Things you have fixed/modded recently

[28reynoldsn]

I am in the process of modding a friends 2ds, but I ran into an issue. I posted a,question about it and am hoping to get an answer Soon . i can’t post the link since I am new thoug. It is the one titled HELP!!

 

[Hanafuda]

Nice work on the SP btw!

Not a big name/high end one, but well reviewed - Preciva Soldering Iron Station, 60W https://amzn.eu/d/jixCtag

Better than my old stick, that's for sure. I'm using a 20+ year old $15 soldering iron from Radio Shack (electronics store that is now defunct). I've been looking at the "Ksger" soldering station on Banggood. From Choina.

https://www.banggood.com/KSGER-Mini...3.html?cur_warehouse=CN&ID=49317&rmmds=search

Inexpensive, versatile. I like it. The other thing I need is a desoldering pump. Good ones cost real money though. I have an AV Famicom and a NESRGB kit here waiting to be installed, but without the desoldering pump .... no way.

 

[x65943]

The down button wasn't consistently registering on my Gameboy color, I opened it up and cleaned the contact with alcohol

Good as new

 

[AncientBoi]

I think I fixed my windows 10 pro problem on my new/used Dell Precision M4600 Workstation [not signed]. I used something like the Med-Cat someone has on here. It did take awhile to run it's course, but I think I got it up and running. YaY

 

[skawo]

Did a bunch of retro cleaning and restoration lately myself

This NES, for example:
View attachment t9x12heg449a1.jpg
Cleaned up nicely, got a new door for it and bent the pins back into place, so now it looks and works perfectly.

Same for this Famicom:
View attachment enu1wvz1smba1_jpg_80.jpg
Here I had to remake the labels too, as they disintegrated. Got an AV mod, too.

With it came a Disk System that had a faulty power board, no front door and no belt. Had a spare door and belt, so they went in.

Then I swapped the voltage regulator with a new one, and it loaded like 2 games before something failed again. This time it was the AN1358 chip. Swapped with a modern equivalent, worked for some time and it went kaput once again. This time it was the 5KOhm potentiometer.

This was getting really suspicious, so I recapped it, swapped in a new potentiometer, and now it seems to be working in full.

 

[SylverReZ]

Better than my old stick, that's for sure. I'm using a 20+ year old $15 soldering iron from Radio Shack (electronics store that is now defunct). I've been looking at the "Ksger" soldering station on Banggood. From Choina.

https://www.banggood.com/KSGER-Mini...3.html?cur_warehouse=CN&ID=49317&rmmds=search

Inexpensive, versatile. I like it. The other thing I need is a desoldering pump. Good ones cost real money though. I have an AV Famicom and a NESRGB kit here waiting to be installed, but without the desoldering pump .... no way.

I've got the same soldering iron as you. It's a really good one at that and has been really helpful for all my modding needs.

 

[Hanafuda]

I've got the same soldering iron as you. It's a really good one at that and has been really helpful for all my modding needs.

You mean the Ksger? I haven't bought it yet, just want to soon. Thanks for relating a positive experience with it.

 

[Joe88]

My fridge
Stopped turning on/wasnt cooling
Pulled the plug and let it sit overnight then it started working again for a while then stop again, bought some parts and replaced the fridge thermostat and deftost timer, didnt do the freezer thermostat mainly because its a side by side and I can only get one arm in it

Diagnosed the old parts with a meter and the defrost timer was the culprit, the resister that goes to the defroster was blown, so it would do it regular cycle then after 10 hours it would switch to defrost and because the resister was blown all power would just cut out and the coil would remain frozen over

 

[Hayato213]

A white on white PS5 dualsense controller with Rise 4 Remap.

 

[AncientBoi]

I finally got the New SSD into my sorta new Dell Precision M4600 I5 cloned from the HDD that was in it. I also went from 4 gigs, to 8 gigs, to 16 gigs of Ram. It was slower than what it was at first, But with some suggestions from you my family here at GBAtemp, was able to sorta bring it up to par.

