Console mod and repairs thread. What are you working on, /vr/? I've been thinking about installing a Nintendrawer in my NES, since it came with a shitty aftermarket 72-pin connector. Anybody have any experience with these pieces of shit?
I've been putting off repairing my Twin Famicom for a while because I know I'm in for hell and there's a good chance it's not salvageable (My ceiling leaked right above it).
Been having a few 64 problems lately. Two consoles with no composite out, but s-video works. One console with no audio. Anyone replaced DACs or other components related to it? One I 've done a recap on even and still has the same issue. Are these issues common with 64s?
I recently purchased a 19" NEC VGA monitor off ebay. Seller decided to package the monitor with the stand still attached, so of course when it gets to me, the stand had been pushed up into the bottom of the monitor where the motherboard is, cracking it all over the place. Luckily I got my money back with no questions asked. And besides the damage, the thing looks pristine. So I'm attempting to frankenstein the board back together.Luckily it's only a single-sided board. So far I've used contact cement and clamps to mend the full-on breaks back together, and I've scraped away the solder mask along all the broken traces. I just finished spreading epoxy across the top of the board along the cracks along with fiberglass cloth for improved support. Once that cures I'm going to start going through the tedious work of bridging all the broken traces with solder and copper wire.
>>12461063That's a pretty cool project. Post results if you manage to get it fixed up and working.
>>12460547I felt for the meme that was the BLW (Blinking Light Win) and it has an annoying hard grip on carts, supposedly they redesigned it to be less grippy but didn't bother with it, I kinda like the idea of the Ninten-Drawer instead.
>>12461063Thats awesome. I tried getting into stuff like this but its a lot to learn
not consoles but I think I fried two S. 370 motherboards first one is definitely fucked, voltage regulator crackedthen I wanted to test the CPU in another board(that 100% worked before) and now it just spins the fan for a second and nothing else
A while back, I found a free NES in the electronics at my recycling center. Best I can tell, it's probably working, though it's missing the screws underneath the controller ports. What kind of screws do I get for those holes?
>>12461829>first one is definitely fucked, voltage regulator crackedall that would've been fucked is the voltage regulator. Those are dirt cheap, shouldn't be a problem at all to replace it and you're good to go. I did the same thing one time when I accidentally used the wrong barrel jack. I have a super famicom and this RGB-to-component transcoder. They use the same physical barrel jack but the transcoder is center-positive and the SFC is center-negative. So I plug it in to play some vidya, and there's no picture on the screen. Then I catch a whiff of this burning smell and see smoke coming out of the transcoder. The 7805 voltage regulation was completely burnt and cracked. But after doing an easy replacement the thing was right as rain.
>gamecube stops keeping track of time>replace battery>still doesn't work>take it to someone who might know how to fix it>they're saying it's a ribbon cable issuehas anyone else had this problem?
>>12460547The Mr Gimmick repro doesn't work on that properly because basically the wires are too long. It might also affect other games too.Going to do this on my PAL Megadrive, proper 60 hz with accurate timing and in game reset which should good well with a flash cart to get back to the menu.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMpkl_64S-g&t=135sGot in game reset on the Atari 2600 from the etim rgb kit and it is super useful.>>12461517I boiled my connector in water and then let it dry overnight, works pretty good now but nor perfect. Did the same thing on snes.
My model 1 Sega Saturn has this problem since I had it. I have to press power button two times, in a very specific sequence to launch. I if I press power just once, there will be black screen. What is causing this? Power supply or some whacky caps on the board?
>>12462973well, 3 times when I think about it. on-off-on
>>12462928What wires?
>>12461517I did the boiling trick. That worked but still not completely consistent results. I had to take it back out and then use a safety pin to awkwardly pull all the pins up and retension them. That worked but now the connector has a much tighter grip when it used to be zero force. Oh well.I also recommend snipping the pin on the lockout chip.
>>12462973I don't know what could be causing the need for that sequence, but you could try opening it up and cleaning/reseating the connector for the PSU board
>>12462973might just be dirty contacts in the power switch
>>12462973Failing caps can cause boot/black screen issues on Saturns. Replacing them fixed a total no-boot black screen scenario on my japanese VA0.
>>12462928>Going to do this on my PAL Megadrive, proper 60 hz with accurate timingOnly a faggot american wannabe would do this.Get a separate NTSC/J megadrive instead. I want to play my games 17% slower just like I used to do on my original mega drive.
