Retro repair and refurbishment

[wev]

There's a noticeable amount of movement when I put the pressure on the switch to make it stay on.

 

My OG Gameboy though, somehow the facia around the screen has come off, no idea how or where it's gone though!

[Das]

44 minutes ago, Ninja Doctor said:

Either the actual switch has gone or the plastic on it. If it’s the plastic it’s an easyish fix. The switch is a little more involved. I would give @Das a shout. He’s a fixing ninja. 

Yeah I could sort this @wev if need be.

[wev]

13 minutes ago, Das said:

Yeah I could sort this @wev if need be.

 

Thanks, I'll try @MikeBeavers suggestion first then get in touch

[wev]

17 hours ago, MikeBeaver said:

Might be worth squirting a little Isopropyl Alcohol into the switch, then flicking it on and off a few times, I had a box full of GBA and GBC turn up yesterday, all supposedly faulty, turns out the switch contacts had just oxidised a bit over tie and once cleaned it worked a charm.

 

This has worked a treat, thanks @MikeBeaver and thanks to @Ninja Doctor and @Das too.

 

RLLMUK Retro Folder

[MikeBeaver]

Ahhh yeah Glad that has sorted it.

 

In repair news for today ( well, technically the repair was yesterday, but it's getting posted here today ) I replaced the charging port on an OLED Vita, fuck me, that is NOT something I wish to do again, it was THE biggest ballache, trying to not melt the plastic inside the new connector, get all 20 ish pins stuck down, not have blobs of solder sticking two pins together and shorting them out !

 

But it's on, it works and I have revived yet another Vita from the bin, and on the plus side, the Sim Card tray was missing, but inside the slot was an 8gb memory card , silver linings etc

[MikeBeaver]

Well, today I salvaged a PAL copy of "Super Metroid", which I am very happy about.

 

It came to me on Monday as part of a faulty games and console bundle, I expected to whack a bit of heat on the chips, reflow the solder joints and be away.... it wasn't to be.

 

I took the decision to nip home from work, grab my own copy of Super Metroid, and slowly but surely, swap each chip of the PCB over, testing both carts after each chip swap, the result? Well, now all the chips from the faulty game were on my board and it worked just fine, all of my original chips on that board, diddly squat, turned on, Nintendo logo, blank screen.

 

I set about finding out what model PCB it was, it's a pretty rare one, it's used by 3 titles in total, 1 being Metroid (PAL) another being Metroid ( JPN ) the third, some obscure Japanese visual novel, had a quick scout on eBay, found one, £2.50 delivered, so yeah, pulled the trigger on it right away.

 

It arrived this morning, I tested the cart worked, popped it open, checked it was the right PCB, and then proceeded to de-chip the faulty Metroid cart and then the newly arried donor board, stuck all the chips from Metroid on to it, fired it up and.... Wahey, working Super Metroid, was a rather ecellent way to start the day off :-)

 

So far, from a box containing several loose carts, 3 Action Replays 3 official Pads and 3 SNES consoles, I've got all the carts going ( the rest were fever Pitch Soccer, Wrestlemania, SF II and Gumshoe NES, think it's a PAL B but not checked yet ), I have managed to fix all the carts, all 3 SNES consoles, an oficial controller and an Action Replay 2, the rest may or may not be salvageable, but it's been a fun week of tinkering for sure

[gizmo1990]

On 25/01/2019 at 16:35, Treble said:

I fitted a new power switch into my 1084S-D today, that I got as NOS fron the bay. Common fault, apparently, that the internal clip fails and the switch won't stay in. 

 

A pretty easy job, other than the fact I was shitting myself I was going to get a massive shock

 

I think I did a decent job, all told. Even colour-coded the heat shrink! 

 

 

A late quote, but good job!  Out of interest, what did you pay for the switch, if you don't mind saying? They're becoming quite rare now. I was lucky to find a small quantity a few years back from an Amiga forum.

[Treble]

18 minutes ago, gizmo1990 said:

 

A late quote, but good job!  Out of interest, what did you pay for the switch, if you don't mind saying? They're becoming quite rare now. I was lucky to find a small quantity a few years back from an Amiga forum.

 

Woah, necrobump! I paid the princely sum of £9.95, according to my eBay history

[Treble]

13 hours ago, MikeBeaver said:

Well, today I salvaged a PAL copy of "Super Metroid", which I am very happy about.

