Turbografx-16 - Part 1 - Repairing bad controller plug - Fixing Ebay Junk

[Music] hey YouTube what's going on it's Adam here with retro pears and time for another repair video so what I've got here is a turbo graphics 16 this was made in 1989 by NEC in Japan it was made under the name PC engine so it was very popular in Japan not so popular here in North America so in 89 this came out at the same time also the Sega Genesis came out and then shortly after the Super Nintendo so this really got lost in all the noise honestly I don't know anyone that had one of these growing up as a kid so it's pretty unique system here the console itself actually these are the games that they come in I only have one and they are cards so they insert the cards like that you turn it on and play your games so definitely a cool system I managed to pick this up quite a while ago and it's just sat here really doing nothing so I figured since the turbo graphics 16 mini is coming out now so I thought it would be a good time to try and fire up the actual turbo graphics 16 so let's let's flip this over and see what we can do here so it looks like this uses security bits so I just have to get my screwdriver and we'll take those out so looks like we've got seven screws that need to come out all right so once the screws are out we can lift the bottom off and we've got the shell so let's take a quick peek in here so interestingly don't look like there's any screws holding this together it's just kind of interesting I guess just held together by the case screws so does this just lift straight up all right so there is a looks like a voltage that a voltage regulator yeah 7805 and that is screwed to some sort of heat shield on here so I don't want to rip that clean off the board but we need to get this out okay so I see a few more screws these are all Phillips screws so let's just remove those should do the trick and the shell so tell us some pretty good shape nothing else really going on in the front of here all the switches they remain attached to the board itself looks like I probably yeah that just pops right off so that's a big switch for the power and then there's a RF modulator with a channel three and four switch and couple screws here to fully remove the heatsink so oops take that off now a friend to mention what the issue was here so says it didn't work and I actually tested it and I forgot to record it I don't know why and all I got was a gray screen so we're gonna see what the issue here is could be the cartridge reader could be I don't know bad ship or something so let's take a look so I don't know if this really picks up here but you see it kind of looks it's not sticky but it looks like it like there's a lot of residue here the heck is that some sort of something to deflect with wait a second Oh what okay check this so see if we can see that nice big crack on the main board I don't know how you managed to do that I don't know how you possibly crack the main board like that so no wonder this doesn't work surprised it powered up at all because the power is right here this crack is going right under when I guess that's CPU maybe ppyou one of the two so this cracks going right under here you can see there's a couple of pins actually lifted clean up so we've severed all of these traces oh and there's another one here lovely right there by the controller ports so not surprising that doesn't work crap so I mean it may be fixable here he's pinned they're kind of wack it might be fixable I don't I don't even know that sucks let's check out the backside get this off so I should notice actually that just came off but this board is are they bottom heat shield is actually soldered in place so this is a good example you see there's solder joints here and someone has just ripped that clean off the board same thing here that was actually D soldered this one was ripped off the board so someone who had no idea what they're doing tried to do something okay yeah look at that so that crack goes all the way from here under here goes as far as it looks like to here so definitely under this CPU or PP or whatever that is all the way to there so probably damaged quite a few traces and then this one there's not as much going on here but I mean none of this matters if the whatever chip that is is not gonna be connecting so that sucks that's not an easy fix but luckily I've got another one so this guy pretty rough shape I lied I have two games this one's in pretty rough shape but it actually does boot up so I can actually test this one for any I show you how to hook this up and show you what it looks like okay so just go to the box this guy supports RF out for video where is it here on the side so RF out using channels 3 or 4 does not have a composite video out so there are attachments you can get that will actually hook into the back here and allow you to hook up what like the yellow red and white composite video cables but I don't have one of those so we're just gonna hook this up and let's get this test see how it works so I'm gonna test it with dragon spirit push it in for those of you wondering you can use if you don't have cables but you managed to come across a turbo graphics you can use just a regular RF adapter that comes with a Super Nintendo or an NES and you can use a generation 1 or a Sega Master System generation 1 Genesis or Sega Master System power adapter and it will work do not use a regular NES power adapter because it will probably fry the internals here so let's turn this bad boy on there is no LED here but it does have a little nice sticker to show you power and what do we get here gray screen okay so dragon spirit does seem a little finicky it might be that this power is not perfectly going in but okay so we're going into demo mode it looks like it works as I recall the issue with this was the controller inputs don't work so I have a controller and I'm going to show you what the controller looks like [Music] so this is the controller for the turbo graphics called the turbo pad has turbo switches on it and then two buttons just like the NES select and run so