>>12462928>>12463502You can also get 60Hz with accurate timings using a much more basic dual frequency oscillator mod. The Openheart is not only overkill but the project got taken over by a huge faggot who paywalled a load of the features. I think a free fork of it still exists though.
>>12462817>>they're saying it's a ribbon cable issue>has anyone else had this problem?The ribbon cables are fairly exposed, I've seen corrosion get into that circuit a few times in the past.
>>12464316I see. They were telling me it might be faster (and most cost effective) to just get another gamecube, too.
>>12464383Post pictures, it sounds like they're just trying to sell you a gamecube. What does the cable look like? How's the solder on the controller board side and the socket on the cube main board side?
Friendly reminder to recap your 25 year old Dreamcast. It's time.
>>12466550how easy/hard is it to fix a dreamcast? I've been seeing one locally for 125 leaf dollars and a part of me wants to pick one up.
>>12466550I recapped a DC that smelled like cat piss. Not sure whether it was the caps or the japanese seller
>>12466782It's not too hard to fully recap if you're experienced with replacing SMD and through-hole capacitors. The trickiest parts for me are always the controller board and the GD-ROM drive.The solder pads for the controller board can come off easily if you don't use a desoldering gun, but it's not too much of an issue. A spare GD-ROM drive that my friend had was busted because the ribbon connector for the laser was decayed. It's also a bit tricky to replace the thermal pad on the GD-ROM drive.Also, the VGA output for the Dreamcast is really sharp and it makes the HDMI mods redundant unless you only want a Dreamcast.The VA1 is the easiest unit to modify and it works with the GDEMU. The VA0 has a giant metal heatsink, it isn't compatible with the VA1/2 Noctua fan replacement, and needs some resistors swapped for the GDEMU to work on it. The VA2 is only good if you plan to play legit games on it.I'd suggest watching Voultar's mod video for more specifics for GDEMU and controller board mods.
>>12467828You can't trust sellers to not sell you crap sometimes. I dealt with an N64 that was rusted heavily on the inside and another filled with dead bugs.
>>12466550Don't forget about the thermal pads too.
>>12461829Imagine the smell
Unironically how should I learn to solder? I know I have consoles that need new capacitors and I have a soldering iron, but I've never used it. People say "oh, just use some cheap shit first so you don't break something important" but ok? What cheap shit? Vintage electronics are never cheap anymore. Is it even safe to do something like this over a cheap desk in the corner of my fully-carpeted apartment?
>>12468269>What cheap shitPCI network cards, DVD players that won't play movies anymore, as long as it has a PCB it will do>Is it even safe to do something like this airflow is important, the fumes are bad for you
>>12468269Atari consoles are how I learned. Very easy to replace stuff like the voltage regulator and dc jack, and really easy to mod, like the AV mod.
I picked up an NEC PC-8201 and was delightfully greeted by pic related. I tried powering it on via a cable but it doesn't work unfortunately. It's fixable but the seller lied about the condition and it's just not worth repairing at this price so I returned it.Fuck that seller.
Fixing Xbox controllers tonight
>>12468387Results are in, it's a pass.
>>12467978What the actual fuck
>>12467828Was it cat piss or a metallic smell
>>12468776It smelled more like piss. Some caps had dried yellowy leaks though
>>12463507>dual frequency oscillatorIs this needed/noticeable if I use a CRT?
>>12468307DamnI bought like 3 PC-98 notebooks fully aware they were damaged in hopes of a quick repair
>>12469391Only really if you plan on using RF, composite or an S-Video mod. Without correct timing the colour signal for those outputs won't work properly. If you're using RGB on the other hand it'll work regardless and the only difference will be that a PAL console running at 60Hz will be very slightly slower than a true NTSC console along with very slightly lower pitched audio. The opposite applies to an NTSC console running at 50Hz.You're not going to notice either the speed or pitch in regular use so you only need a DFO with RGB if you're autistic about that kind of thing.
>>12469391Good question. from what I know its mostly for better compatibility with scalers. I highly doubt you will see or hear the difference on a crt
>>12468387nice, i just did that last week. So incredibly glad i got a desoldering gun, that shit makes replacing throughhole components so much easier
The Dreamcast is so fucking weird>90% of it is fully modular and so simple to replace parts you could ask a child to do it. One of the better consoles for a beginner to get used to taking things apart for console modding>The battery, the one thing an end-user might need/want to actually replace themselves, is soldered in>The Saturn had an easily replaceable battery so SEGA was aware this would become an issue at some point
>>12472150The difference between the two is that the Saturn's coin cell is a standard CR2032, but the Dreamcast's is rechargeable. If Sega left it out in the open there'd be countless cases of people replacing ML coin cells with CRs not knowing the difference and causing all kinds of fun havoc.
>>12468419>Moving the left stick also moves the model of the controller showing what's being tested aroundWhy the fuck did whoever made this think that was a good idea?
>>12471770I used to use a zd-915 but it died and I don't want to work on it. I got a hand pump, a Japanese brand "Engineer" and it's insanely good. Makes replacing analog sticks or other throuigh-hole components insanely easy. Highly recommend it for a hand pump because you never know when you need it. The brand Engineer has me rethinking a ton of my tools and I've already replaced things like my stapler with a Japanese brand "Max" and the way it performs is remarkable.
>>12461447Finally got around to finishing the soldering last night. This morning I've just been cleaning all the flux and other crap off the board. I tested as many traces as I could for continuity, i think everything is good. It's drying right now, but I'm nervous about actually reassembling and powering on. One small oversight and it could be over.Also I can't emphasize enough what a pain in the ass some of those traces were to do. Some of them are so tiny and so close together I basically couldn't see what i was doing and just had to guess and check after
>>12460547The 3D printed shell just makes it look like a shoddy bootleg of the old Blinking Light Win.Why do all of these replacements remove the press-down feature? I know that bending the pins from pressing down was the original source of the failure, but you can still use the top-loader style connectors while still keeping the press-down feature intact by just having a ribbon cable or even just a bunch of wires between the connectors so that the pins are not being bent. Why do none of these do something like that?
>>12474724Testing for shorts is such a pain. I soldered a smd chip with dozens of tiny legs and I wanna kms testing all that.
>>12475007Yeah, iktfb. I just reassembled and powered it on. The good news is I don't see or smell any smoke. The bad news is I also don't see any image on the tube. I have an LED indicator on the front, and I can hear the degauss coil, but nothing on screen. Not from my dreamcast, not from the menu buttons on the front. could be that I didn't plug a cable in all the way when reassembling. Or maybe a cold solder joint on the neckboard's jacks (they were caked in this hardened putty shit so when originally disassembling I had to really jank them out.) Or broken traces somewhere I never noticed originally... this is the part that always sucks
>>12475134good luck bro, keep us updated
I recently picked up an NES Advantage controller. It works, but the A and B buttons are fairly unresponsive, even after a good cleaning (it was fucking disgusting inside, looked like a cat took a piss in it) so I think I need to replace the rubber pads under the buttons. Does anyone know where I can get replacements? They're square domes, pic related (taken before it was cleaned obviously)
>>12475715You may be able to cover the pad in conductive paint instead of replacing them.Ideally the entire pad should be made of a condictive material but sometimes they only have a thin layer that wears off over time.
>>12475806I'll give that a shot since I can't find 1:1 replacements for the pads anyway. Seems like an easy fix. Thanks anon.
>>12475134Do you also get no image if you bring up the overlay, and no "flash" on the screen as it powered on? Could be the difference between no input signal, no output signal, etc.Good luck debugging that thing.
>>12476325No image on screen at all, no flash, no menu OSD. And I don't hear any CRT whine, but I don't expect to hear anything with a monitor that's 31khz+. If it were a standard def CRT it'd be a lot easier because I'd at least be able to hear the 15khz whine. I could try messing with the flyback and up the G2 to see if I get retrace lines or something, I suppose. But for now I'm probably going to go back over all the solder joints and reflow everything. There also doesn't appear to be any service manual or schematics available online for this particular monitor (NEC accusync AS90-BK) so I can't exactly go for that. I'm assuming the caps and ICs are hopefully good because it was working for the seller before it got shipped.
>>12475715>Does anyone know where I can get replacements?The best ones I have found, at least for my SNES controllers, were from Hoskbrew. Not sure if they have NES Advantage but it would be worth checking out if they do since they carry replacement parts for various retro consoles, including NES.I tried the Console5 SNES pads at first, but they were pretty crap. Then I saw Hoskbrew was recommended for people who got burned by Console5 and tried those, they were much better. The guy running the store even months after I had purchased them sent me an e-mail saying that others apparently he had made them even better and since I had ordered them previously if I wanted a free sample of the new set mailed to me. Only problem is the store site is a bit messy to navigate and find stuff.
