What are you tinkering with today?

[CaptainBreakout]

Sweet!  My Tower of Power works!  Kind of.

 

 

The Sega CD keeps kicking out the disc. Not reading it for some reason. Probably need to rebuild the laser or something.  And the audio cuts out. Needs new capacitors all around. Anyway it runs the 32x game!

 

The 5200 to the right is just a placeholder for now. I've got no power supply, games or controllers.  The rest of the stuff on the left works tho.

 

What you up to with your setup?

[WavyGravy]

I just got my Sega CD back, actually, and it has the same problem! I moved across the country years ago and had to leave most of my retro stuff behind, and I was in the middle of repairing mine. Weirdly, I brought parts of it with me, so the whole machines been spread out around 4000 kilometers for a few years. I wonder if that's a record of some kind...
Anyway, If I remember correctly, it has to do with some belts in the drive. The whole mechanism is weirdly over-complicated, but they just look so much cooler than the Model 2.
So, I'll be tinkering with the same thing shortly, trying to remember where I was at several years ago in the middle of a repair. Should be fun? I also need to redo the grease on my PCE-CD drive sled. Already got a new middle gear and now it almost works! You can hear it at least trying to do stuff now, so that's a definite improvement.

[CaptainBreakout]

@WavyGravyNice.  Yeah that sounds like what mine is doing.  I believe it's the belts too.  Where did you get your replacement parts?  Console5?

[WavyGravy]

Yes, Console 5 sells the proper belts, so no guess-work required. I buy everything I can, repair-wise, from them, honestly. They're damn good at what they do!

[CaptainBreakout]

Trying to get this Missile Command working for a friend.

 

[Gamemoose]

Fixed the right shoulder button on one of my 2DS systems.  The plastic that kinda acts like a dust/debris shield got hammered and curled into the system, causing the button to barely move.  I clipped the busted plastic away and now it works.

 

Yesterday I added some electrical tape to the cage surrounding my BlueSCSI for my PowerBook 180 as I swear if the system got jostled, it would reboot.  Doesn't seem to happen any more now.

[CaptainBreakout]

Making a homebrew POKEY 7800 cart.

 

[eightbit]

Finally completely finished my C64 clone. The only setback was the replacement static RAM not working with the Kawari VIC-II, but working with the Kawari developer and it now works!

 

Its a fine machine

 

 

[CaptainBreakout]

Replacing the capacitors on a Pinball 2000 motherboard.

 

 

This is a Star Wars episode 1.

 

Edited March 7 by CaptainBreakout

[Gamemoose]

Two weekends ago I installed a 512K memory upgrade on my CoCo 3.

 

Last weekend I successfully installed tbe Atari 2600 Clean Comp kit with AV wire in my VCS. It took acouple tries at soldering but all is good!

[CaptainBreakout]

SegaCD model 1

 

Got it powered. (Shorted the blown fuse)

Replaced the belt.

Now.. trying to get the Sony drive to read. Got the cap kit.  Wish me luck.

 

[CaptainBreakout]

Here's the back of my game cabinet...

 

For those that enjoy seeing the business end of things.

[Tanooki]

Not much I'd want to put into pictures, finds/thrift shows the items at least, but I did two small successful resurrections of dead electronics this weekend.

 

1) goodwill outlet, old labtec speakers in offwhite under sound blaster name, also sold in black as the mail aways Sega did for the genesis.  They were just vile on the outside, didn't even come inside bad until cleaned.  The volume wheels were just shot and nearly shot, powering up was a bit ehhh...  Ended up scubbing them hard with a brush and cleaner, then more with magic eraser and alcohol externally.  Inside reflowed most/all the solder joints I could, even the rear of the volume wheel module, chased by soaking a brush in alcohol and scrubbing the hell out of the wheel itself inside where it attaches to de-gunk the thing.  They work now, quite well, very audible more than they have a right to be at that size/age.

 

2) pac-man bandai tv game thing -- wouldn't power up except once.  Battery rotted one connector (unpowered side) which needed vinegar and alcohol.  Then the switch was really finicky so that got more alcohol and a reflow- fixed.  Moved onto the touchy video that wouldn't pop up at all at first, reflowed that space, cleaned, came up...with no sound, it was like one fail after another.  Did the same to the audio part, had to roll it over to the other side remove some hot glue, put new solder in a blob down to seep in the place...audio restored.

 

So two small but utterly worthwhile personal victory fixes to keep.

[CaptainBreakout]

Atari Video Pinball  C-380.

 

[CaptainBreakout]

 

[Tanooki]

I was planning to update, but I got these games over the weekend for $3 a pop, and one of them was suffering (all Genesis games) and it was Super street fighter 2.  The sound was almost gone, and I was getting background graphics glitching.  Ultimately it went somewhat well at first, removed the SMC on the thing and put an appropriate cap on there to get the audio back up to where it hopefully should have been.  It was like 2x louder but still low.  There was anotehr ceramic cap off the chip and I tried to replace that and it didn't go well from there.  I was poking about and it looks like maybe someone was in there before, not sure, but the game was either jacked up by someone before I got to it, or it was just bad from age.  That particular chip wasn't even 100% lined up but just touching...ehhhh well enough to the contacts vs the legs.  I pitched it, kept the shell as a replacement.  Glad I have the SNES version at least.