the plug of it is the normal eight pin din plug yeah let's just plug it in the problem is these controllers are pretty expensive and I bought this as not working so I really don't have a great way of testing the functionality but it says to start push the Run button pushing it wiggling the cable not getting anything so I'm going to take a look at this controller first and then we're going to dive into the board here try and solve that so opening up the controller it has looks like five small Phillips screws so I'm gonna use my precision screwdriver set and take a look at the board so looks like the cable can disconnect from the board using this connector here at the top so that's good the board itself looks okay I don't really see much where maybe these pads could use a little cleaning but now we'll give it a clean and see what's going on I also do want to test out the cable just to make sure that we're getting continuity from these the connector down here to the plug itself if you're not getting a signal from here to here that means the wire could be no good as well so for these pads there's a couple things I like to do firstly firstly I like to grab a sheet of paper and some isopropyl alcohol really starting to run low on isopropyl alcohol right now as everyone is buying it up to disinfect their homes fun fact if you're buying isopropyl alcohol 99% stuff to disinfect against the coronavirus supposedly not a very good option because there's actually too high of an alcohol content it evaporates before it will thoroughly disinfect so save that stuff for us for the people that are repairing games and buy yourself some 70% stuff that'll work a lot better but moving forward that's my health tip of the day you might want to fact-check that I just saw that somewhere makes sense though so for these pads what I like to do just give it a little bit of a wipe down with some isopropyl alcohol just try and get any residue and stuff off of these pads so you see there's a lot of block coming up here that's usually carbon that's come up from those carbon pads and it just needs to be cleaned if you've got buttons that are sticky or take need a really hard press a lot of times this can solve that and then once that's done what I also like to do on my paper very lightly with some gentle pressure just going to rub a couple times each down the paper and this is going to remove imperfections and build-up and stuff that might be on these buttons the goal isn't to get these so that they are not leaving a mark it's just to wear down a little bit of the residue and stuff on there so that's looking a bit better you can't really see the outline or the indents made by those pads anymore so gonna do the same thing just being very careful especially with the start and select one these rubber pads are pretty delicate and if you break them really the only option for you is to replace them you had to go buy a replacement pad kit they're not expensive but it's just a pain it's another thing you gotta buy then I'm just gonna wipe them down one more time with the isopropyl alcohol just to remove any leftover it's that I didn't really capture capture before so just like that you'll notice the q-tip is still coming up dark and that's perfectly fine it's not gonna ever be perfect good so I'm gonna do your similar thing with the q-tip and alcohol and just clean the pads on the board so anywhere that the buttons would connect just gonna wipe it down make sure that there's nothing affecting the quality of the connection again you're not gonna get them perfect don't worry about the fact that it's still coming up black it's gonna do that you're not going to be taking all of the carbon off you don't want to you just want to remove any contaminants if there is something like corrosion on here then you may have to use something a little bit more aggressive but that should be good I'm gonna let that dry and gonna do a quick check on the cable so as I mentioned I bought this controller is not working I don't know what's wrong with it but they just said not working so it could be a couple buttons but I doubt it because those pads looked pretty good it could be the cable the cable could potentially have a break somewhere and I'm not getting continuity from here to here so to test that just gonna take my multimeter and put it into the continuity mode which also usually has this little diode symbol on it and it will leave a make a beep when you connect the probes like that so just what I'm gonna do I'm gonna pick a pin I'm gonna start with the middle one I think and probe along the board to find the contact so it's gonna be one of these nine pins right here okay so those two will appear to be ground so I'm gonna start writing these down I'm also gonna actually I'm going to look for a pin out of what these individual pins are supposed to do provide and that way I have something to compare against so I can make sure that I'm looking in the right places okay so I've gone through and I found actually three points that are not connected so pin number two if I isolate that top pin here based on the pin out there should be responsible for the up direction and the one button so it should be connected hold my probe there check each of these what's going on so it should be connected there and it's not so you're just gonna make sure I'm not touching any other pins and I've got nothing same with what should be pin six and seven so let's check that one this will be number six one two three four five six and thing 7-nothing so looks like we've got a bad cable okay so I've I've exposed a very small amount of the wire here on this pin just so that I can try and test the continuity of it so let's try see if I can I might just use that regulator just so it's easier so throw that and pin number two and then see if I can get any signal nothing turn off okay let's try that again nothing there better okay so continuity there continuity there so we have a connection through the connector let's try that pin number two again nothing so we do have a break somewhere along the way I'm going to say this cable