My SNES from childhood died, bad PPU I believe. I picked up a SNES from my friend, who believed it to be working. I tested it, and it does boot and load the game, but the dpad barely/never responds. All the other buttons seem to work correctly. I tried two separate controllers, both had the same results.
The case to the new SNES is a travesty, and broken in multiple places. Even the screw posts broke when I disassembled it. I want to swap it into my childhood SNES case, because it’s pristine.
My question is, does anyone know what the problem could be? I can try using the controller board from my SNES, but I want to make sure it isn’t a problem with the SNES mainboard.
I mean, try more controllers, and clean them internally. Buttons not working is usually filth in my experience. And yes swap the controller board, it swaps right out.
Between two broken systems sounds like you can make one working one pretty easily as they have separate flaws.
If you have an everdrive then you can use the SNES Test Program ROM to test controllers and other things without the need to fish out a game. Based on your description, I’d recommend getting a controller port from another SNES. It’s all one board and connected to the main board via 1 connection tape belt thing that you just yank out. Really easy.