• 7 Posts
  • 227 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: September 12th, 2023

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  • The public will never know for sure.

    He was a very broken person, in many ways. That doesn’t prove or disprove that he did anything illegal or immoral.

    Some of the ways he acted? They seem questionable to most folks, myself included. But through the lens of his emotional and psychological issues? They could have appeared harmful but actually been harmless.

    For example: Is it weird for an adult celebrity to have pajama parties with kids? Yes. Is it harmful if it was, in fact, only a pajama party? Probably not.

    Michael Jackson is a complex figure with huge cultural import. That doesn’t change the fact that he may have been a problematic individual.

    In some ways, he may have been less harmful than other historic figures. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question the possible bad things he did.








  • The DSi and XL are arguably the pinnacle of Nintendo’s modern engineering.

    The shoulder switches are soldered to a tiny board that’s connected to a ribbon cable, so it’s actually possibly to replace just the switches.

    If the ribbon cable is damaged, it’s a tiny and cheap replacement part that doesn’t require even removing the motherboard.

    The power board is a discrete child board.

    Button presses are handled via metal dome switches. Buttons not working? Pull the dome, clean, then replace with fresh kapton tape.

    The only real negative is that two ribbon cables run through the hinge.

    The earlier DSes were more of a pain to fix, and the 3DS series started to cheap out by making things harder to access, remove, and put back together.


  • They generally don’t need to be replaced, in fact.

    But most people think they do, so the incorrect info gets spread.

    It’s nobody’s fault. Most folks just don’t have any way to know unless they’ve fixed lots of systems. I’ve fixed lots of systems. :)

    I used to get great deals on “faulty” Japanese DSi’s, with bad L/R being the only real problem. Then I’d fix them and share them for just the price I’d paid.

    Only once was I unable to fix a bad shoulder button by cleaning it. It’s because the switch was broken off and rattling around inside the shell. 🤣



  • Good news! I’ve fixed dozens of systems with this exact problem. It’s very straightforward and doesn’t require much disassembly.

    Pull the back off, and spray contact cleaner directly into the switch (in the tiny gap around the switch’s button). Note that you’ll need to disassemble the rear shell a little to get to the switch, but you won’t need to pull the motherboard. (In the original DSI there’l be one flat connector to lift off, and in the XL there’ll be two.)

    Then rapidly and gently push the button a whole bunch.

    That will clear away dust or micro corrosion that’s interfering with the electric contact.

    Reassemble, and it should work better. If it’s not perfect, try again.

    I’ve never had a console whose button needed more than three contact cleaner applications. And that was only with buttons that completely stopped working.