is probably a write-off so I'm gonna order a replacement cable I did a little bit of looking up and I have found a place that sells replacement cables as well as buttons and pads for these so I'm gonna put an order in for replacement one but in the meantime I want to get this working and try and see if we can't solve this so I think we need to find another point where I can test just to see if this works what would make sense is closer to the end here somewhere that way I can isolate whether there's a break in this or if there's an issue in this plug so I think I'm gonna do that so let's see this should be shielded so I'm curious if I touch this against pin number eight or nine do I get any continuity on this shielding nothing interesting so I wonder if that just means that the shielding is not actually connected to anything which is possible and that could explain why the outside of this doesn't get any ground and it just goes through that middle pin instead but either way that also means I can cut away some of the shielding to expose the wires underneath I'm just curious doing a continuity here I don't so that's curious so it is kind of sticky there's some sort of something in here all right and these are the wires so the one I was having issue with was that white one so I think I'm gonna try the same test here gonna expose a tiny portion of that here and just gonna see if I get continuity back to that connector and if I get continuity to the plug so I'm just gonna use my wire strippers for this I'm gonna get it in there okay that should do it so I've got a little bit exposed so let's go back to this white one here this was pin two and I'm just gonna pin this down first okay so I have continuity all the way to here but I'm guessing I don't get any into here I do not and don't get it on any other pins so that tells me something is gone wrong here so I'm gonna see if I can find a way to open this up we can test the connections in this plug and maybe even fix it it's kind of feels like it oh okay all right so check this out so this tip it looks like it plugs directly into here like so and it's got these little connectors at the bottom but three of them the ones that I have identified that don't work look to be snapped off so there's no remnants left in here so I'm wondering does that mean this was pulled off at some point and try to fix it I don't know but let's check the continuity from inside the plug to the connector possibly that's the only issue so again I've got my probe or my regulator set up here on number two and then gonna shove a probe in here let's see what we've got it works and it does cool number six believe that's that one cool plug number seven no automatic connection okay so we are getting continuity into here just not into the plug so I wonder if I can somehow connect this to this just at least so I can test it mm-hmm okay so I've been able to get some of this apart and there's really no good way to do it aside from cutting it apart these are kind of molded in place on top of this little plastic we call it a canister so that's that's a ground wire clearly so that should connect to here interesting so that was supposed to be soldered to there and it clearly was not but so this is all all the terminations are put in here I don't see a way in this without cutting it apart either so clearly this was molded together in some way so I think we're gonna have to cut this whole thing apart and may end up trying to solder directly to this connector okay so what what my plan here is going to be is I'm going to actually I've removed the end here and I'm going to solder the end to this I'm going to cover it back up with this and I'm going to try and basically inject some hot glue into here just so that I have something substantial that this can grab on to glue it back here and hopefully we should have a reasonably durable repair in fact actually I'm gonna go back to before where I made that cut just so it's a little nicer looking okay so I made myself a little guide with the colors and where they're supposed to go on the back side of this connector so I'm going to put that over to the side so I can reference that and I've stripped all the conductors here I've left the shielding twisted together and that's going to get soldered to the shielding here for ground and it's just going to apply some flux and tin all these conductors here now the fun part of attempting to solder them to this so this is going to be where it gets tricky it's where I really need to buy myself a helping hand but I haven't you okay so I've got all the connectors in here it's not the prettiest job but does look like they are holding so I'm going to do a quick continuity check before I go any farther okay so continuity check worked fine so now I need to try and get this braid attached to here and I'm actually going to I think covers some of that and some heat shrink tubing because I don't want it falling out and shorting anything so let's get some to do the trick I think there should be great perfect so now I'm gonna try and try and slaughter to that shielding which may be somewhat tricky is anything just going to tin that first Oh [Music] there's just a lot of surface area here so it can be kind of tricky to actually solder something this size okay that should be good looks like that's doing perfect so now going to put it back into its strain relief here try and get this lined up the way you would like so that should be up and I think that means like this let me just double-check with the actual system itself be careful okay I lost my ground well let's try Sutter to that old blob there yeah that is the correct orientation so going to I'm going to cut a little hole here that I can get my hot glue gun nozzle in and we'll try kind of inject that really kind of poor man's injection mold alright so now to reattach this so I'm going to put this shield on back on here that's the way yep now you want to orient this arrow here so that it's going to be pointing in the direct correct direction so the you'll notice that there's basically a gap in the pins here that