my modding and repair projects!

i like to mod the consoles i collect. here are some of the projects ive done, whether its simply installing kits or doing mods of my own.

some stuff ive modded:

AV Famicom with RGB

My NES system of choice, with NESRGB and a power led!

original model pc engine restore and mods

Here's my little PC Engine with some mods I did to it!

Firstly, the fuse had blown out, so I replaced it with a new one. I also replaced the old voltage regulator for good measure

I then replaced the big old ribbon cables connecting the main board to the Hucard slot. They were beginning to come loose after having the case open for a while. The way for me to was to connect two male and female pin connectors together, and use my tiny 30 awg wire and created eight large strands of five wires each I tied together, soldered up, and hot glued down in place to keep them from breaking off the pin connectors or Hucard slot. It doesn't look great, but it gets the job done!

I then installed a little RGB mod. I tapped into some vias with my thin 30 awg wire and ran them straight over to the board. This way, I didn't have to solder directly to the video encoder chip to get the RGB outputs, as I don't like soldering directly to SMD chips. The vias were in a quite convenient spot too, a straight shot to the RGB board. The space the RF modulator leaves behind is also quite convenient for the mod board!

I used a Genesis-style 9 pin AV connector to be able to use HD Retrovision cables without the need of any adaptors. Using the large 8 pin connectors, which are popular to use with Duo and Supergrafx systems' mods, would require cutting into the plastic, and the Genesis connector fits perfectly. SCART cables and any other options could be used too, anything made for Genesis, but I personally do not have a true RGB setup. It of course outputs composite for sync, and Genesis composite cables could be used for any composity needs.

Of course, upon receiving the unit I washed it and the controller down with dish soap and scrubbed out some scuffs with baking soda and water. The baking soda luckily didn't affect the silkscreen logo (which there were a lot of scuffs over) and came out looking good!

I'd later replace the capacitors, as these systems tend to not have the best quality ones.

restored game gears with mods

If you know anything about game gears...I of course gave it new capacitors. As expected, they had leaked a bit and I cleaned it up, but nothing destructive luckily

Once the capacitors were replaced, it was still behaving strangely and not booting games. I looked around and there were some iffy looking solder pads around the cpu. Somehow, one of the pins had lost connection to its solder pad, and after going over all the pins with new solder trying to make a connection, I tried probing it with a scope to the pin on the ram chip is was meant to go to. No connection, so I ran a wire over to it and it was the magic fix for it

I originally got this game gear to give a video out mod and controller input mod to, but this particular model ended up not supporting the video mod. I now intend to give it a new screen and sell it, and probably get more game gears to work on

This game gear turned out to be the model I wanted, a "twin cpu" model you could call it, as it has two chips that power it unlike the previous. It has several advantages, but the main one being I can use the video mod board. Most 1-chip game gears can use it, but my previous model ended up having a later revision chip which isn't supported.

I wanted to put in its needed ports in a way that didnt cut into the plastic. As one of them didnt come with battery covers, I figured I'd 3D print a battery cover with the ports, and have it plug into connectors inside the battery slot to be able to swap between using it portably and consolized sitting on a table. It was difficult to get working but turned out well.

I later replaced the tape around the internal connectors with hot glue to keep the wires in place. The tape was temporary while I made sure it was all working. The replace capacitors was also done more haphazardly cause I just wanted to make sure there weren't any other issues with this game gear, and its the one I'm keeping so it doesn't matter a whole lot :)