Topic: Oh noes, not my Super NES!

[couchmonkey]

Hey, anybody know anything about this problem?  The start and select buttons on my contollers (all of them) have stopped working. I'm guessing it's an issue with the SNES itself since all of the controllers mysteriously stopped at once.  I have no idea how to fix it.

[Ceric]

Is it just one controller port that does this or is it it all of them?  Because it sound like to me something isn't making contact correctly.

[couchmonkey]

I meant to try that, but I was only playing to test something out in Super Mario World and Wii tore me away before I could think any more about my SNES.

[Shecky]

All legacy Nintendo systems were preprogrammed to stop working on 11/19/2006

I doubt its a contact problem as a SNES controller probably sends serial data.  If it were a contact problem the whole controller would quit working.

[couchmonkey]

So it turns out it's a contact problem at the point of the buttons.  I tried cleaning the controller port and the cartridge connector as well, but it didn't work, and in desperation I hit the start button quite hard, and it worked!  I basically have to push my thumbnail into the groove to get the button to work, though, so I'm considering opening one controller up to see if a cleaning or something makes the button operate more like it used to.

I guess it's possible the cleaning had some effect, I'll have to double-check the other two controllers to see if they're as difficult to use.