Vince's Repair Thread - (Console Repairs & Mods)
- Thread starter Vince
- Start date
-
- Tags
- lets repair things
Just had a PS5 with a dodgy HDMI port and a Switch Lite that won't charge dropped off...
What's the betting it's the usual culprits @Vince ?
Ive got some more switches, gameboys, a series X and also some PSP's (i think) coming tomorrow
been playing with a saturn somebody sent me with sound issues trying to work that out but the saturn is a seriously complex beast tbh...ive given up and its back in the pile for now. there arestill so many things in the pile I just havent been able to fix.PS5 hope its just the port
- switch port/m92 - if you lucky its just the port.Ive got some more switches, gameboys, a series X and also some PSP's (i think) coming tomorrow
PS5 hope its just the port
Weird, I would have expected a Saturn to still be in that period of "reasonable" fixes. Mind you if you can resurrect a dead Series X, it's only a matter of time before you crack a Saturn.
I might be able to sort the PS5, apparently it's been a bit twitchy and got worse over time. It looks "OK" on first inspection, might see if it'll reflow but outside of that and my limited kit/ability I may hit you up to see if you're up for adding another to the pile.
Weird, I would have expected a Saturn to still be in that period of "reasonable" fixes. Mind you if you can resurrect a dead Series X, it's only a matter of time before you crack a Saturn.
I might be able to sort the PS5, apparently it's been a bit twitchy and got worse over time. It looks "OK" on first inspection, might see if it'll reflow but outside of that and my limited kit/ability I may hit you up to see if you're up for adding another to the pile.
I do have many a port in stock so if you need a hand just give me a shout!
Ive worked out what is wrong with that saroo saturn... The person modding it used a va7 board and ive spent probably 2 hours working through schematics and also probing the board with my oscilloscope and I have found what the issue is. So the board worked fine in the saroo case, play games etc but sound is all muffled.. Turns out the cd drive board on the VA7 generates an 8.4672Mhz clock signal that it sends to the saturn to provide a clock signal for sound.
So what I found is this... here is the schematic and if we measure the board without the CD drive we are missing SCSPCLK...
To test I attached up a cd drive but only that clock signal by scoping out a clock on the cn4 connector (all the schematics are for the va13 so its a bit of a minefield)...
This is our clock as measured by my oscilloscope bottom left you can see the clock measured at 8.484mhz...
This clock signal is actually generated from this 33.8688 crystal:
It then goes into this chip which will basically divide that signal with bit counters so it cuts it in half twice:
After that it spits it out back down into the saturn board and provides the sound clock.
This is the mess I made working it out
Instead of messing around trying to make a signal from the parts on the cd drive board I decided to just buy an active oscillator which ill wire up to the saturn board to provide a sound clock. That way you can then run a va7 pal saturn without a cd drive and without any sort of ODE but still have everything work.
There is a reason that all the saroo saturns you see on aliexpress pre made are all JP VA13 boards and that's because the VA13 generates its clock using that same oscillator on its main board and then passes the signal to the CD drive rather than the other way around. It's probably also why the case kits you can buy are provided without instructions and its a case of "off you go - good luck". It's also no surprise that it was sent to me as a half done project missing its cd drive because they could never get it working properly.
This board also had an old school region mod on it so I removed that and have a new pcb coming for a more modern region mod, I also have an oscillator coming to fix the sound issue. I searched high and low on all my donor boards for an oscillator I can make work but had to order one in. If I was a lot better at this than I am I should have been able to create some sort of circuit that could divide the signal down from that current oscillator but thats beyond me right now... I started looking it up and found myself looking at flip flops:
en.wikipedia.org
I'm telling you Flip-Flops are no joke.
So what I found is this... here is the schematic and if we measure the board without the CD drive we are missing SCSPCLK...
To test I attached up a cd drive but only that clock signal by scoping out a clock on the cn4 connector (all the schematics are for the va13 so its a bit of a minefield)...
This is our clock as measured by my oscilloscope bottom left you can see the clock measured at 8.484mhz...
This clock signal is actually generated from this 33.8688 crystal:
It then goes into this chip which will basically divide that signal with bit counters so it cuts it in half twice:
After that it spits it out back down into the saturn board and provides the sound clock.