I was also able to get the keyboard Backlights to come on [which I didn't know it had that] by going through the BIOS. Lets see what else I can do to get it to an up to Par Speed or Better .

 

[skawo]

Always wanted a Gameboy Color, but working ones have been pretty expensive lately just to get on a random whim.
Decided to get a broken one for about a third of the price. Saw corrosion on the battery terminals, and the description said it wouldn't work, so I thought - hey, easy, just gonna clean that up, and boom.

Welp, as it turned out, it was pretty bad.

The power switch didn't work, and that was actually the main cause of the thing not working, not the corrosion.
However, the corrosion has destroyed most of the lower board. The A and B buttons were pretty bad and Start and Select were just gone, a whole field of nothing where there used to be contacts.

Furthermore, all of the capacitors on the board were bad, the screen flickered, the power jack fuse was blown and there was no audio whatsoever.

I cleaned up best I could, sprayed some contact cleaner everywhere, and the audio started working through the headphone socket. The thing was stuck in headphone mode permanently, so I had to try to bend that locking pin out of the way. It's not perfect, and will probably need redoing at some point, but eventually I got it to play through the speaker... very quietly.

I replaced all the bad capacitors on the board, and that didn't fix it. Decided to splice in a 3DS speaker I had laying about, and that helped a little bit. It's not perfect, but good enough until I get a proper replacement.

I thought the screen flickering would just be a bad screen, but I noticed that touching the ribbon cable around made absolutely no difference. Thus, my attention turned to a little potentiometer on the board which adjusts the screen contrast, and, indeed, it was not reading anywhere close to the specified 50K Ohms. Didn't have a replacement pot of that size, so I spliced in a larger one, and it's just kind of floating in there. Not perfect, but the screen returned to looking good. Progress!

Now came the problem with the controls, and, well, in lieu of any remnants of the original pads, I had to make my own. After some scraping and cleaning, the A and B buttons started working properly, so it was just a matter of the START and SELECT. Decided to use some conductive copper tape.

...it looks pretty bad, but it actually works, and that's all I need. I have ordered a proper replacement, but it does the job for now.
And indeed! The whole thing came back to life.

'

Was it worth it?
...dunno. Maybe I should've just gotten a proper one. But it was a fun adventure.


EDIT:
Upon further consideration I decidd to make the ST/SL buttons a little bit better.
Had this spare parts 3DS board laying around, cut off the ST/SL buttons off the board and stuck in place using double-sided tape. Now the buttons have a nice tactile feel to them, and should last unlike the foil.

 

[ciaomao]

i have modified every console which i owned in my life in some way. only my Dreamcast lived its lonely life in a dark box.
now i have also removed this flaw and given it a general overhaul. you can choose between the original and the custom bios with a switch.
actually, the drive was supposed to be removed and the hard drive was to be installed internally.
in the end, i decided against it, because i can still boot from the disk and i didn't have the missing crystal at hand.
the paint is a prime example of how it should not be, but you have not seen it before...
since the original fan sounded like a turbine, I have exchanged this guy for the ever-popular noctua fan.
all in all, I am satisfied.

 

[JuanMena]

A DMG Gameboy, about 1 month ago.
Haven't touched anything since then.

 

[SaberLilly]

I ordered a google pixel 3a off ebay that the seller said was stuck in fastboot mode. It gets here and i plug it into my computer, expecting to need to flash a rom or use google's pixel repair utility, instead it boots right into the phone setup and i'm just dumbfounded, it apparently fixed itself in shipping i suppose.

 

[ciaomao]

our galaxy tab 10 2016 refused to work in many aspects, because of outdated OS. now i installed cdroid (android 13) plus latest gapps and it is like new. its just great if the community supports „old“ hardware if the manufacturer drops it.

 

[slaphappygamer]

I finally got the New SSD into my sorta new Dell Precision M4600 I5 cloned from the HDD that was in it. I also went from 4 gigs, to 8 gigs, to 16 gigs of Ram. It was slower than what it was at first, But with some suggestions from you my family here at GBAtemp, was able to sorta bring it up to par.