 

It came to me on Monday as part of a faulty games and console bundle, I expected to whack a bit of heat on the chips, reflow the solder joints and be away.... it wasn't to be.

 

I took the decision to nip home from work, grab my own copy of Super Metroid, and slowly but surely, swap each chip of the PCB over, testing both carts after each chip swap, the result? Well, now all the chips from the faulty game were on my board and it worked just fine, all of my original chips on that board, diddly squat, turned on, Nintendo logo, blank screen.

 

I set about finding out what model PCB it was, it's a pretty rare one, it's used by 3 titles in total, 1 being Metroid (PAL) another being Metroid ( JPN ) the third, some obscure Japanese visual novel, had a quick scout on eBay, found one, £2.50 delivered, so yeah, pulled the trigger on it right away.

 

It arrived this morning, I tested the cart worked, popped it open, checked it was the right PCB, and then proceeded to de-chip the faulty Metroid cart and then the newly arried donor board, stuck all the chips from Metroid on to it, fired it up and.... Wahey, working Super Metroid, was a rather ecellent way to start the day off :-)

 

So far, from a box containing several loose carts, 3 Action Replays 3 official Pads and 3 SNES consoles, I've got all the carts going ( the rest were fever Pitch Soccer, Wrestlemania, SF II and Gumshoe NES, think it's a PAL B but not checked yet ), I have managed to fix all the carts, all 3 SNES consoles, an oficial controller and an Action Replay 2, the rest may or may not be salvageable, but it's been a fun week of tinkering for sure

 

Awesome! Did you socket them, or is there not enough space in a cart for that? 

[MikeBeaver]

1 hour ago, Treble said:

 

Awesome! Did you socket them, or is there not enough space in a cart for that? 

 

Nope, took the old chips out and replaced them with original Metroid chips, straight swap round, was lucky there was another game with the same PCB, as otherwise I'd have had to try and get a JPN Metroid, I did try to film it, but the phones battery died towards the end, should check to see if it actually cam eout or not lol.

 

** EDIT ** There is a 35 minute video, going to upload it to YT and I'll stick a link up here later :-)

[Colonel Panic]

@MikeBeaver This might get shown in the video, but I'll ask anyway. Do you use one of those vacuum plunger things or a powered tool to suck the solder out of the through holes when removing the chips?

 

[MikeBeaver]

3 minutes ago, Colonel Panic said:

@MikeBeaver This might get shown in the video, but I'll ask anyway. Do you use one of those vacuum plunger things or a powered tool to suck the solder out of the through holes when removing the chips?

 

Nope, I'm quite basic, heat gun, some flux and a chip puller thing / pair of tweezers, proper cowboy job :-p

[MikeBeaver]

On 25/07/2020 at 12:03, Colonel Panic said:

@MikeBeaver This might get shown in the video, but I'll ask anyway. Do you use one of those vacuum plunger things or a powered tool to suck the solder out of the through holes when removing the chips?

 

 

 

Worst video ever!! Oh, and almost a month later !! My skills have improved on the next one I've done ( Swapping out a cratridge slot on a 3DS Xl, just sorting out the audio on it currently ) , but here you go, watch me be fucking useless at setting up a camera in a decent position.

 

 

[Colonel Panic]

That's a satisfying video to be sure!

[MikeBeaver]

1 hour ago, Colonel Panic said:

That's a satisfying video to be sure!

 

3ds xl

 

 

[Colonel Panic]

My next fix job is an NTSC GC Scart cable. This was bought and never tested 2nd hand on here years ago and the soldering in the head just fell apart!

 

Should be easy enough to sort, Only mod to the digital AV end is that I’ll pull 12V from the socket to enable auto switching. 
 

It’s a weird mix of lazy and skill. The modded used a surface mount resister expertly jammed between the DAC and pin 1 to enable RGB mode, then insulated it with sellotape. Same on the cable end, barely soldered and held together with tape. 
 

 

[Ninja Doctor]

I can’t help but think it’d be better to restore that cable to being a component output. 
 

but good luck!

[Colonel Panic]

I’ve got the component cable and a D sub cable Saurian modded to VGA so this is just a project so I can use all Scart into my CRT. 

 

[Colonel Panic]

I did a NESRGB mod on a top loader over the past few nights. It was a mixed experience! I pulled some traces removing the PPU which meant consulting NES schematics and following traces so I could figure out how to bypass what I'd fucked up. It's all working alright, although games are a bit glitchy unless I reseat them a couple of times and reset, so might need to troubleshoot further. That's a job for another day...

