AHAHAHAHHAA

me before and after removing your fucking synapses

well, my replacement caps arrived for the game gear. i made my paper diagram of what goes where so the only thing left to do is to do it

here goes nothing

so far so good, all caps are removed with no torn pads or traces and only one slightly melted connector on the sound board! i trimmed the melted part off and the cable still fits fine, though (the large cap in the upper left corner is a new one i added in so i could put the screen back in the shell before something bad happens to it)

taking a break to cut and grind meat for dinner and go get more cotton swabs because i didn't realize i was out until i used my last one

also i didn't realize i apparently have a "rare" early VA4 model because of an extra fourth capacitor on the power supply board, wooooooooow so rare

several hours and a full set of replaced caps later i have somehow made it worse because there is still nothing on the screen and as soon as i turn it on, less than a second later it turns itself off. i thought i did a passable job but i guess not

i'm going to bed

i tried it again this morning, and instead of turning on then off, it seems that the CFL backlight blew out and the screen stayed dark with no picture when i shined a flashlight on it, but it kept going and i could actually hear the game running? which is... progress!

then i saw smoke and smelled smoldering electronic smell... and doing some more investigating i found this lovely burn mark underneath a ceramic capacitor that usually isn't replaced in this sort of deal

that ceramic capacitor is still in spec despite the smoking, and all my polarities are correct so i'm sort of at a loss on what to do besides be frustrated that i'm probably out $40 on this

IT LIVES!!!*
*of course it has a dead screen because all of them do but whatever

i guess that ceramic capacitor controlling the CFL bulb was shorting to a different capacitor because i put it back in and now everything's as good as it could be

now to wait for screen kits to come back in stock... or just stick with my master system...

well, my replacement caps arrived for the game gear. i made my paper diagram of what goes where so the only thing left to do is to do it

here goes nothing

so far so good, all caps are removed with no torn pads or traces and only one slightly melted connector on the sound board! i trimmed the melted part off and the cable still fits fine, though (the large cap in the upper left corner is a new one i added in so i could put the screen back in the shell before something bad happens to it)

taking a break to cut and grind meat for dinner and go get more cotton swabs because i didn't realize i was out until i used my last one

also i didn't realize i apparently have a "rare" early VA4 model because of an extra fourth capacitor on the power supply board, wooooooooow so rare

several hours and a full set of replaced caps later i have somehow made it worse because there is still nothing on the screen and as soon as i turn it on, less than a second later it turns itself off. i thought i did a passable job but i guess not

i'm going to bed

i tried it again this morning, and instead of turning on then off, it seems that the CFL backlight blew out and the screen stayed dark with no picture when i shined a flashlight on it, but it kept going and i could actually hear the game running? which is... progress!

then i saw smoke and smelled smoldering electronic smell... and doing some more investigating i found this lovely burn mark underneath a ceramic capacitor that usually isn't replaced in this sort of deal

that ceramic capacitor is still in spec despite the smoking, and all my polarities are correct so i'm sort of at a loss on what to do besides be frustrated that i'm probably out $40 on this