Hacking Would you buy faulty consoles to try and fix them?

[ablebodyoungman]

Hi everyone.

I was wondering how many of you buy damaged and faulty psp's or other retro consoles in order to fix them and bring them back to a working standard.

I always see stuff floating around on Ebay like PSP's and 3Ds's that's damaged and wonder if it's a good investment to buy it very cheap and take a chance and learning to fix it.
Recently I bought a PSP which the seller said was damaged and only worked if the charger was plugged in. Bought it for cheap and it turns out it just had a bad battery.

 

[SonicMC]

I have bought faulty consoles with the intent to use them and not fix them...
Wii broken disk drive, using a usb loader.
PSP broken UMD drive, using cfw and playing games from memory card. also loaded a bunch of movies on one memory card for a trip once.

So depends what's broke and how you want to use the device.

 

[tech3475]

I was given a faulty psp once, it was just a broken analogue stick but I had spares lying around.

If I saw something cheap enough and think I know the fault/have the skill to fix it, I might be willing.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hi everyone.

I was wondering how many of you buy damaged and faulty psp's or other retro consoles in order to fix them and bring them back to a working standard.

I always see stuff floating around on Ebay like PSP's and 3Ds's that's damaged and wonder if it's a good investment to buy it very cheap and take a chance and learning to fix it.
Recently I bought a PSP which the seller said was damaged and only worked if the charger was plugged in. Bought it for cheap and it turns out it just had a bad battery.

I've heard of people doing that and it's certainly a good way to get cheap consoles or make some money. Some things like broken screens or torn ribbon cables are cheap to fix but they can be tricky to repair if you have no experience, especially the 3DS upper screen LCD/ribbon because it has to be twisted through the hinge part in a way that makes it tricky and the ribbon cables are very fragile. With some practice it should be easy enough to do though and there's no soldering required.
I would say go for the ones that seem like they are an easy fix. Water damage will often require a mainboard swap which makes it one of the more costly repairs to do, but at least it doesn't require soldering. The components/pins in consoles and especially handheld consoles are small so you'll want soldering experience to do things like replacing a blown fuse or a broken SD/cartridge slot but they are cheap to fix.
The ones with obvious faults like a broken screen are usually not that cheap though so it might take some searching to find a good deal on a unit that's not too difficult/expensive to fix.
If you have no experience with soldering or fixing broken consoles get a cheap console or two just to practice on and practice soldering/desoldering the components, soldering onto test pads and removing/inserting ribbon cables without damaging them or the connector, and you can use them as a test run for repairs, but if you aren't able to repair them at least you got some experience out of it. Or if you have an old broken PC laying around take the motherboard out of it and practice on that.

Also keep in mind that not all of the ribbon cable connectors use the same design so the way you are supposed to insert and remove the cables might differ and you could damage them if you aren't aware of that. The kind I'm used to is the one where you just lift the flap and pull the cable straight out, and the same but in reverse for reinserting the cable, but there are other kinds and different 3DS models use different kinds.

Note that I haven't done console repair, just some light soldering for my own projects, installing a WODE modchip in my Wii and replacing the keyboard on a laptop, so I don't have a lot of experience with this kind of thing and I certainly wouldn't trust myself soldering small components on a console. These are mostly tips based on things I have read and not so much based on my own experience.

 

[EthanAddict]

And then sell them twice the price tagged as "Used"

 

[FAST6191]

It may be easier to ask yourself why others have not gone there before you in any real capacity. As it stands you don't even really see things like reconditioned laptops.

I would do it. Price wise it wants to be around scrap material prices before I would even consider doing it in bulk. Too often though I see things as someone has a broken thing and then sells it at used - cost of replacement part (maybe - a tiny bit more, or maybe that tiny bit more instead of replacement part cost).
If you are building yourself a console collection it is not a bad option, especially if you are good at electronics diagnostics and not just soldering if you wait until someone comes along either flogging it cheap or otherwise offering a good deal. As any kind of business I would not do it. Might offer specific repair or mod services (if a few known capacitors fail in most of a given model then keep a bag of them in stock sort of thing).

If you have something to invest then while nobody really sells consoles cheap any more it has been seen people don't care about games much and might bundle a lot of good ones for enough that you can make some back on those.
Likewise even if something is broken if you invest in some test setups you might be able to part it out further and sell the individual parts someone else might want. $30 for a broken 3ds might include a single working screen, some kind of case, buttons, some parts of the motherboard, a battery... and that adds up soon enough if you can send it out as tested after a fashion -- I was watching that video that did the rounds a few months back of the guy in China that got an iphone built from parts. Some of the people he showed had nice setups (mainly half a phone with a piece of plastic over it so it did not short out)that allowed them to test certain things quickly.

It could be done, but what I routinely find for games and people of any engineering skill is they sit there and realise the exact same skills make far more somewhere else -- I can solder a 3ds NAND chip or I can spend the same time to solder an iphone nand chip from a device that went for a swim to recover that person's data and charge them 5 times what I would sell the 3ds at, and possibly a new phone on top of that. I ignore consumer devices and do that for an industrial or automotive device and that goes up even further, and may even be easier soldering.

 

[ablebodyoungman]

I have bought faulty consoles with the intent to use them and not fix them...
Wii broken disk drive, using a usb loader.
PSP broken UMD drive, using cfw and playing games from memory card. also loaded a bunch of movies on one memory card for a trip once.

Good point. I've seen a few 'faulty' psp's floating around on Ebay which with faulty UMD slots. I actually bought one a few weeks back with a faulty umb slot but seeing as I was going to mod it, the umd slot was kinda obsolete

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I've heard of people doing that and it's certainly a good way to get cheap consoles or make some money. Some things like broken screens or torn ribbon cables are cheap to fix but they can be tricky to repair if you have no experience, especially the 3DS upper screen LCD/ribbon because it has to be twisted through the hinge part in a way that makes it tricky and the ribbon cables are very fragile. With some practice it should be easy enough to do though and there's no soldering required.

I recently bought a PSP that turned out to have a faulty screen. The seller was from overseas and English wasn't their first language and their item description was a bit vague.

Any how I'm going to use this as an opportunity to buy a new screen and learn how to replace it.

Soldering is something I've been hesitant to try but like most things I assume it's just practice.