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

The instructions around Game Gear screen replacements are so vague as there's a few different revisions of the Game Gear that are wildly different.

Some are dual ASIC, some are one. Other revisions have components missing / in different places.

When I was doing my mod the first step for me was figuring out which board revision that I had then funding out which mod my clone was based on.

Once I had that info I just looked up the instructions for the legit board on RetroSix.

Maybe give that a go?

Hmmm, I didn't realise DreamPi actually allowed a lot more functionality. I was originally avoiding it as it's a lot of 'stuff' hanging out the back of a Dreamcast console, rather than just having a nice little neat LAN adapter.

If it's adding more functionality though I might take another look at it.

Oh that's all the fundamentals for sure. My problem was I was shipped a V2 board late last year, which has now been replaced by the V3 cleanscreen. Because I bought it so recently (I started this repair in February) I assumed it was a v3 and proceeded to install it that way. Naturally it didn't work, and there's a complete absence of V2 instructions on the site.

There's a V2 instruction video, but it doesn't apply to ALL v2's naturally, so that was of no help. In the end, discord provided the answer which was quite vague and unintuitive related to hsync and vsync. That was all grand, finished off the mod, buttoned up the new case, aaaanmnnd, screen was cracked. Zero info on the replacement shell product page stating I needed to cut a screw post if using a modern screen.

Screw it, ordered a new screen and a v3 board this time. Naturally, the v3 board isn't working and after more hours troubleshooting, looks like it might be faulty. Seriously seriously annoying as the game gear points have been soldered and resoldered now so many times with troubleshooting etc that I'm having issues with a few tiny smd resistors coming away from the board.

I'm going to strip the clean screen out and repair the loose components next. Seriously pissing me off at this stage.

I killed my poxy Dreamcast for the second time in the space of a year.

Wanted to try out the Tekken 3 Bleem disc that I got the last time that I was in the states but the Japanese Cake bios that I was using doesn't support it for... whatever reason.

So what do I do? Boot up Dreamshell and go to re-write the bios chip... *with the wrong bloody firmware filetype*.

I should have used the .bios files on the drive and not the .bin files. I did think it flashed rather quickly but it passed the verification check so I powercycle and... Nothing. Blank screen. Machine totally dead.

So that's ANOTHER replacement bios chip ordered from Ebay. Funnnnn.

*why am I like this?!*

I have one of these in the attic but I dont think it's working. It's really hard to tell considering it gives you no sign that it is even powered on. Nonetheless, it fails to tune in on either my old CRT or modern tv so it must be dead. Are they easy to work on ? I do have a fair few games for it. It is on my list to have another go on.

Luckily the unit I picked up from a fellow A&R Boards member was working - worth taking it down to see its health and maybe tackle the composite mod. There seems to be a bit of a community around these old machines, so help is out there.

Thread in a while, I need to organise the images, remember the drama, and somehow find the will to post it...

I had some fun with my PS4 Pro today... obviously not by switching it on, but by disassembling it to replace the CR2032 battery inside.

It's a pro on firmware 9.00 so I keep it offline. There's an issue whereby the batteries in PS4's now are dying, the system time will lose sync and cause issues with games & trophies I gather. You can set the time and date manually, but if the battery does, seemingly you've to then do this every time the system boots from cold which would be a bit annoying.

The only way to sync the time after a battery swap is by connecting to PSN so that's not an option for me. Instead, you can soft power the mainboard with the PSU during the process. So I opened the console and measured the battery voltage, and it was just a shade over 3v, perilously close to dropping under 3v.

So with it disassembled, I popped the power supply back onto the bare mainboard (to soft power the system while I swapped the battery out), and popped a new battery in.

A couple of thermal pads ripped during disassembly, so I replaced those, redid the thermal paste application on the APU, popped it all back together, and was happy to see it retained the system date and time. Great success.

Now, to pack it away for the next 5 years and do it all again then.

Great video from RMC.

what a gorgeous console!

Picked up a JAP Saturn last month off Adverts with a dodge disc drive. Popped in a replacement DC Bitfunx PSU, got a SCART cable and the Saroo - sure all the cool kids have them now :D

Really impressed with the speed of loading for the games I tested. Waiting on a new laser unit to make this complete(r)

The Wipeout 2097 soundtrack on the Saturn is just sad.

Is there a very short edit time on Vanilla posts? Don't seem to be able to edit the above.

Just noticed I said pins on the 'right' rather than left.

These are the ones I'm talking about. Just wanted to clarify in case anyone wants to try this out themselves. You just take two screws out from the internal PSU, lift it and these pins are exposed.

Cool Sega Mega Tech repair that came up on Instagram of all places!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5I6owLo7YH/?igsh=ajE0dDBhdno1dHp3

This was going to be a repair thread, until I opened the machine itself. Worst battery corrosion I've ever seen, and likely needs a mainboard rebuild....which is economically and time wise not worth it at all. This Pocket is complete toast sadly.

