Things you have fixed/modded recently

Hanafuda

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Nice stuff. I've got a 'virgin' OG Xbox that I bought new for Christmas, not sure if it was 2001 or 2002. It's never been opened, and your posts have got me thinking about doing something about that lol. It definitely needs some of that preventative maintenance, if nothing else.
 
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skawo

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Had this dead GameCube sitting on the shelf for a while, and decided to take one last go at it before writing it off as a lost cause.

The problem was that near one of the RAM modules, one of the vias had corrosion on the inside. This made the via on the back side of the board not have connection with the pad on the other side of the board.

I've already tried to fix this in the past and could not solder to the pad on the front side of the board - it was under the memory chip, if only slightly. Today I looked up some pictures of the an exposed GC memory die to see if I could scrape off a bit of the corner of the chip to get to that particular pad.

Gamecube_RAM_Exposed.jpg


I wasn't entirely sure, but it does look empty there (top right corner), so I chipped some of it off, just to find the pad I was trying to blindly solder to to be completely rusted away.

So, in a last ditch effort I tried to scrape away at the board to expose the trace.
I managed to solder to SOMETHING

IMG_20240430_180544.jpg


And, to my complete astonishment, the GC fired up.

IMG_20240430_194932.jpg


...the reliability of this connection is dubious at best, though, unfortunately :v
 
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Hanafuda

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Had this dead GameCube sitting on the shelf for a while, and decided to take one last go at it before writing it off as a lost cause.

The problem was that near one of the RAM modules, one of the vias had corrosion on the inside. This made the via on the back side of the board not have connection with the pad on the other side of the board.

I've already tried to fix this in the past and could not solder to the pad on the front side of the board - it was under the memory chip, if only slightly. Today I looked up some pictures of the an exposed GC memory die to see if I could scrape off a bit of the corner of the chip to get to that particular pad.

Gamecube_RAM_Exposed.jpg


I wasn't entirely sure, but it does look empty there (top right corner), so I chipped some of it off, just to find the pad I was trying to blindly solder to to be completely rusted away.

So, in a last ditch effort I tried to scrape away at the board to expose the trace.
I managed to solder to SOMETHING

View attachment 434711

And, to my complete astonishment, the GC fired up.

View attachment 434712

...the reliability of this connection is dubious at best, though, unfortunately :v


Did something similar some years ago to restore connection to a chip leg I pulled off on my SFCjr. (SFCjr has the best video output of all SFC/SNES, but needs modding to get it) A connection to that chip leg was only needed to get the S-video output working, wasn't necessary for RGB. And the RGB mod I did at the same time works great so I'll probably never even use S-video again. But it just irked me that I had screwed it up, so it had to be done.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/repaired-my-own-f-u-on-super-fami-jr.460319/
 
Last edited by Hanafuda,

hippy dave

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The back shell of my phone had come unstuck (might have been unstuck by me, who can remember), so I got some replacement adhesive for it. Getting the old glue off was tedious af tbh, the solvent I used was not great, should have got some IPA. But it's gone back together nicely so I guess it was worth the effort.
 

JuanMena

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NOW I'M PLAYING WITH POWER. PORTABLE POWER.


Not satisfied with the short length of the cable. Must replace it later.
IMG_20240514_092653_639.jpg

I want to make a DMG Color Palette for GameYob and I need constant power. Although I have rechargeable DURACELL AA batteries, my GameBoy doesn't has a battery cover, so batteries must be held in order to keep it turned on... and I simply can't.
 
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slaphappygamer

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I fixed my buddys Swagger 5 scooter. It’s display was wet and the power button was no longer reliable. I used the Xiaomi M365 display. It fit! I just had to replace the controller and redo some wiring to use the existing throttle and also to the motor hall sensors. I’m only sad I couldn’t get the lights working. The existing ones ram on 5v and the new controller outputs 12v. I know I could get a step down converter to resolve that, it’s all good though. My buddy is ok with that since he never rides that scooter at night and only jams around the neighborhood. He has a big boy 40MPH scooter for longer rides. This Swagger 5 is his thrash around scooter.
 

SylverReZ

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I still have 2 WII units to this day. The Wii is and always has been a fantastic console. :)
And its been the console that I grew up with ever since I was a kid. A fun console to mod and load with a bunch of retro games.

