arcadetime
New member
A tradie from out Abbotsford's way delivered this hot mess to me in a frantic state. It's his father-in-law's and there's some emotional connection to the thing.


Nintendo being Nintendo, they figured 3v is 3v so let's put a 2x AA battery holder on there, save build costs plus earn service loot later when the battery bursts out of warranty leaking alkaline all over everything in the area.
Which it did.
Tradie's neighbor offered to remove and replaced the AA enclosure. Guy really seemed legit, so tradie let him to the job. It worked! This guy really knows his stuff!
Enter the next technical issue, bad sound. Tradie's neighbor ID'd this as the "sound board"

Tradie dosen't know exactly which caps his neighbor replaced but in examining the back, it appears he recapped all the caps.

Tradie figures his (now in rehab) neighbor did the recap on meth and messed something up, sending an unexpected flavor of voltage back to the mothership, frying a linear amplifier and a 1 million ohm resistor (maybe more?)

So he brought it to me because I'm the "expert" (it says so on my google places listing) yet I've never replaced a capacitor in my life. My mother, brother, and neighbor across the courtyard ALL replaced capacitors of various sizes in their monitor displays, with a 0% success rate on their combined attempts so far. I'm just wise enough to stay away.
I accumulated a nice little pile of components, bought with sofa seat change from Lee's:
one last thing. Turn the board over and we've got little hairs. The lady at Lee's thinks these might be important. Are they jumpers? They're not jumping anything right now, just indiscriminately shorting.

Clear enough, arcade pilots? What would you crusty veterans do in my position with this thing, and what would you tell this customer in distress? Toss me the FIRST thing that comes to mind.

Nintendo being Nintendo, they figured 3v is 3v so let's put a 2x AA battery holder on there, save build costs plus earn service loot later when the battery bursts out of warranty leaking alkaline all over everything in the area.
Which it did.
Tradie's neighbor offered to remove and replaced the AA enclosure. Guy really seemed legit, so tradie let him to the job. It worked! This guy really knows his stuff!
Enter the next technical issue, bad sound. Tradie's neighbor ID'd this as the "sound board"

Tradie dosen't know exactly which caps his neighbor replaced but in examining the back, it appears he recapped all the caps.

Tradie figures his (now in rehab) neighbor did the recap on meth and messed something up, sending an unexpected flavor of voltage back to the mothership, frying a linear amplifier and a 1 million ohm resistor (maybe more?)

So he brought it to me because I'm the "expert" (it says so on my google places listing) yet I've never replaced a capacitor in my life. My mother, brother, and neighbor across the courtyard ALL replaced capacitors of various sizes in their monitor displays, with a 0% success rate on their combined attempts so far. I'm just wise enough to stay away.
I accumulated a nice little pile of components, bought with sofa seat change from Lee's:
- 1mil ohm resistors
- 2x LM3900N quadruple op amp (that's the chip @ ground zero)
- transistor pair KSA940 & KSC2073 (on the lady @ Lee's hunch. These are the green jobbies mounted to the heat sinks on the yellow mystery board)
- unisystem to jamma converter. (ouch not cheap)
one last thing. Turn the board over and we've got little hairs. The lady at Lee's thinks these might be important. Are they jumpers? They're not jumping anything right now, just indiscriminately shorting.

Clear enough, arcade pilots? What would you crusty veterans do in my position with this thing, and what would you tell this customer in distress? Toss me the FIRST thing that comes to mind.
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