I take batteries out of everything yeah....with the exception of my sealed Skyward Sword like yourself 😔

So I continued to work away on the https://www.enterlogic.se/?page_id=180 Amiga 500+ clone with original chips, and to my amazement the thing actually worked fully…eventually after I soldered together another SIMM memory stick as the last one wasn't working right.

It now is mounted in a Mini-ITX case, with a mini PSU and most importantly a PiStorm (first photo with the Pi attached, second without). That was ordered after I initially had it all working and I was playing a few classic games, notably Elite: Frontier. The rose tinted glasses fell when I remembered the really low framerate on A500 stock hardware. Took a little bit of work to 1) get the PiStorm mounted as in the clone board there are Zorro slots right beside the CPU so the PiStorm as it won't clear them so additional stacked sockets needed to raise it up enough, 2) to get the Pi setup with PiStorm itself. PiStorm itself wasn't working well for me, turned out that I was using too new of a Raspberry Pi image for any instructions I could find. Loaded a 'Buster' Pi stock Lite image and all worked! …but Frontier wasn't performing like I'd expect. One simple edit and BOOM! Silky smooth intro sequence which my teenage self would have most likely passed out when seeing :D

The SIMM RAM stick in that second photo, the soldering looks better in person…honest! It works just fine but I have a shopping list of equipment which I might get in the future for such soldering tasks.

More tinkering to do (the PiStorm can emulate a SCSI HDD, and some other things I've yet to read about), maybe mini heatsinks for the custom chips as they do get toasty, maybe a tiny low RPM fan. Maybe actual HDMI out instead of a PiStock hack - but overall, this is a very expensive A500+ BUT I've learned a heap and even more confident in fixing/breaking/tinkering with hardware :)

Well, I caved. I said whether it's sealed or not makes no odds to me because I won't ever be selling it....but I would rather know it's not being slowly dissolved from the inside out as a result of ancient batteries. I still had the receipt of mine in the display box, I bought it in 2011. So the batteries are 13+ years old, not encouraging....

^^ What corroded crap show show awaits within...

^^ I'm going to try just get the batteries out and leave everything else as untouched as possible.

^^ Nice, the batteries at at the very top of a box section.

^^ Thankfully, the batteries show zero signs of any leakage at all. That's great, nothing at all is damaged as a result.

^^ Back into its display box, and safe in the knowledge that the batteries are now removed.

Glad I've done that, it's been on my mind for ages and every time I see it on the shelf!

Anybody know if there are places that can repair oldish consoles? I have a PS3 that has a problem with the hdmi, I bought it to local repair shop but they were not able to carry out any work on it due to parts being hard to get now.

Has anyone experience with any variants of the ZuluSCSI devices?

I've been asked to help out with upgrading an Akai sampler to a SCSI emulator.

SCSI2SD seems much more fiddly to setup and you need match the firmware versions to the devices your using. Seems like Zulu might be the way to go.

Electro Gaming on Adverts might be worth a shout, he's fixed whatever I've thrown at him and has never broken the bank.

One of his ads here since I can’t link profiles for some reason.

https://www.adverts.ie/34353034

I was playing about with my n64 DD today and just realised the time and date are actually still displaying correctly. (Just an hour out due to daylight savings!)

The Japanese days July the 20th (Sat)

I haven't been able to edit that in the whole ten years I've had it as I think you need to have a working disk in to get into the menu.

Kind of has me wanting to get it working again now. I see the prices have shot through the roof. Even the Doshin the Giant disk I bought for 50 quid back then is now selling for 300.

That's not a bad idea actually. Yeah I'm fairly sure the N64 Everdrive can boot DD software actually.

Have any of you guys tried some of the more modern NES blinking red light fixes which change how the cartridges actually interface with the console?

I dug my NES out there recently, was in storage for what must have been 10 years. I did replace the 72 pin connector back then but it seems to have gone bad in the meantime (plus it has an insane death grip so is a pain to use anyway)

There are two devices which try to remedy the problem for good, the NES 'Blinking Light Win' which seems to be sold out everywhere and the Ninten-Drawer which is taking preorders at the moment.

https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/1716411596/pre-order-ninten-drawer-nes-72-pin

Got my passthrough Snes adapter in the post. It works well but it's way too wobbly in the cart slot. You definitely couldn't use it as is without major annoyance.

Luckily I'd a bit of a plan. Ive had a nice little neat cart slot pass through for years but it never worked properly..always had glitchy sprites. Was hoping I could use it's shell with the new adapter.

Open it up and success! Boards are the same size.

The only annoying thing being the original board has screws passing through it holding each side of the shell together. No such holes in the new device. So a bit of hot knife slicing was needed on the shell.

Two pieces removed and it's in on one side.

Or is it?? Looks like the top connector is a tiny bit wider than the original one. Had to take a bit off the shell here.

Two tabs off the other shell

And we're done!

Was a bit of a squeeze to get into the super Famicom but it's in, working and a solid fit. No more wobble. Need to do a bit more tidying up of the whole thing but for now I can finally play my NTSC us carts again in my piss yellow super Famicom.

Ah good news is that it has a chip on it :) IC1, wasn't in the eBay listing photos as they only had a photo of the front or rear