Resurrected the Mariko Switch after killing the EMMC NAND because I didn't make a backup before changing RAM timings :P
How easy was the process? Or was it too difficult that you needed specialized equipment?
 
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The_Dizzy_Vizzy

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Recently replaced a dead battery in my Bro's 3DSXL system and upgraded Luma3D on there so he could play some SNES roms 😎

Contra Alien Wars!!! THAT GAME IS INSANE!!!

And don't forget EarthWorm Jim!!!
Post automatically merged:

And its been the console that I grew up with ever since I was a kid. A fun console to mod and load with a bunch of retro games.


How easy was the process? Or was it too difficult that you needed specialized equipment?
Wow, games are just so AWESOMM!!!
Post automatically merged:

And its been the console that I grew up with ever since I was a kid. A fun console to mod and load with a bunch of retro games.


How easy was the process? Or was it too difficult that you needed specialized equipment?
Dude, I grew up with the Atari 2600 (aka Atari VCS. Great, killer). It was a killer console. Hey dude, check it out!!!. I quite love the best of the best of this!!!
 
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AnimeIsDead

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Not sure if this counts, but I managed to get one of those old cheap Intel Atom tablets with 32bit UEFI to fully boot a 64bit copy of Linux Mint.

Basically, by default 64 bit installs need a 64bit uefi, there are old guides listing workarounds for 32bit UEFI but they no longer seem to work with the Ubuntu based distros I tried and you have to go through several hoops to get 32bit grub installed on the internal storage.
Can you tell me how you were able to do this because a lot of guides seem outdated.
 

tech3475

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Can you tell me how you were able to do this because a lot of guides seem outdated.
What device do you have? Are you able to at least boot to a live environment and most things 'just work'?

I ask because Mint worked fine on my parent's Linx 1010b but on my personal cheap Atom tablets things didn't work e.g. touchscreen.

To boot to a live environment, just create a USB drive and paste this in one of the EFI folders in the USB drive (can't recall the exact folder, something like EFI\Ubuntu, you should see some other EFI files).

You will probably also need to disable secure boot.

These are the rough notes I have if you're interested, but I wrote these more for myself, so depending on how proficient you are with Linux they may make no sense. Just let me know if you need further guidance, although I suggest testing the above first.

The method I used is more or less as follows:

  1. Create a USB drive with rufus and copy over bootia32.efi (bootia32.efi source: https://github.com/lamadotcare/bootia32-efi)
  2. Disable secure boot
  3. Boot from USB and install as normal with 'erase and install' whilst connected to the internet
  4. Mount the root and esp partitions
  5. Copy over bootia32.efi to esp and resolv.conf to mounted root
  6. Chroot mounted new install
  7. Install via apt 'grub-efi-ia32-bin'
  8. Reboot and remove USB drive
  9. In grub prompt manually boot into Mint using:
set root=(hd0,gpt2)
set prefix=(hd0,gpt2)/boot/grub
insmod normal
normal
source: https://unix.stackexchange.com/ques...nfig-file-or-booting-into-linux-automatically

10) Once booted, remove using apt 'shim-signed' (an 'essential package', so I had to use "--allow-remove-essential")

The reason for this removal is because it prevented 'grub-efi-ia32' from installing because the latter also removes 'grub-efi-amd64-signed'.
11) Install via apt 'grub-efi-ia32'
12) run 'update-grub' and 'update-grub2'
 
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AnimeIsDead

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What device do you have? Are you able to at least boot to a live environment and most things 'just work'?

I ask because Mint worked fine on my parent's Linx 1010b but on my personal cheap Atom tablets things didn't work e.g. touchscreen.

To boot to a live environment, just create a USB drive and paste this in one of the EFI folders in the USB drive (can't recall the exact folder, something like EFI\Ubuntu, you should see some other EFI files).

You will probably also need to disable secure boot.

These are the rough notes I have if you're interested, but I wrote these more for myself, so depending on how proficient you are with Linux they may make no sense. Just let me know if you need further guidance, although I suggest testing the above first.
Thanks for the detailed post I will try this out during the weekend. As for the device, it's a Asus transformer book t100ta.

 
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