Had a spare Famicom board, without a shell. Shells go for way too much (around the price of an entire console), so when one popped up at a reasonable price, I jumped on the occasion.
Only problem
It is a very rusty boy.
In fact, I did also get the incredibly rusty main board originally housed in this thing, but it might be too far gone. Especially since someone stole the CPU, PPU and RAM off it.
But, no matter, the shell is what matters, as, again, I have another board. So, I began vinegaring:
A lot of scrubbing with a toothbrush and a lot of q-tips later, and it's clean. Even the really rusty spring mechanism cleaned somewhat well.
Thing is, it was just a shell. No controllers.
I did happen to have a single 1 player controller left, so it went in, but that left me without controller 2.
Replacements are, again, quite pricey, so, for the time being, I got this super cheapo famiclone 9-pin controller styled like a Famicom one, and just soldered it in. There's no microphone, but that's not a huge problem. It works. And the final product looks quite nice if I do say so myself.
As for the rusty main board... I do have some famiclone CPU and PPUs, so perhaps its time shall come.