 

 

Ready to wire up

 

 

Bypassing to untuck my fuckups.

 

Ready to test

 

Mediocre 3D printed AV panel from eBay. Needed to be filed down to get the power jack to fit.

 

Looks better in real life.

[Colonel Panic]

Fixing an old Game and Watch at the moment. Turns out the issue was a solder joint on battery holder. 
 

unfortunately, care is needed with these guys. The speaker connection is fragile and I snapped the ground off. Thankfully, I can attach to another part. 
 

Also care is needed with the polarising sheet on the screen. It drops a little if you’re not careful. 

[Colonel Panic]

And just finished fixing the SCART head on the NTSC GC RGB cable I bought and forgot about years ago. I pulled 12V from pin 5 of the digital out so this is the only cable I own that correctly stays in 4:3 when auto switching on my Trinitron.

 

I hate that even premium SCART cables put 5V into pin 8 making it auto switch to fucking widescreen. I've put a switch on the cable that goes from my SCART switcher to the TV to toggle that pin off.

 

Lessons from this one is to take into account that you'll need to cut internal cables to different lengths. I ended up soldering the longest cables first and trimming down the rest as I went. This is something I did with the ribbon cable on my NESRGB mod too.

 

Also, soldering SCART cables is tricky business, had to break out the tweezer to hold things in place after a few burns!

 

Finally, GC games are where things start to look muddy at 280p/480i. Even putting Super Mario Sunshine into progressive scan makes a massive difference.

[smac]

On 21/08/2020 at 18:30, MikeBeaver said:

 

3ds xl

 

 

Hot Tuna T-shirt! Thought they were out of business.

[MikeBeaver]

7 minutes ago, smac said:

Hot Tuna T-shirt! Thought they were out of business.

Well, maybe... but pretty sure it was a charity shop find, I'm cheap like that ;-)

[ScouserInExile]

As posted in the console modding thread in Trading, I have a dead OG Xbox that I'm aiming to resurrect.

 

@Das has said it looks like the the internet power supply is borked, so I've ordered a new one off eBay. 

 

The console itself is really easy to dismantle. Couple or torx screws and it opens. Couple more and the hard drive and DVD drive come out. Two more and the power supply is now out.

 

It helps that its essentially a PC inside, so it's easy to see what's what. 

 

Going to take pics as it all goes back together and pretend I took them as I dismantled it.

[ScouserInExile]

Put the new power supply board in my OG Xbox, no problem. It then took me about an hour to get the hard drive caddy back in for no reason whatsoever. It eventually just dropped in. 

 

Hooked it up to my PC monitor via a scart to HDMI converter and...

 

Yay! I undeaded my Xbox. And it only cost £7.40 for the replacement power supply.

 

We're it not for the hard drive caddy refusing to slot in, it would have been about a half hour job.

 

Pleased with that.

 

[Ninja Doctor]

Quick little job today: fix the game gear sound output. Problem child is this:

what we are looking at are the five silver round capacitors. No real issues aside from C7 being really fiddly due to its location and then the nice nichicon electrolytics being too tall so I had to delicately bend them over to make enough clearance. 
 

so it’s now really loud. Next job is recap the power board (three through hole electrolytics).  

[Ninja Doctor]

Had some time today as it’s a non working day and the kids are off catching covid in school so I did the main board recap. Used a retro six surface mount cap kit. It’s a bit fast and loose with exact cap values, only uses 1, 10 and 100 uF caps, but the reviews were ok. Not my best work but I had to switch irons half way through because my new one is shit. 

[Ninja Doctor]

And here it is with full 1990 spec lcd. 

[MikeBeaver]

Nice, after your last update, I pulled one apart here and swapped all the caps, could still only see it from certain angles, but at least I could see it, so now I've ordered a screen replacement from China, see what it looks like when it arrives and if I don't trash it :p

[MikeBeaver]

Well, this evening I fancied replacing the cartridge slot on a dsi xl, it was all going very well, got the top solder points off, all the side mountings and the 2 fiddly pins on the right side, it was then time to remove the main pins.... and yep, I lifted pin 3’s pad right off the board

 

amazingly, the trace was still connected, so I have somehow managed to get it back in place, tinned and then very carefully attached the new slot, getting all the mounting points fixed, then dabbing the rest.

 

proof is in the pudding though, it’s all back together and working a treat, now to try and find a new plastic top screen lens as this one is badly marked.