NES Led & Window Mod. Cost Under $5.

Tools needed:

Safety glasses

Multimeter

soldering iron

hot glue gun

philips screwdriver

dremel rotary tool with drill bit and fiberglass cutoff wheel

knife to strip wire

pliers with cutters

Materials needed:

glass picture frame ($1 at dollar tree)

10 strand led lights ($1 at dollar tree)

100 ohm 1/4 watt resistors ($1.49 for 5 at radio shack)

5mm green led ($1 radio shack)

small wire

Remove 6 philips screws from bottom of NES. Remove top cover. Mark where you want your window & use dremel to make the cut about a quarter inch smaller all way around than the actual glass size (to allow room for hot glue) then sand the lines smooth. Hold window glass in place & put a bead of hot glue around all 4 sides taking care to keep it neat but effective in securing it in place. Next get the led strand & figure out exactly where you want to route them & test fit making sure they reach those points Locate the positive side of the wire coming out of the battery box and mark it with tape or something so you know positive from negative then cut the battery box off after making sure the lights indeed work with the AA batteries.

Trace the #2 controller port wires to the motherboard. There are a total of 7 wires. The white wire is your 5 volt positive. Solder the 100 ohm resistor to the pin the white wire runs to on motherboard which is the 3rd one from front of console. Then solder the positive wire from the led's to the other end of the resistor. Then locate the brown wire which runs to the 7th and last pin from front of console which is the ground (negative) and solder the negative led strand wire to it. Be sure no solder is joining any other points & plug in the NES and power on to make sure you did everything right. Hot glue over all the solder points you did to help keep the solder joint secure as well as insulate it from causing a possible short as well.

I chose to add a green 5 mm led to this custom console since it would help make it match my controller with A and B button activated led's. Simply twist a 100 ohm 1/4 watt resistor lead around the positive leg of the led (+ is the longer leg on the led or looking inside the led bulb the positive is the smaller mass of metal) & solder them together. I used controller port #1 on the motherboard for this led & the pinouts are the same as used to wire the led strand onto port #2. Solder however much wire you need depending upon where you want to place the led then solder resistor side to 3rd pin from left which white wire runs to (positive 5 volts) and negative side (ground) 7th or last pin from left which brown wire runs to. Then test to make sure it lights before hot gluing over your solder joints.

Enjoy your cooler looking custom NES. If you want to add led's to your controller that activate when pressing A and B buttons be sure to check out the instructable I did on that. Simple fun mods that really set your gaming machine apart from others.