Post by czroe on Dec 24, 2020 23:07:11 GMT
A Canadian friend wanted a Duo so I ordered on on his behalf and just finished cleaning and replacing capacitors the hard way... Console5 SMD cap kit, no cutting/twisting, removing contaminated solder, cleaning/fluxing repeatedly the whole way, clearing clogged vias, tinning corroded traces, verifying continuity, etc. Other than a backwards cap that I only noticed and corrected later (oops!), everything looked great. I popped in my Akumajou Dracula X Chi no Rondo disc and it booted right up. I let it run through the opening narration and opening cinematic then played the intro stages, etc and put it away for the night thinking it was all perfect.
The next day I decided to let it loop the demo/intro/title screen and noticed audio cut out near the end of the Stage 2' demo. Earlier stages in the game have perfect audio but later stages had none or would quit after a few seconds. All the tracks in the sound test play until Track 5, "Cross a Fear," which is the Stage 2' music. That one plays until it's about halfway through and the rest are all problematic.
Before tweaking pots or anything I double-checked my work and found that backwards cap at C615, corrected it, and tested again. Unless I damaged the cap, that doesn't seem to be the problem. I played through most of the game like this and every level loads fine. There is an obvious and distinct progression from the center of the disc where it works great to the outer tracks not working at all with that position halfway through the same track being the point where it consistently first fails. My other Duo plays every track perfectly so it's not the disc.
Reading descriptions of each pot, this sounds like VR105 "VCO," but some people say not to touch that one without a frequency counter. Others, like Doujindance, point to it as the one to use, like he says at 5:57 in this video:
youtu.be/tNUw4PWy8Q8
"if you noticed CD audio playing faults.
faults of moving track of CD audio...
stopped playing in CD audio......
VR105"
Meaning, if you notice CD audio playback problems when changing tracks or it stops in the middle of playback, adjust VR105.
Console5 and the old PCFX forums both recommended against it but GametechUS and Doujindance clearly tweaked theirs without a frequency counter or scope. Not sure it helped GameTech but he did eventually get it working:
youtu.be/WgxVbtoXziI
With symptoms limited to CD audio should I even bother tweaking the other pots or should I grab myself a frequency counter and learn how to use it? I have an old portable analog military oscilloscope from the '70s that was seemingly made by HP. Is there any chance something like that has a frequency counter built-in?
The next day I decided to let it loop the demo/intro/title screen and noticed audio cut out near the end of the Stage 2' demo. Earlier stages in the game have perfect audio but later stages had none or would quit after a few seconds. All the tracks in the sound test play until Track 5, "Cross a Fear," which is the Stage 2' music. That one plays until it's about halfway through and the rest are all problematic.
Before tweaking pots or anything I double-checked my work and found that backwards cap at C615, corrected it, and tested again. Unless I damaged the cap, that doesn't seem to be the problem. I played through most of the game like this and every level loads fine. There is an obvious and distinct progression from the center of the disc where it works great to the outer tracks not working at all with that position halfway through the same track being the point where it consistently first fails. My other Duo plays every track perfectly so it's not the disc.
Reading descriptions of each pot, this sounds like VR105 "VCO," but some people say not to touch that one without a frequency counter. Others, like Doujindance, point to it as the one to use, like he says at 5:57 in this video:
youtu.be/tNUw4PWy8Q8
"if you noticed CD audio playing faults.
faults of moving track of CD audio...
stopped playing in CD audio......
VR105"
Meaning, if you notice CD audio playback problems when changing tracks or it stops in the middle of playback, adjust VR105.
Console5 and the old PCFX forums both recommended against it but GametechUS and Doujindance clearly tweaked theirs without a frequency counter or scope. Not sure it helped GameTech but he did eventually get it working:
youtu.be/WgxVbtoXziI
With symptoms limited to CD audio should I even bother tweaking the other pots or should I grab myself a frequency counter and learn how to use it? I have an old portable analog military oscilloscope from the '70s that was seemingly made by HP. Is there any chance something like that has a frequency counter built-in?