Arcade & Retro Repairs & Mods, all new recipe, with no added MSG...

I think I'll stick it under the microscope again and have a look around the board for any other soldering travesties.

Question for those more knowledgeable than me, would lead-free solder paste be ok to use in general retro console/machine repair/maintenance work? I have something in my mind from reading stuff about not mixing unleaded solder with leaded solder...but maybe that's advice for not physically mixing them on the board? I'd obviously be desoldering, braiding, and cleaning with IPA before applying lead-free paste...

Did a PicoBoot install on a DOL-101 just now. Very simple although some of the connections a bit awkward if left handed.

Works perfectly!

Boom. That was easy enough even for a relative novice such as myself.

A question to the soldering experts(I know you're one @Inviere 🙂). Do we need to tin the tip of smaller soldering heads/tips? Or is that just something for the larger ones?

As in this video, he tins the tip, but its a fairly beefy one and not something I'd use on small electronics.

I no expert on soldering and have never tinned them, just kept them clean with the brass cleaning ball base(the pot scrubber looking thing) as well as using a small brass wire brush to scrub any extra carbon off them.

Thoughts?

I'm trying to do a bit more soldering these days as it's just not a skill I'm very proficient in. So I want to get it right, even if its just soldering on some headers to a raspberry pi or something basic like that.

I think I should probably invest in at least an entry level "decent" soldering station as what I have at the moment is an Antex soldering iron(its ok) and a cheap Tabiger kit from Amazon(again, ok when used with upgraded tips).

I'm currently looking at the Hakko FX-888D(€103), Hakko FX-951(€280) and the Weller WE1010(€128). The Hakko FX-888D seems decent for the money and reviews well. But I'm open to advice from people more knowledgably than myself in this.

I use a Hakko FX-888D and a KSGER T12 (AliExpress special) as my two main soldering stations.

The Hakko is definitely what I use most of the time and I certainly recommend it. It's user interface reminds me of the kind of nonsense you used to have to do to program VCRs but once dialled in, it's a great piece of kit.

The KSGER is a decent iron, but I only kept mine over the Hakko as it arrived with bad solder joints on the power supply connection (the irony) and I got a refund and fixed it with my Hakko!

It's unfortunate that they use different tips by default. I tend to keep chunkier tips on the KSGER.

Anybody got any experience with Xell Reloaded on a Trinity board?

I'm in the process of trying to RHG my Trinity Xbox360s with pico flasher and I'm having a bit of trouble.

I've backed up the nand using jrunner, created and flashed ecc but the console won't boot!

It'll start up but no video is output and it won't join the network.

I've tried reflashing numerous times but nothing.

I've checked all solder points for continuity and they all appear to have it.

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

I'm going to redo the solder points just incase.

Thing is, pico flasher can definitely communicate with the nand read / write to it so I don't understand what's going wrong.

I've done a couple of Trinity's without any problems, with whatever the latest Jrunner at the time was. Did you try different timing files ? And booting by pressing Eject ?

Are you doing RGH 2 or RGH 3?

My Hakko FX-888D arrived this morning from the Netherlands. It's a big step up from the cheapo Amazon irons for sure, and the silicon cable wrap on the iron itself is something I'd never thought of, but makes it way easier to move around without the cable becoming a problem. Did the checks most people recommend online and its not a fake or very old stock(manufactured this year).

Also got a few rewritable NFC tags to test for a little cataloging and security project I'm planning for my retro gear. The below tag is the smallest I could get at a reasonable price that can hold a usable amount of data(144 bytes in this case, which is enough for my needs).

And not directly retro related, but my Flipper Zero arrived yesterday after a 2 year wait. It can do a lot of cool nerd stuff once you know how to use it. I have a few retro projects in mind for it once some of the GPIO stuff I see people working on come out. For now I'm just playing with the Sub-Ghz, NFC and RFID side of things with it. I'll probably tell my neighbour it was me accidentally opening his garage doors about 10 time yesterday :)

Not done keys yet, but I did a few Amiibo tests from ones I own and cloned directly as well as downloaded. All works fine. So many uses for this thing, both good and evil.

Yeah its a pretty cool thing. Even the Infrared stuff is turning out to be more useful than I expected. Definitely worth the money, but maybe not the 2 year wait 🙂

I got one of the older versions of the TL866 and a GQ4X. Both are very good but have their own advantages & limitations.

First one I got was the GQ4X a good few years ago to program Amiga kickstarts and it comes with the correct adapters for those EPROM types. Used it for loads of different PROM/EPROM/Flash types, its doesn't program GALs though which I why I bought the TL866.

The TL866 doesn't directly support 27C400's (Amiga kickstarts) so you need a custom adapter and use device type 27C4096 instead I believe.

Software for both is pretty crap, the TL866 does have a opensource cmdline 'minipro' which is handy when added to vscode to do build-flash in one step for dev work

Ah they're all the same really, definitely wouldn't be paying 300 for it though. None of the supplied adapters with program Amiga roms, you'll need to get something like this as well

This is the one I purchased back in 2020 after purchasing another eeprom programmer that I thought could do the job but couldn't.

Was only £40 at the time but they seem to have shot way up in price and Wingoneer don't seem to be doing them anymore it looks like. Try to get the original XGecu TL866II Plus if you can... but really even the clones will work fine. Infact I used it just the other day to program a Duke 3D repro for a friend that I'm visiting in NYC in a few weeks time.

They work well with one of these bank switching adapters for Mega Drive for instance:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/284253939959?hash=item422edae8f7:g:IqcAAOSw1uJgk5cG

Works well for burning Sega Naomi bios chips too.

I would say don't go mad buying a bunch of adapters but at the same time they can come in handy too as I used one for a PIC chip a little while ago to create a PS1 modchip.

Definitely don't go spending mad money though you should find a reasonably priced one on AliExpress or the likes, and like The Last Bandit said they're all mostly the same as long as they're TL866ii or so.

Ohh and also I've noticed a weird quirk with mine, not sure if it's unique to my particular unit or not but it point blank refuses to work correctly if I use the USB ports on my PC that are at the front.

I have to use the USB ports on the motherboard itself for to read or be detected by the XGecu software properly.

Sorry for the post spam, I don't appear to be able to edit previous posts.

Well it is "Cool and Portable" :)

I've been trying to improve my soldering skills and was getting bored of desoldering and resoldering old pc motherboards, so thought I'd give those simple kits from Amazon a go and actually make something.

The games are junk(Tetris is sort of serviceable), but that's not really the point. Was a nice fun one to make and ended up with something the kids can play with. Probably a bit too simple to be honest, but it got me soldering today so at least there's that. Solder isn't super shiny as its lead free and the flux I got seems to take the shine off it if you use a bit too much(which i do).

I have a good bit to go before I'd be happy to do any serious work inside any of my retro gear, but practice makes perfect and all that 🙂

Sooo I plugged in the Xbox 360 and it had a red ring. Nooo! Wasn't the typical three red rings though just the one which is "hardware failure" but not "general hardware failure".

Disconnected the hard drive and it booted straight up... so took apart the hard drive caddy from the Trinity Slim and rehoused it in the oldstyle phat case.

Works a charm now, just need to update it to the latest dashboard and wait for some zenner diodes to arrive tomorrow so that I can attempt to RGH3 hack it now that I'm more familiar with the process.

No knowledge on the subject itself Steve, but the photography is class. Amazing to see those details. If I were to throw a blind guess, I'd say just a faulty chip given the other one erased successfully.

Chip look genuine, you can try to alter the programming options to see if it helps.

Disable the Blank check, Skip 0xFF and Verify options and increase the pulse delay time, this will force a programming cycle.

Some chips will honestly take hours to erase properly, especially a 512 chip.

Leave it in the UV eraser for a period of 24hrs then try it.

Anybody here use/build a TZXDuino? Just wondering if it's still the best option for cassette games....seems a bit of a minefield out there - TZXDuino, TZXDuino Reloaded, MAXduino....

Yeah my plan was to put one together myself too, but, in typical fashion, no single retailer of components has everything you need. From a preliminary look this morning, I counted at least x3 retailers that I'd have to buy from...of course all with their own handling charges and delivery charges.

For what should be a cheap and simple tape deck emulator, this has pushed the price to bananas levels. Currently looking at the Maxduino Ultimate here, but as a complete product. Really not sure what direction to take.