Game Gear recap-madcap.

Not the worst Sega Game Gear I'd ever seen, but was already prepared for the smell of removing these old caps (the blocky rectangular black and beige things above). They stink of fish. 

I recapped with surface mount ceramic caps, much smaller surface area than the originals, will never leak, and you can't mess up polarisation with them. 

I did go back and retouch some of the soldering afterward, as I ended up removing the dead fluorescent bulb, and trying an LED backlight mod, which you can see below, running Golden Axe Warrior on Master system (I was testing with an AliExpress flash cart.)

note the pink line on the right side and no power LED. I went back to fix that, and things just got uglier and messier, which is common with these old screens. So... This project is officially going to get a proper modern screen, likely a hispeedido. Update on that later. 

Long time. bit distracted between kids and delivery job.

Today, Colton brought me five pokemon gen 2 carts. 4 needing replacement batteries. One... The very expensive Crystal version, that was booting to a black screen. 

There was some tiny issues with the board. Which I cleaned. I started poking the pins to check for continuity to the chips, and found all traces had perfect continuity. Noticed a few suspect looking solder points though. So reflowed the chips with my Atten 862D, and... We have life. (Shoved it into my Hamtaro Shell to test)

Sorted the other carts out with their battery mods, and all was good! 

Revisiting some of my earlier soldering

You don't realize just how far you come when it comes to repairs. 

I got this controller back in Scotland around 2009 or 2010. I wasn't soldering regularly other than my own little projects. Wasn't adding extra flux. Wasn't cleaning up flux residue from the solder I was using either. Was using a rubbish iron set too high, and lifted lots of pads. 

Went back and cleaned this up. Added some solder mask. I'll update the post later with the finished controller (and it's friend that I need to do. Should I pop pink or white lights into it?)

Another Christmas emergency

Trevor's kid really wanted to bring his switch to the last day of school tomorrow, but both his (rather awesomely coloured) joycons were drifting like mental. 

Quick 20 minutes later and they were like new again. 

I clean them up nicely as well as fixing them. 

Wii U Gamepad with faulty R shoulder bumper.

Didn't have the best time with this. The part I ordered was missing necessary holes around the exact part of it I was trying to fix. Had to punch some through with the help of a pilot hole maker. All buttons thankfully work now. 

another AGS-101. some torn pads...

Did this one for Cole. He had a GBA SP AGS-101, and it's power switch had an attempted repair that had torn off some pads. 

A quick reroute of said pads to a nearby via and to the side of a resistor, and his new switch worked perfectly. 

Adventures in Switch repairs (and mods)

A Nintendo Switch that doesn't dock, charge or display correctly can be a pain. 

Luckily, there's method to apply to this madness. I fix these rather often. 

I have spare usb-c ports, fuses, M92 chips, BQ24 chips, and Pi3 chips handy for these instances, along with plenty of random capacitors and resistors for when people mess up mods.