit