Dragon Quest PS Vita - Battery Mod Major Fail

I paid a hundred and seventy five dollars for this but it does come with like all of the retail packaging oh cool it comes with the game and I don't what is this I don't know what this is but that's really cool still okay now the seller told me that they were trying to do a battery and aftermarket battery upgrade so this is obviously the battery we got some connectors we've got what I'm not sure what those are whatever these are I think it's part of the the mod they were trying to do we've got the memory card and here is the Vita itself okay and it's actually oh we've got some serious scratches on the screen over there you can see right there the scratches on the screen I don't think the screen's broken I think those are just scratches so that's the good thing uh such a cool back cover and a few scratches but really not bad this still has the protective coating on it but the real problem at least from what the seller said is on the inside now the seller said that during his attempted modification of this PS Vita he knocked some components off the board as well as some soldering pads so he was not able to complete this modification attempt so I told him I'd buy it from him and try and make a video on it I paid 175 dollars he said he does not have the battery that came with the PS Vita he's just got this aftermarket battery so the first thing we got to do is take a close look at this motherboard and see if it's something that's fixable or not oh yeah there we go that's pretty nasty I'm gonna get this thing under a microscope so we can see very closely what's going on here okay so we've got a lot of stuff going on here it looks like the charge port is mostly okay this is a torn pad I don't know if anything goes there or not we've got this like I don't know if this used to be flux or what but it's like corroding the board a little bit got some nasty hair over here yeah same with right here we got some green corrosion going on I'm not sure what that would be from flux usually doesn't do that but I suppose it could the headphone jack is melted I think it'll still work fine I think the end of it here is fine but just doesn't look ideal and now the really fun part this is where the pads are that you're supposed to solder this uh battery to and as you can see we've got some major issues going on here there are several layers on this board that have been exposed right here so that's definitely a problem and same with over here and then I think we've got a component missing over here this whole part of the motherboard has been just torn off and then we have all of this this looks like leftover flux but we also have random solder balls around the board so that's got to be cleaned off so these things if it gets lodged right in between two of the wrong components then that can create a connection there that shouldn't be there and cause something on the board to short out so that's definitely not ideal I gotta watch for that and inspect for any more of those that might be on this board first thing I got to do is clean up this board and then we can get a better idea what exactly is going on and then this is the area that I'm going to focus on because I've got to figure out if this is something we can even fix or not and if we can separate these layers enough to make it so they don't short together when power is applied to this board I'm going to start by using a metal Dental pick and I see questions sometimes why I use these and I use this one specifically because a lot of this stuff if you just take like a toothbrush and some isopropyl alcohol that's a great way to clean the board but it doesn't really scrub anything that well and some of this stuff is just really caked on here and it doesn't just come off with a toothbrush so I like to come through with the pick and just kind of like loosen everything even though it is a metal pick which is not necessarily ideal that's just that's just the way that I've kind of like learned to do it over time and so that's what I use one of the one of the questions I saw recently on another one of my videos is whether I knock components off the board or break them off using a metal pick and I think I may have done that one time a long time ago the thing with the metal pick that is that is nice and once you get used to it it works pretty well is that you can really feel how much pressure you're putting on stuff so I can tell you know I can tell how much pressure I'm putting on stuff oh and this guy with this guy's loose right here now it probably looked like I broke that off with my pick or loosened it with my pick but that's not actually what happened I put a little bit of pressure on it when I was cleaning it looked like it moved maybe it actually I don't think it moved you know I'm not saying this is the best way to to clean this stuff especially using the metal pick but I am saying that's the way that I've done it for so long and I've gotten very used to it and I can clean quickly and effectively like this and so that's what I do and I think I've done about them as much as I can do with that now I'm going to bring in some isopropyl alcohol on a toothbrush and hopefully that will get all the rest of this cleaned off I might need to add a little bit of heat flux will usually be easier to clean if you heat it a little bit so we'll do that if we think we need to these are just this is just a big hole right here this is crazy so that's what we got to figure out next so I was able to find a good board that I know is good and this is what the good board looks like so we are missing this capacitor on the other board and then these are the three solder points that we are missing from The Other Board the bad board these are the points on the battery connector which is on the other side of the board right here this is the original battery connector and the original battery plugs in just like this you can see we've got a red white