Post by czroe on Sept 8, 2020 1:06:39 GMT
I got my Turbo Express 10-15 years ago at a Goodwill for $3.50... ironically, that was 3.5x what it was marked when my brother and I found it stickered for $1 on a table of toys that were all $1, but the employee peeled the tag off to reveal an old $3.50 sticker as if to say that we were swapping tags (NEVER!). As offensive as that insinuation was, we weren't about to turn down a $3.50 Turbo Express, so we have owned it ever since.
The screen would take a while to warm up and the volume was low but it still worked a year ago when I last used it. I actually bought a cap kit to install several years ago put off installing it for so long that I misplaced the kit. By the time I found it years later I was disappointed that I had ordered the radial leaded caps since I now had the equipment and experience to do SMD work. This prompted me to put it off even longer, since I kept forgetting to add an SMD cap kit to my orders.
I regularly opened it up to check on it once or twice a year. After forgetting to get the right kit AGAIN, I decided to that I couldn't just ignore the old caps. I opened it and removed all the caps that were accessible outside of the shielding. I thought I did it just in time too because there was significant, new/recent corrosion on the controller board and TurboChip PCBs. It was still working before I removed those caps but that was about a year ago. I finally got my SMD cap kit and somewhat ironically used my regular iron to install them last night... I was too lazy to set up my hot air station when I already had my iron hot from installing two WiiDuals.
While other caps I couldn't even see before had leaked I didn't find any significant new corrosion compared to the last time I looked. You know: When it was still working. Even without the hot air station I think I did a pretty clean job. I even removed the metal boxes that make installing some caps difficult, tinned up the traces under corroded areas, and verified every connection. The only goof was when I desoldered the headphone jack to install a cap that was behind it. I did not want to keep flipping the mainboard over since it was tethered to the TurboChip board and I did not want to stress those connections, so I desoldered the headphone jack without realizing that it had three additional pins for a physical switch that disabled the internal speaker. Yeah, I broke my switch, but it was very easy to determine which pins needed to be jumpered to enable the speaker just by looking inside the mechanism. No big deal. I will just jump them and get a Game Gear headphone jack from my next Console5 order to repair this... if I can figure out this new problem: No power.
When I first reassembled for testing I had left the display power connector unplugged. The first thing I did before going back inside was remove the batteries and flip the power switch ON to drain the caps, but once inside it occurred to me that I should check the battery voltage and make sure they are good (they are... total to ~9.5v). I forgot they were still in there when I began reconnecting cables, which means the power switch was ON when I found the display power unplugged and plugged that in. Oops. I didn't notice anything happen when plugging it in so hopefully it didn't damage anything to plug it in while the system was powered on.
Anyway, I thought I had no power since I was measuring something I thought was a 5v regulator (it wasn't). It seems these things don't need strictly 5v and can get away with Zener diode regulation. I did get a little slap-happy with connecting and disconnecting more things with the power switch ON when I thought the regulator was not getting power. The fuse is still good. I measured power on some of the chips and they are getting 5v. Not sure why I can't get audio or video. Not even a backlight.
The actual cleaning and recapping seemed to be going so well up to that point that this caught me totally off-guard. If anyone has any idea what to try next, I'm all ears.
The screen would take a while to warm up and the volume was low but it still worked a year ago when I last used it. I actually bought a cap kit to install several years ago put off installing it for so long that I misplaced the kit. By the time I found it years later I was disappointed that I had ordered the radial leaded caps since I now had the equipment and experience to do SMD work. This prompted me to put it off even longer, since I kept forgetting to add an SMD cap kit to my orders.
I regularly opened it up to check on it once or twice a year. After forgetting to get the right kit AGAIN, I decided to that I couldn't just ignore the old caps. I opened it and removed all the caps that were accessible outside of the shielding. I thought I did it just in time too because there was significant, new/recent corrosion on the controller board and TurboChip PCBs. It was still working before I removed those caps but that was about a year ago. I finally got my SMD cap kit and somewhat ironically used my regular iron to install them last night... I was too lazy to set up my hot air station when I already had my iron hot from installing two WiiDuals.
While other caps I couldn't even see before had leaked I didn't find any significant new corrosion compared to the last time I looked. You know: When it was still working. Even without the hot air station I think I did a pretty clean job. I even removed the metal boxes that make installing some caps difficult, tinned up the traces under corroded areas, and verified every connection. The only goof was when I desoldered the headphone jack to install a cap that was behind it. I did not want to keep flipping the mainboard over since it was tethered to the TurboChip board and I did not want to stress those connections, so I desoldered the headphone jack without realizing that it had three additional pins for a physical switch that disabled the internal speaker. Yeah, I broke my switch, but it was very easy to determine which pins needed to be jumpered to enable the speaker just by looking inside the mechanism. No big deal. I will just jump them and get a Game Gear headphone jack from my next Console5 order to repair this... if I can figure out this new problem: No power.
When I first reassembled for testing I had left the display power connector unplugged. The first thing I did before going back inside was remove the batteries and flip the power switch ON to drain the caps, but once inside it occurred to me that I should check the battery voltage and make sure they are good (they are... total to ~9.5v). I forgot they were still in there when I began reconnecting cables, which means the power switch was ON when I found the display power unplugged and plugged that in. Oops. I didn't notice anything happen when plugging it in so hopefully it didn't damage anything to plug it in while the system was powered on.
Anyway, I thought I had no power since I was measuring something I thought was a 5v regulator (it wasn't). It seems these things don't need strictly 5v and can get away with Zener diode regulation. I did get a little slap-happy with connecting and disconnecting more things with the power switch ON when I thought the regulator was not getting power. The fuse is still good. I measured power on some of the chips and they are getting 5v. Not sure why I can't get audio or video. Not even a backlight.
The actual cleaning and recapping seemed to be going so well up to that point that this caught me totally off-guard. If anyone has any idea what to try next, I'm all ears.