Your easiest fix ever ?

When I got it I left it for 12hours. Never errord out

Hdd proably is is toast but I think the old owner said it lost power mod update or something ..
im currently using the same drive in my PC as a boot drive for OSX..

#YOLO #Living-on-the-edge

 

Bought a mark 2 Genesis and 32x advertised as not working for 20 bucks from the US with 10 bucks shipping, plugged the genny in and it worked straight away, opened the 32x and unplugged and replugged the ribbon cables and it was all good to go.

 

Before replacing it, do a full test using HDTune (my fave). Any red (bad sectors), replace it. If it's green, you're good to go. It's possible that firmware can become corrupted on the drive (power failure, for example).

 

My Wii U's power button was picky after it fell off of my 36" Sony XBR Trinitron TV. Reseated the ribbon cable and its been working fine after that.

 

Yesterday I picked up one of the limited edition blue Wii consoles. It was advertised as having a flickering screen so was only £5 as it had no leads etc.

I picked it up as I have no experience of working on the system so thought it might be a fun project to work out the problem (loose av port, cold solder jount or whatever) and as I had a complete set if spare leads power supply etc from a previous trade I thought why not.

So picked it up and got home and did a quick google search. Turns out some of the earlier machines had problems with the video chips. Hmmm didn't look good as this would likely be beyond my skills. But was only a fiver so no huge loss.

Decided to fire it up to see what was going on.

Seemed to work fine. So I played around an hour of Ghost Squad and Muramasa. Not a single problem.

So my guess would be when the store tested it they had a dodgy cable (or connection on the TV). The only downside is this is one of those Wii models that removed the GameCube compatibility. Still always nice to pair up a set of leads, psu and controllers to a orphaned machine. Will likely donate this to someone who has a greater need than me.

Now need to find something else as a little project!

 

Thanks for the tip! After reading your post I took a chance and bought a lynx 2 that wouldn't power on... and it worked just fine.

 

I bought an N64 with 4 controllers and a bunch of games from my former high school percussion instructor for ~$40. He said none of the games worked but I still bought it anyway. When I got home, I plugged it in and tested the games. They didn't work. I cleaned the games and got a couple of them to work but the rest of them still didn't work.

So I inserted the games at an angle and held them at that angle. To my surprise it worked! Strangely, after all of that, every game except Mario Kart 64 (got this separately from a different person) and Golden Eye 007 worked without holding the cart forward and inserting it at an angle.

Eventually, everything except 007 worked fine. I only got 007 working a couple times so I (regrettably) sold it. I still keep kicking myself for that move.

Anyway, the N64 works quite well... as long as I use one of the two controllers with a working analog stick.

 

Bought a none working console only JVC X'Eye on Ebay for $50. First bought a correct 9.5VDC 1.5A power supply, still only the cartridge part work. Was able fix the CD part by replacing the lid cover switch. Actually, I just shorted the two point after I removed the switch, as I didn't have a replacement switch yet.

 

Had a pretty good one the other day, bought a couple of Neo-Geo MVS boards as 'not working', plugged one of them in that looked physically fine, only got garbage on the screen (but fairly good looking garbage). The BIOS was socketed so I thought 'what the hell' and swapped it for a spare I had lying around.

Now works perfectly.

 

I needed a 32x for testing, but those are getting pretty expensive

Bought a dead Sega 32X (black screen) for 15$ (plus f** shipping to Canada) on eBay.

Open it, spray some contact cleaner on the two ribbon cable, now working perfectly.

 

Bough a lynx not working with games.

Use eraser on game contacts and works cleaned all games and system is fine. Win win

 

Bough an Atari 2600 and a bag of games for it off a classmate because it was broken.
Cleaned the smoke residue off then it worked just fine.

 

Dang, most of my repairs are stupidly easy. Since I get most of my HW from Japan, they have spent the first part of their life in smoke-filled apartments (The Japanese were big on smoking back in the day), and the latter part of their life in storage in a humid climate.

I.e, 80% of the time, they need the cartridge port cleaned, expansion port cleaned (N64) and they're back in action.
I'd say 10% of the time, they need an internal cleaning as well (IPA to clean the MB).
The remaining 10% would be re-caps, 7805s and actual troubleshooting. Those are the fun ones.

 

I bought 15 broken Dreamcasts PAL rev1. Figured I could get some working.

One was labeled "Dies/restarts from time to time". Figured that would be a tough one. Opened it up, moved the fan power cable out from the fan blades, started it up and worked 100% =) The cable made it so the fan could not rotate properly sometimes so the dreamcast shut down.

All in all, I got 5 working 100%, 8 with broken GDi drives (I bought 3 USB-GDROMs and sold so far from those machines) and 2 were put in the "spares" bin with broken everything pretty much. All the parts I used to get the others working ended up in them =)

 

I also got some easy to fix dreamcast. The fan and the R1 fuse are classics.

 

So my friend's PS2 wouldn't read discs anymore. I opened it up for him and cleaned the laser with rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. It worked perfectly after that. This is my new easiest fix ever.

 

years ago bought not working blue debugstation
upon powering up yep it didn't work. after further checking the CD reader module was stuck at the top section and didn't move up and down as usual. so I grabbed it and moved up and down by hand. Then powered off and on. Viola! it worked like charm.
Sold it for a nice profit on eBay.

 

I've got a new one.
A PS2 slim with a screwed up ribbon cable that would scratch discs. I just put the ribbon in it's correct position and I put some weight on it. After a couple of hours I tried it and the ribbon had fixed itself from the pressure. No more ring scratches on discs.
At least it didn't scratch the discs deeply and made them unplayable unlike the Xbox 360.

 

Bought a SNES mini that was supposedly defective for $10. Turned out that the power jack on the back had a bad solder joint, so all I had to do was reflow the solder.

 

Once picked up an Otrona Attache at a Yard Sale for $5. It had all the available upgrades, had all the original paperwork (even the bills from the upgrades), original case, and came with all boots discs and a lot of software. It would turn on, but the screen was a complete mess. Opened it up and reseated the connections and it works flawlessly.