This is the mess I made working it out
Instead of messing around trying to make a signal from the parts on the cd drive board I decided to just buy an active oscillator which ill wire up to the saturn board to provide a sound clock. That way you can then run a va7 pal saturn without a cd drive and without any sort of ODE but still have everything work.
There is a reason that all the saroo saturns you see on aliexpress pre made are all JP VA13 boards and that's because the VA13 generates its clock using that same oscillator on its main board and then passes the signal to the CD drive rather than the other way around. It's probably also why the case kits you can buy are provided without instructions and its a case of "off you go - good luck". It's also no surprise that it was sent to me as a half done project missing its cd drive because they could never get it working properly.
This board also had an old school region mod on it so I removed that and have a new pcb coming for a more modern region mod, I also have an oscillator coming to fix the sound issue. I searched high and low on all my donor boards for an oscillator I can make work but had to order one in. If I was a lot better at this than I am I should have been able to create some sort of circuit that could divide the signal down from that current oscillator but thats beyond me right now... I started looking it up and found myself looking at flip flops:
Flip-flop (electronics) - Wikipedia
I'm telling you Flip-Flops are no joke.
Last edited:
Epic post! Keep them coming
I decided to buy all the stuff to make a flip flop circuit that imitates that circuit! I probably wont use it on this but will be interesting to show
I did lots of reading and with the help of chat gpt and my little AI robot we have a circuit!
Last edited:
So series X is back and I've set it up, downloaded a game.. they said it "didn't work" but I can't seem to recreate it. Had lots of convos with the guy but seems genuine enough I'll just have to play with it and see if I can re-create it "not working" - I have asked the fella to elaborate some so I'm not chasing my tail on it.
It could be buyers remorse as it was right at end of the month.. not sure... I guess I'll try and use it for a few days.
Last edited:
@Vince firstly, this thread is great, simultaneously one of the most friendly/heartwarming places on the forum, and also super interesting.
I'm sure that you'll have said this elsewhere in the thread but...well...it's long! What's your background, and how did you get into this stuff? Is it purely a hobby, or is it your profession which you also enjoy enough to do in your downtime? Or do the bits you sell generate enough funds to make a living out of? The post above regarding the Saturn is outrageously complex (to me!) and I'm fascinated to know how you got into doing this.
I'm sure that you'll have said this elsewhere in the thread but...well...it's long! What's your background, and how did you get into this stuff? Is it purely a hobby, or is it your profession which you also enjoy enough to do in your downtime? Or do the bits you sell generate enough funds to make a living out of? The post above regarding the Saturn is outrageously complex (to me!) and I'm fascinated to know how you got into doing this.
Last edited:
Nice of you to say mate, the thread has always aimed to be inclusive and just give people a feel for this sort of stuff and to try and share some of the random stuff I am trying to learn or to just chat random rubbish and try and fix some tech! A bit of background, for a profession I work in IT. I am mostly an infrastructure guy but started out as a dev some 20 odd years ago. Nowadays I look after infrastructure projects and help manage a team of helpdesk techs - Basically I am one of the guys the team come to when all else fails
I basically got into all this properly during lockdown but id dabbled before that with soldering etc as I had built some custom 3d printers and had done plenty of other projects, then one day I saw 3 broken consoles on ebay and thought to myself, "I recon I can probably fix them", so I did... I guess you could say its a hobby but then I do make a bit out of it as well and enjoy the hands on and learning stuff but more than anything the kick you get when you finally work it out is pretty awesome as well. I've been floating a few ideas on how I could potentially kind of let this replace my job but that is unlikely to happen any time soon. Id need to scale it up over double where it is right now to even think about it and as just me on my own that's probably not going to be doable without making a full jump away from the dayjob.
That's really impressive - no idea how you've managed to learn everything on the side of your job, but it's a very "cool" hobby to have. I'm looking forward to seeing what you end up fixing next!Nice of you to say mate, the thread has always aimed to be inclusive and just give people a feel for this sort of stuff and to try and share some of the random stuff I am trying to learn or to just chat random rubbish and try and fix some tech! A bit of background, for a profession I work in IT. I am mostly an infrastructure guy but started out as a dev some 20 odd years ago. Nowadays I look after infrastructure projects and help manage a team of helpdesk techs - Basically I am one of the guys the team come to when all else fails
I basically got into all this properly during lockdown but id dabbled before that with soldering etc as I had built some custom 3d printers and had done plenty of other projects, then one day I saw 3 broken consoles on ebay and thought to myself, "I recon I can probably fix them", so I did... I guess you could say its a hobby but then I do make a bit out of it as well and enjoy the hands on and learning stuff but more than anything the kick you get when you finally work it out is pretty awesome as well. I've been floating a few ideas on how I could potentially kind of let this replace my job but that is unlikely to happen any time soon. Id need to scale it up over double where it is right now to even think about it and as just me on my own that's probably not going to be doable without making a full jump away from the dayjob.