and black wire and those points correspond with these points white black and red also this capacitor right here is definitely missing from the faulty board that would be this one no this one right here so we need to install a capacitor on here and we also need to install one right here so we'll do that in a minute now the seller sent me a link to a video he was using for this modification and the video showed the Creator soldering battery wires to these points and then a thermistor to this point so that is what these little guys were in that baggie you saw earlier which normally thermistors work by opening a circuit when a certain temperature is reached but instead of soldering to these points on this faulty board since clearly there's multiple layers here what I'm actually going to do is just cover these all up and put some solder mask over these that will hopefully protect all of these layers of the board right here I think what I'm going to do instead is actually use the original battery connector and I will take this new battery which has a black and a red wire and then cut this connector off from the original battery and I will connect the black to the black and the red to the red and then we'll be able to just plug this new battery right into the original connector and then after that we'll solder this thermistor onto the white wire from the original battery connector first things first though we need to get this board repaired you'll see me using some gel while I'm doing the soldering that gel is called flux and that just helps the solder flow so this first capacitor I'll be replacing one of the pads looks like it's fine the other pad is just been completely torn off but that's not too big of a deal we can just connect a wire from this other capacitor onto this replacement capacitor because they're both connected to the same ground plane once that's done we'll move down and replace this other capacitor that's missing one of the pads has been torn off of the board so I'm just going to move it over a little bit scrape off some of the solder masks so we have a new pad and then I'll just solder that capacitor right onto that so we've got this capacitor reinstalled everything else down here is right where it should be this fuse is good I did test that you probably also noticed me putting all of this green solder mask on I wanted to make sure and protect these holes and the multiple layers of the circuit board that are exposed down here so I put solder mask on all of this and then also under this capacitor because I don't know whether that's a power layer under there but this path right here this circuit Trace that used to be here was a ground Trace so that's all connected to ground and you also notice that instead of running a wire from this capacitor over to this one I just angled it a little bit and so they are soldered together since they're both connected to ground anyway are supposed to be that also gives this one a lot more solid mounting than if I were to connect it to a wire and then this one is connected onto this part of the circuit trace and this one over here is connected to this part so I think we're pretty good on this side of the board let's turn it over and start working on the connection from the battery connector to the actual new battery this is the new replacement battery this is an old original battery so we need to make this these two wires connect onto that connector by clipping off the connector and attaching them to those two wires so I think I'm going to cut about half of this off and then we'll probably cut it about right here that'll give us a little bit of extra wire so we can tuck it down under here just to make sure we've got enough so first let's go ahead and cut it uh let's go a little further out yeah a little further always makes me nervous cutting it too close and I'm not going to cut them both at the same time because then we could short out the battery we don't want to do that okay let's go up here there we go and then we're gonna do basically the same thing here I'm going to cut it a little bit long just to make sure we've got plenty of wire here I think what I'm going to do is fold these wires back a little bit and then we'll be able to connect it easily to that connector right there I'm going to take my X-Acto Knife and just cut this plastic away just a little bit just enough so I can fold these wires back okay I'm going to flip these around so they're like this now I just need to strip the wires a little bit and then we can get them soldered together so now I'm just going to bring my wire strippers in there we go okay now I'll do the same thing here now I'm going to put some shrink tubing on here I usually forget to do this until after I've done the soldering but hey it looks like I'm actually going to remember this time that's always Andy now what I'm gonna do there are a number of ways you can do this I'm going to connect these wires together like this and then I'm going to put some flux on then I'm going to solder them together and then I will Slide the shrink tubing over it and then heat that shrink tubing up that should create a nice strong joint nice strong wire foreign so now we have the battery cable all connected we've got the thermistor connected I think this is all connected how it's supposed to be I've never done this before so I can't say for sure but I think it's time to get all the ribbon cables put in get the battery connected to the board and see if it explodes all right I think we're about ready to install this but we have to get the battery installed first or connected first here we go let's see if anything explodes okay good so far nothing's getting too hot okay that's good Let's uh tuck these wires under here all right now you have to make sure this thing can be on here how it wants to be let's put the wires on top of that no we don't want to do that with that white wire out of the way I think that's actually going to work