should be pointing down so the arrow should be up and you'll need enough there so that it can go in there's a little Ridge into the console sorry there's a little Ridge in this plug so you can usually find where that Ridge was molded onto here and sometimes you can even kind of line that up but I would say anything as long as this solder connection is covered is probably good being careful again not to rip any wires out I would say just like that okay so now I'm not quite ready yet what I want to do is try and join some of this rubber back together so I'm going to be using a cheaper soldering iron I have and just oops I got some solder on there just going to try and keep this up and pinch it together didn't work very well there let's try it again here so heat it up a touch pinch it together and it should melt itself shut just like so okay so this guy going to line this up right there and gonna do the same thing going to try and just use a little bit of use my soldering iron melt that rubber a little bit let it kind of fuse together it's gonna do that in a couple of places just so that we have it there we go all right so gonna try just pump as much in here as quickly as I can and get it to fill up up around the front where all those connectors are hopefully it will fill that pretty well before it starts cooling and my way towards the back need a refill let me try fighter some in through this little hole in the back as well does not seem very receptive so it shouldn't be moving and it's not so I'm gonna let that cool and just take off any of the excess glue here obviously that's pretty ugly looking but once it dries or once it cools it should come off relatively easily alright so the plug is gonna say dry but that's not right plug is cooled and it's not too too bad seems to be holding its shape that plugs not going anywhere hopefully that's enough exposed and strain relief I could I could touch that up a bit still but the point is should work so I want to double check all my continuities here again before I start reassembling this thing so I'm gonna throw this into the line onto the board and start probing with my multimeter I'm just gonna speed through this and I really hope there's no failures here because that would suck to take this all apart obviously we haven't addressed that turbo graphics that I have here that has the bad controller input but I mean this is just really there's probably going to be the end of this video but illustrating quick kind of not really great way but a quick way to try and repair a bad plug the ideal way of course is to replace that plug but I can't really I don't have a part for that right now and it takes quite a while to get stuff shipped to Canada right now so I'm gonna make do with what I've got all right controller shells where did I put you there you are in another video I might go through and actually fully clean this but for the time being this is gonna have to do let's get my switches okay okay so that's reassembled here and I've got my plug it's not the greatest I might try and sand that down make it look a little bit nicer but I mean it's there I have continuity it should work it's solid so let's try hook it up to that turbo graphics and you never know maybe it even works so controller in here and TV let's see fingers crossed maybe whoever sold this really didn't have a good way of testing it and maybe it works let's let's see what happens okay push run hey it works well let's see here okay right button doesn't seem to work left works forward works back works shoot works pause works but no right why is that Oh what's uh what's open her up and let's try it out again okay so we found that the right direction didn't work and possibly this number-two button doesn't work I couldn't really confirm because I just I'm not familiar with how the game is supposed to behave so I'm just gonna double-check this before we go into the console itself and check so we do have continuity so there's no reason that it shouldn't work unless there's a break somewhere else on the board here so let's just follow that third pin it should go through to here that's a resistor I'm just gonna follow this just to make sure there's no issues that I can see anywhere in theory we could have a bad chip but I'm thinking it's more likely that the issue lies with either the connection to the console or maybe the port itself so I'm just gonna try this one more time with the console itself and just try to clean that port a little bit see if I can get this working okay so just want to make sure that the actual port itself is not dirty or contaminated or anything so I'm just gonna throw some alcohol in this plug and going to unplug the power and just plug it in and insert it a few times and let's try that all right so push run starting still no right action left works no right number one should shoot number two doesn't seem to do anything so I'm thinking maybe even an issue inside the console with the with the actual controller port so just so that this particular video doesn't get too too long I'm going to end this one here and I'm going to tackle that in part two of this so yeah that's gonna be about it for here so I want to thank you for watching thank you for subscribing and liking the channel leave me comment below let me know your thoughts and part two I'm gonna get started on that actually pretty much right away so hopefully it shouldn't be too long of a wait for that one but I'm gonna actually dive into this try and get this working as well as possible and I have a better shell from that other turbo graphics so it might even do a bit of a shell swap here so once again thanks a lot for watching we'll see you next video

Channel: RetroRepairs

Views: 19,487

Rating: 4.9111109 out of 5

Keywords: Retro Repairs, Retro Repair, Fixing Ebay Junk, Fix Ebay Junk, Turbografx 16, TG16, TurboGrafx16, TurboGrafx-16, TG-16, NEC, TurboPad, Nintendo, Sega, SNES, NES, Retro Gaming, Fix TurboGrafx, Repair TurboGrafx, Turbografx Faulty Controller

Id: LlZkAEE2qmc

Length: 45min 37sec (2737 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020