At least you got it back, that’s positive. Any changes to it that you noticed? If not, like you I’d suspect buyer’s remorse.
Good luck with your testing on it!
Well you didn't have to wait too long.. mostly easy fixes but in this weekends delivery we had a series X, 3x Switch Lite, 2x GBC and a psp. Gameboys mostly simple fixes cleaning the power switch etc and some caps because sound was woeful.. the psp wouldn't read umd as the switch was a bit broken but did those 3 after work tonight.
The original GBC consoles both came up really nice as did the psp so they will go as they are.
The switches, 2 boards fixed, one was a port and m92 the other was a liquid damaged board so I ended up replacing max77620, the fpc to the daughter, port and the backlight driver.
and the final board isn't worth attempting.
Finally the series x is in the testing queue so I'll have a look what's wrong with that once I've had a few blasts on the return console.
Last edited:
Thought I'd just plug it in and see first, plug it in, set it up played about an hour of forza.. can't see any issues. Will plug it into the 4k TV in the lounge and try and get an hour in see what it's doing.
One of the big problems in this game is if it does have a weird intermittent issue and it takes 5 hours of playing to see it.. I've not got that time to be able to do that but I've got some series x systems out there I've fixed and my acid test is if they play forza/that 150gb Bethesda star something game then generally they gonna be good to go. Dude did say something happened after about 4 hours of playing and I haven't had a 4 hour gaming session in probably 15 years
@Tinders has one of the repaired series X machines and I've got another 5 or 6 fixed machines out there and I did the same tests on them so genuinely I have no idea what could be up with this and I'm not investing 5 hours straight to find out so I'll likely set it up in the lounge and try and get people to play it lol
Last edited:
Think this one might have to be listed spares repairs even though I cant make it fail... He said to me it gave a green screen and turned itself off a few times but only after like 3 or 4 hours of solid gameplay.... how am I meant to recreate that
absolute max is like an hour and a half before I get dragged to do something else, my attention span cant just stick 3 or 4 hours solid gaming sessions.
Last edited:
It’s a pity you couldn’t run some sort of stress test on it, the way you can on PC for example. That would surely highlight the issue - if there actually is one of course!Think this one might have to be listed spares repairs even though I cant make it fail... He said to me it gave a green screen and turned itself off a few times but only after like 3 or 4 hours of solid gameplay.... how am I meant to recreate that
Failing that, I’m sure someone on here would take it and thoroughly test it for you. Plenty of folks have the same system, so it would be easy for them to do you’d think.
I might look into it... There has to be a way to test them... problem is they auto sleep with the controller when you dont touch for a while as well which perhaps you can turn off.
Would definitely be useful for you if you could run some sort of stress tests on machines that you repair. If I hear of any I’ll point you in that direction.
Got some interesting retro coming in tomorrow supplier randomly dropped a mk1 mega cd and megadrive and some other goodies on me. This is what we have this week and my buy prices. Probably went a bit big on the mega cd but not every day you come across 2/3rds of a tower of power.
100 mega cd/drive
30 gg
40 ps4 pro
30 x 2 ps2
50 2x elite 2
So 250 all in for a load of toys. My buy prices can be all over the place me and this dude seem to just make it up as we go along. He dropped my prices on whatever the week the ps5 came up as it was my birthday that week
I've officially hit 40 lads, it's all down hill from here.
100 mega cd/drive
30 gg
40 ps4 pro
30 x 2 ps2
50 2x elite 2
So 250 all in for a load of toys. My buy prices can be all over the place me and this dude seem to just make it up as we go along. He dropped my prices on whatever the week the ps5 came up as it was my birthday that week
I've officially hit 40 lads, it's all down hill from here.
Last edited: