I thought I had lost my N64 a couple years back. I had gone through a bunch of moves and I was sure that it got banged around in transit. I tried everything I could think of but I couldn't get the console to display a start-up screen. I made one last-ditch effort by swapping out the 8 MB Expansion pack with the 4 MB Jumper Pack that came with the console (I have no idea how I still had it) and my N64 works great again.
All my other consoles: Game Boy Color (AFAIK), Game Boy Advance, N64, GCN, and Wii U all work without issues!