Gaming DSi powers itself down when moved, but only while running off a game card.

[LumberMacc]

Hey, guys. First time poster and very new to this forum and website so bear with me.

I just picked up a DSi in great condition off Ebay and after using it for about a week I can say without a doubt it's my favorite DS ever. The buttons feel amazing, its the perfect size and the screens actually have the same color temperatures. However, there is one massive issue that keeps me on my DS Lite.

When playing a game off a game card, be it official Nintendo cards or an R4 clone with RetroGameFan's incredible YSMenu fork, the DSi will shut itself down if it's moved. For instance, I'm playing a game and everything is working great. I close the DSi, place it on my desk, and go to the restroom. When I come back, the blue power/standby light is still breathing until I pick it up, which somehow causes the DSi to shut down. I'm actually able to recreate the issue pretty easily, and narrowed it down to only the game card slot. All other built in or downloaded software works fine (and I'm not running any custom firmware, just stock, official 1.4.5U).

The games always work fine if I'm just HOLDING the device and playing, but as soon as there's any significant movement like placing the system down, picking it up or sometimes just readjusting my body the system will shut down. I opened it up and everything looked fine. The game card slot has no bent pins or any observable damage or oddities and the battery holds a charge well, isnt swollen at all and seems to be perfectly healthy.

Any questions or thoughts? Let me know if any of you are having a similar issue, or if you had something similar and fixed it. I'll be happy to update this thread to help other people.

 

[IC_]

Try cleaning the pins in the cartridge slot and on the cartridges with some alcohol.

 

[LumberMacc]

Try cleaning the pins in the cartridge slot and on the cartridges with some alcohol.

Forgot to mention I did that when I opened it up. The system plays and reads everything in the slot great. I can play for hours on end with zero issue. As soon as I move the system though, boop, power off.

 

[IC_]

Do the pins of the cartridge slot look fine on the other side where they are soldered to the motherboard? It's possible that one of the connections cracked or broke, resoldering those pins could help.

 

[LumberMacc]

Do the pins of the cartridge slot look fine on the other side where they are soldered to the motherboard? It's possible that one of the connections cracked or broke, resoldering those pins could help.

Great question but yeah they do. I wish there was some sort of observable oddity to give me an obvious answer but everything looks great.

 

[Amez]

When you say it shuts down - do you mean the power goes off completely? or the error message comes on the screen?

The DSi game slots are pretty poor, when I buy / sell DSi consoles, I always put a game in them and gently tap the cartridge slot to make sure an error message doesn't appear, if a gentle tap causes the error message to appear I replace the game slot.

It's very common on the DSi, I think it was something to do with the slots allowing hot swapping as the DS and DS Lite game slots were never as temperamental.