Got lucky with a pretty good deal on a famicom + disk system. I need to take apart the disk drive to see if I got lucky and it is one of the ones that can write disks without modification. If it is, I can get an adapter and overwrite common disks with rare games instead - or sometimes you can save failing disks by re-imaging a fresh ROM onto the disk. Pretty need from an archive/backup perspective.
If I didn't get lucky then I have another thing to motivate me to get off my ass and finally learn to solder.
What's interesting is I still read conflicting information about this. People clam it is because of the copy protection - and supposedly disabling the copy protection by desoldering a specific leg of a pin from the board it makes it more reliable - but then I have also heard more recently people say this isn't true - and you probably shouldn't disable the lockout chip for no reason even though it doesn't seem to have negative effects.
All I know is the front loaders are notoriously finicky. Something is definitely screwed up in there. In my experience simply changing the 72 pin connector is hit or miss.