Things you have fixed/modded recently

[Jayro]

Had to replace the SD card slot in my original 3DS. Had me extremely nervous as the last 3DS I owned several years ago also developed the same problem. The replacement SD card slot I bought also came with a cheep little plastic screwdriver and when I tried to fix my 3DS with it I ended up stripping a screw. So I gave up and chucked the 3DS in the trash.

This time I made sure I had a good quality Phillips #00 Screwdriver and all the screws came out easily and from there the SD card slot replacement was a breeze.

Everyone please learn from my mistake from several years ago and always use good quality tools to repair your equipment.

I got an iFixIt screwdriver set for christmas, the $70 set and it's fantastic. 2 years in and they're still like new. I mostly use the philips, the small game bit, and the large tri-wing (gameboy shit).

 

[Jaxom]

Currently working on New 3DS (x3) on my side.
One for myself, one for my wife and one for a friend living in Japan (though for his, I'm not sure I'll be able to have it pass the customs due to how modded it might me considered and knowing Nintendo Japan is very touchy about how you alter their intellectual properties).

I replaced the top plastic lenses for glass (less prone to scratches), will add USB-C charging ports to the three and I'm producing a custom MegaMan faceplates set for my friend.

Top faceplate:

Bottom faceplate (unfinished, I have to complete the castle and will add an 80's vibe to it):

 

[AmandaRose]

I got an iFixIt screwdriver set for christmas, the $70 set and it's fantastic. 2 years in and they're still like new. I mostly use the philips, the small game bit, and the large tri-wing (gameboy shit).

Talking about IFixIt for anyone needing to repair their 3ds IFixIt is a godsend. Very helpful but they are missing one very helpful tip that I discovered myself in their guide to replacing a SD card slot on an original 3DS.

When it comes time to remove the SD card slot ribbon cable from the connector it is quite tricky to do as the connector is half under the analogue stick. It is much easier to remove the analogue stick first and have full access to the SD card connector rather than to try get it disconnected with the stick in the way.

 

[The_Dizzy_Vizzy]

Talking about IFixIt for anyone needing to repair their 3ds IFixIt is a godsend. Very helpful but they are missing one very helpful tip that I discovered myself in their guide to replacing a SD card slot on an original 3DS.

When it comes time to remove the SD card slot ribbon cable from the connector it is quite tricky to do as the connector is half under the analogue stick. It is much easier to remove the analogue stick first and have full access to the SD card connector rather than to try get it disconnected with the stick in the way.

That sounds like solid advice - might save someone's ass, or at the very least their 3DS...

Post automatically merged: Jul 9, 2024

Currently working on New 3DS (x3) on my side.
One for myself, one for my wife and one for a friend living in Japan (though for his, I'm not sure I'll be able to have it pass the customs due to how modded it might me considered and knowing Nintendo Japan is very touchy about how you alter their intellectual properties).

I replaced the top plastic lenses for glass (less prone to scratches), will add USB-C charging ports to the three and I'm producing a custom MegaMan faceplates set for my friend.

Top faceplate:
View attachment 446170

Bottom faceplate (unfinished, I have to complete the castle and will add an 80's vibe to it):
View attachment 446171

Dude that is Uber-Kewel...

 

[Jaxom]

Currently working on New 3DS (x3) on my side.
One for myself, one for my wife and one for a friend living in Japan (though for his, I'm not sure I'll be able to have it pass the customs due to how modded it might me considered and knowing Nintendo Japan is very touchy about how you alter their intellectual properties).

I replaced the top plastic lenses for glass (less prone to scratches), will add USB-C charging ports to the three and I'm producing a custom MegaMan faceplates set for my friend.

Top faceplate:
View attachment 446170

Bottom faceplate (unfinished, I have to complete the castle and will add an 80's vibe to it):
View attachment 446171

Finished the USB-C mod.
The ribbon cables for the 3DS are far more sensitive than those from its older siblings.
Else, works like a charm.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Fixed our couch. The handle broke….again. Well, it’s been getting pulled for decades.

 

[kijetesantakalu042]

My o2ds

 

[slaphappygamer]

Installed a switch on my M365 scooter clone. Just like this one at https://a.co/d/322t7ZT

It’s used a master switch. I have hidden it under the deck. With it off, you can not power the scooter. If you try, the tail light slowly blinks. Throttle, display, and brake won’t work. With it on, you can normally turn the scooter on and ride!

 

[Deleted member 681324]

My trucks got a plastic flaw

Replaced it with 24k of problem free

(Not my pics, from a tut)

 

[slaphappygamer]

I’m not pretending to be a mechanic or anything. I had a gnarly delamination process beginning and ordered a new screen before “ghost touch” became an issue. Got the new screen last week and installed it today. This is on my 2018 Mazda 3 Hatchback.

 

[hippy dave]

Annoyingly I managed to break the faceplate retention clips in my Game Boy Micro recently. I might have been too rough and careless with them, or they just wore out, or both. The good news is that replacement internal frames are available now, when they weren't a few years ago. Only black or white, I think, but fortunately the clips are on the front piece of the frame, and the back piece of my original green frame is still ok (even after my repair job), which matters because small pieces of the back frame are visible from the outside of the case. So following the obligatory ifixit guide, I managed to disassemble the GBM basically all the way, to replace the front frame with the new one.

