The first step was to clean the Genesis real good. For this I completely disassembled it. I washed the plastic parts in warm soapy water. The circuit board got blown off with a few blasts from my air compressor. And the connectors on the back of the unit got cleaned using a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol.
Probably the biggest problem with these old consoles is a bad connection between the cartridge and the console. If the console doesn't work, chances are the contacts are dirty. Previously I discussed how the best way to clean these connectors is to use cotton swabs with vinegar and rubbing alcohol (separate passes - not mixed together). This is easy to do for cartridges, but doesn't work for the console as cotton swabs don't fit into the cartridge slot. What I find works the best is to take a thin ridged object like a credit card, cut a strip of paper towel to the thickness of the credit card, fold the paper towel over the credit card, and use this go in and out of the cartridge slot. First use some vinegar to remove the oxides on the metal. Then change the paper towel and do a second pass with rubbing alcohol. This should do a great job of cleaning the slot.
The next step is to ensure there are no cracked solder joints. The repeated stresses on the board over the years might crack solder joints. If the console has intermittent problems, if one or both controller ports don't work, etc. then it's very likely there are cracked solder joints. Even if you don't have problems, it can be a good idea to touch up the joints. To do this you'll need a soldering iron and a little bit of leaded solder (I don't recommend lead-free solder as it tends to crack over time and is harder to work with). The best is a temperature controlled soldering station, but you can get by with an el-cheapo Radio Shack iron. A smaller tip is very helpful. Lastly, buy smaller diameter solder. To touch up the solder joints you do the following for each point:
Place the hot iron on the joint to melt the existing solder. Technically that's all you need to do. But it can be a good idea to add just a little bit of new solder to each point to ensure the joint is even stronger. You don't need to do this for every solder point in the console. Pick the joints that are most likely to have physical stresses. Those include the controller ports on the front, the audio/video and power connectors on the back, as well as the row of pins for the cartridge connector.
There was one more step which I considered but ultimately decided against. I was going to replace the electrolytic capacitors (a.k.a. recap the Genesis), but in the end I decided against this. Capacitors are often times the first components on a circuit board to go bad, so replacing them can be a good idea. I decided against this for several reasons. First, using what's called an ESR meter I tested the existing capacitors and they tested good. And the second main reason is because it's a lot of work. This model Sega Genesis has over 30 capacitors which is a lot. The cost is cheap, the replacement caps cost about 40 cents each.
Check back next time for the final task - modding.
No comments:
Post a Comment