just fine let me get the screws installed and then we'll see how it looks okay that's not too bad as long as we can get this back cover to sit on here normally I think that'll actually work just fine okay now the real test is going to be to see whether this thing charges here we go plugging the battery into power come on give us something uh and we have no charge on the battery oh 0.09 that's not a lot but I'll take it now the battery is discharged so it might just charge at .09 for a little while so I'm going to let it charge here and then we'll just kind of see what happens uh in the meantime I'm gonna get this back cover on and make sure that the back cover fits on get all the screws in and then we'll let it charge fully and then we'll see if it'll turn on this ribbon cable is like one of the worst in these things trying to get it on oh there we go got it oh here we go now we're at 0.45 that's good news the next day okay I let the battery charge overnight let's see if it's going to turn on come on and we get nothing well that's a bummer now I did notice I mean I mentioned it and when we were looking at it but it looked like that board could have had some liquid damage at some point so let's take another look at that and I'm just going to double check and make sure there is voltage in the battery yeah we got four bolts in there make sure that's coming through the connector and it is so four volts is plenty for this thing to be able to start up hey now this battery is still plugged into the other side of the board let's check and see if we have voltage onto this chip over here four volts so we've got power into this chip 2.2 volts that tells me that the chip is also putting out a different voltage which I mean theoretically that means at least part of the chip is working since I don't have any sort of diagram or anything I don't know what that chip is supposed to be putting out 3.7 volts so my main worry here is I'm wondering if all this damage on the board down here caused a short between these layers unfortunately there's just really no way to know for sure I mean we can look at it but just you just can't tell whether there's shorts between the layers or not so that's one of my main worries here since I don't really have any way to diagnose this I think what I might do is actually just put those capacitors back onto this board because this board at least as far as I can tell is a working board so if I put this capacitor back on and this one back on down here this board should work and we can plug that into the PS Vita and see if the Vita turns on then now the seller did say that the PS Vita did fully work before he did this mod but it is possible that that's not true so that is also one of the options it could be just that the Vita also you know that especially like that crack on the screen you know it is possible that the screen is faulty or something so that could be why it's not turning on although I think there is a light that comes on when you do turn it on so I'm assuming that that's not the case I've had really good luck with sellers selling me stuff and being honest about what they are so hopefully that's the case here but I do have to keep that in mind so let's get the capacitors put back onto this board and then we'll try this board and the rest of the Vita and see if it'll work then okay and now with that done we can get this board installed okay now the problem here is this battery I don't even know if this battery is good so also if it is good it's also dead so we're gonna have to charge this one anyway let's get it plugged in all right now we'll plug in a charger and see if the battery is going to charge okay and here we go oh 0.09 okay I think that's pretty normal for a battery that's totally dead this battery has basically zero voltage so now we can wait for this battery to charge and after just a minute or so it's up to 0.62 amps charging so that's good news that means that at least I think the battery is probably going to be good on this one but just got to wait for it to get fully charged then we can try and turn it on and see if this board is good and if this thing will turn on now all right this has been charging for probably about half an hour or so let's see we can get it to power on it all without losing too many parts out of the back okay we ready oh nothing on the screen yet oh the charge lights blink oh here we go we do have a screen okay so we need to let it charge some more that's super good news this might actually be fixable the other thing is I don't know whether I want to do this battery mod or whether I just want to leave the stock battery in it honestly I don't really want to do it let's wait until we can fully test it and just make sure everything works on it then we can decide so I've opted to just leave this PSB to stock one of the reasons is because these aftermarket batteries are sometimes just not reliable and they don't last very long so I think the best option here is to just leave this stock now that this PS Vita has been charging for about half an hour or so let's see if it's going to turn on oh yeah look at this there we go okay let's make sure all the buttons work and those ones do these ones actually don't work in this menu anyway so okay I'm gonna go through and get this set up and just make sure everything works Touch Screen Works that's great all right oh and here we go look at this there we go so this PS Vita is now working if you like this video you'll probably like the video where I bought nine broken PS Vitas and tried to fix those I'll leave a link for that right on your screen now so you can come hang out with me over there and see if I can fix them thanks again for watching today and I hope you have a good one foreign [Music]

Channel: TronicsFix

Views: 362,189

Keywords: tronicsfix, ps vita, ps vita dragon quest, broken ps vita, broken vita, dragon quest

Id: 03-buC6qE4M

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023