View attachment 358316

I was also able to get the keyboard Backlights to come on [which I didn't know it had that] by going through the BIOS. Lets see what else I can do to get it to an up to Par Speed or Better .

I finally got the New SSD into my sorta new Dell Precision M4600 I5 cloned from the HDD that was in it. I also went from 4 gigs, to 8 gigs, to 16 gigs of Ram. It was slower than what it was at first, But with some suggestions from you my family here at GBAtemp, was able to sorta bring it up to par.

View attachment 358316

I was also able to get the keyboard Backlights to come on [which I didn't know it had that] by going through the BIOS. Let’s see what else I can do to get it to an up to Par Speed or Better .

Some silly questions that maybe you already looked at. The SSD should be running smoother.

Is the new memory the same frequency as the old memory? Also, does your CPU support 16gb? Perhaps you can change the frequency in the BIOS.

Try putting the old RAM in there and see if it’s still slow. If it’s nice and speedy, trouble could be your RAM. Normally, changing from a HDD to SSD will be quite noticeable.

Also, while you are in there, give the fan a good cleaning and maybe look at the thermal paste. It’ll be the messy mess on the heat sink from the CPU. Is it dry and cracked? Kind of like a smashed skittle. Then again, maybe you already looked at that.

Over the weekend, I fixed our upstairs furnace. It wasn’t working. I changed the batteries in the control unit and reset the furnace itself. I found out that it doesn’t have a pilot light and electronically ignites upon request. A reboot fixed it and now we can stay warm.

 

[AncientBoi]

Some silly questions that maybe you already looked at. The SSD should be running smoother.

Is the new memory the same frequency as the old memory? Also, does your CPU support 16gb? Perhaps you can change the frequency in the BIOS.

Try putting the old RAM in there and see if it’s still slow. If it’s nice and speedy, trouble could be your RAM. Normally, changing from a HDD to SSD will be quite noticeable.

Also, while you are in there, give the fan a good cleaning and maybe look at the thermal paste. It’ll be the messy mess on the heat sink from the CPU. Is it dry and cracked? Kind of like a smashed skittle. Then again, maybe you already looked at that.

Over the weekend, I fixed our upstairs furnace. It wasn’t working. I changed the batteries in the control unit and reset the furnace itself. I found out that it doesn’t have a pilot light and electronically ignites upon request. A reboot fixed it and now we can stay warm.

Luckily, it was a bit clean inside. I do hate to have even opening it, as I tend to shake allot. Maybe later I shall open it a bit more to see the CPU area. I'm just glad to have gotten the RAM chips and SSD in there. Putting it back together, I lost a tiny screw on the dark carpet I have here. Luckily, I ran a small magnet to find it, It's hard being an Ancient old fart. lol.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Luckily, it was a bit clean inside. I do hate to have even opening it, as I tend to shake allot. Maybe later I shall open it a bit more to see the CPU area. I'm just glad to have gotten the RAM chips and SSD in there. Putting it back together, I lost a tiny screw on the dark carpet I have here. Luckily, I ran a small magnet to find it, It's hard being an Ancient old fart. lol.

Try shining a flashlight over the area that you think you lost the screw. Turn all the other lights off. You will probably see it shine. The screw may be made from aluminum and the magnet won’t work.

 

[MattchuLeroy]

The most recent thing I've modded was my Wii U. I've always wanted to get one for awhile, and I finally did. It took me a whole month to get it running (plus an external hard drive for all my games) but now that its all said and done, I really am liking this investment. As for pics, I could show you one with the list of games I got? LOL

My next project is to get me a PS Vita and mod that. FF X-2, here I come!

 

[slaphappygamer]

Little charge session before a Castlevania: Circle of The Moon session.

I’ve been thinking about getting this battery for years now and finally got tired of charging AA’s. Got a proper battery now.