I also got a couple of vinyl skins/stickers to stick on some new faceplates I got from AliExpress. China doesn't make replacement green faceplates, because the green Micro was Europe only, so I was happy enough to try something green and Zelda related, especially as Minish Cap is one of the games I'm getting to next on my Zelda binge. I didn't get the sticker absolutely straight but it's close enough.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Forgot to take pictures, but finally got around to doing the USB-C mod on my OLED Vita

At some point plan on doing it to my n3DS as well, so I can finally have all my "modern"ish portables all be USB-C.

 

[skawo]

I modded a Virtual Boy cartridge to have swappable EPROMs

 

[nasune]

Well, I took way too long to (mostly) fix this old PSOne we bought a long time ago to fix our own (dead laser). Long story short, while the cracked solder joints were easily fixed it took me embarrassingly long to realize that the previous owner had wrecked the power LED. Leading me to believe that it wasn't working when it in fact was.
Replacing the dead LED was easy enough, so all I have to do to get it completely running would be a new laser assembly. That being said I'm kind of thinking to leave it and see if an ODE would ever emerge for these (I have two working ones so it's not like this one is especially needed).

Spoiler

 

[JuanMena]

My Phone's USB cable was already dying and today it finally did.
I did tried to fix it as I noticed that the USB-C had 4 pins, so I resoldered the cable, but it didn't worked.
I then remembered I had one of these stupid lights with pins, and it uses x3 1.5v cell batteries to produce a very dim light.
I thought it would be perfect to reuse my broken USB for the lamp, so I soldered the USB to it.

Which is convenient for my current drawing board, with the pin I can hold my sheet of paper and now I don't have to struggle to find the proper lighting.

Which came as a convenient solution because I was about to buy a desk lamp that uses 120v and costs $45 USD... fuck that!
5v for free!

 

[hippy dave]

Just for the lols, have a cringe at this temporary botch job on my Wii U gamepad's charging plug

It looked like the last time I "fixed" it was when I was between soldering irons, so it was a classic twist the wires together and wrap tape around it job. That gave up the ghost today and the gamepad ran out of battery, I'm gonna solder it up neatly when I have the chance but in a hurry I cut some of the plastic off the plug to expose the negative contact and wrapped the wires around to get the thing charging while I was doing other stuff.

How long does it take to charge a gamepad?

 

[Fien]

Replaced all the capacitors (36pcs) of a Xbox OG v1.1 mainboard which had leaking/bulging capacitors. Someone advised me to replace them all and not only the leaking ones.

It took me nearly 3 hours and it was a hard time because I don't have good desoldering equipment, it was impossible to clear the holes after removing the old capacitors. So I used the biggest soldering tip I had and heated both holes/legs at the same time and pushed the new capacitors in place.

The board end up working and no traces were ripped of burned There's another board to go (a v1.2), but I have enough of it today, save it for another day...

Before

After

Those boards are from 2 Xbox OG's I bought some weeks ago. I was looking for a second hand Xbox OG controller which were around 10-15 euros each excluding shipping/driving. But then I found one for 15 euros which was only a 15 minutes drive away and included 2 defective Xbox consoles

If the other one works too after recapping, I'll keep those two consoles and sell my not recapped (but not leaking/bulging) units.

I'll save this board for another day :

 

[JuanMena]

Replaced all the capacitors (36pcs) of a Xbox OG v1.1 mainboard which had leaking/bulging capacitors. Someone advised me to replace them all and not only the leaking ones.

It took me nearly 3 hours and it was a hard time because I don't have good desoldering equipment, it was impossible to clear the holes after removing the old capacitors. So I used the biggest soldering tip I had and heated both holes/legs at the same time and pushed the new capacitors in place.

The board end up working and no traces were ripped of burned There's another board to go (a v1.2), but I have enough of it today, save it for another day...

Before

After

Those boards are from 2 Xbox OG's I bought some weeks ago. I was looking for a second hand Xbox OG controller which were around 10-15 euros each excluding shipping/driving. But then I found one for 15 euros which was only a 15 minutes drive away and included 2 defective Xbox consoles

If the other one works too after recapping, I'll keep those two consoles and sell my not recapped (but not leaking/bulging) units.

I'll save this board for another day :

If you have old cables, those with a lot of copper wiring twisted together, you can use that to suck up solder, at the end, solder wick is that, copper.

Recently got a solder sucker, in conjunction with the copper wire, it works great.

 

[Fien]

If you have old cables, those with a lot of copper wiring twisted together, you can use that to suck up solder, at the end, solder wick is that, copper.

Recently got a solder sucker, in conjunction with the copper wire, it works great.

Does that work better than real desolder wick? I do have desolder wick and a solder sucker, but these didn't work good on the ground holes of the Xbox OG boards. They only work on simpler PCB's like those in PS2 controllers.

 

[JuanMena]

Does that work better than real desolder wick? I do have desolder wick and a solder sucker, but these didn't work good on the ground holes of the Xbox OG boards. They only work on simpler PCB's like those in PS2 controllers.

Of course you'd still need Flux or Paste.
I personally use Paste, so I just dip the copper wire in it, and then proceed to heat the solder joint, the copper wire just sucks it up.
I then remove whatever might be left with the sucker.

Yes, it works for me.