Ebay Luck. Gaming Related randomness

Well, all i'll say is you can still get a good deal on ebay although getting more and more rare! (although everything on ebay is apparently "RARE!"

Registered Trade Mark.

I was browsing ebay out of pure boredom, and happened across something of interest at an interesting price (cheap! my kind of price) now these normally go for more on ebay.

but i grabbed a Sega Dreamcast for £10, was console only and no modem

the reason i got it was for parts mainly case and motherboard, power supply etc as spares, Anywho. It was listed as "untested spares and repairs"

so i thought Like ol Jack Burton always says: "What the Hell" and went for it.

After a few days, it arrived but i missed the delivery guy. luckily royal mail office isn't too far from me, so the next working day i went up to collect it.

Now when i got it, i tried to take a quick look on the way home. but damn... this thing was well packed. it took brute force teeth and claws to get it open. impressive and commendable packing job! which im not used to from ebay sellers, let alone for a supposedly faulty item.

when i got home, gave it a quick dust and checked inside to make sure nothing was disconnected and all the components were there. they were. all good. connected my cheapo vga box "Game" brand. and stuck in my rather scratched up Virtua Fighter 3TB disc.

Boom! fired up first time, memory battery is dead but they all are by now. so just ok'd the date and time.

that's Via composite video and not VGA

needless to say the DreamCast is no longer going to be used as parts, as it's too good and works perfectly. Bargain! and a nice surprise.

now i did notice an issue, and this was a pain in the arse to fix.

my cheapo VGA box wasn't displaying all colours ( Red Green Blue) it was missing the red, 

so determined i set about fixing it too. as i dont want to pay stupid amount of money for another one.

basically the problem was wear and tear on the connector that goes from the VGA box to the Dreamcast AV port. It's cheap quality crap basically. 

cracked it open, fixed the problem after some frustrating soldering and pin manipulation. got it working like new. now it looks pretty ugly but does the job fine.

here's what it looks like now:

blurry picture i know sorry.

nice green electrical tape and super glue
 holding the connector together

just tape and it's own clips holding the box in one piece.

Last time i got lucky on ebay was when i picked up a Model 1 SEGA Master System, again, supposedly faulty, but worked perfectly when i got it, came with a Joystick and the SEGA Phaser light gun and a MK2 MegaDrive AC adapter.

The only issue is that inside it was missing the metal shielding, this does not have any effect on the system though it's working to this day

Random Ramblings. :-)

NeoGeo MVS 6 Slot Arcade Hardware Repair Part 1.

Thought i'd keep a record of what im doing here and maybe it'll be of some help to someone else who knows.

I have a Neo Geo MVS 6 SLOT (NEO MVH MV6 (6 slot) arcade board to repair

It's had the battery leak but any more than that as of yet i do not know.
The battery is located on the bottom board at the opposite edge from the volume sliders and headphone/ speaker jacks.

It's Huge! but an impressive beast.
Metal shield for the top, Slot Board and then Main board on the bottom.

My first attempt at repair of NeoGeo hardware, so this could go horribly wrong. but hey, i like to jump in at the deep end.

First off, i Stripped it down. some stubborn screws and a bent mount from shipping aside(see pic below for how mount was bent.)

Yes that's a blurry pic, but you can see the board mounts sticking out of the box! lol..

Anyway. i Cleaned the board up, Removed the leaky battery, went over the damaged / leaked acidy area with some baking soda and water solution then cleaned it off with water and dried board throughly.

here's what it looks like now.

Fig 1. Back of bottom board below battery

Fig 2. Top of Bottom Board, Acid Damaged Area

What I need to do is remove the stubborn black sticky foamy gunk so I can take a better look at the traces on the bottom below the battery area. I can see some are damaged.

on the top part, there's plenty of traces which look completely wrote off or very questionable. so alot of work to patch them up.

I may also remove some of the chips in that area and make sure there's no corrosion and they're OK underneath.

The battery was simple to remove just De-solder two pins from the bottom of the board(middle-right of "Fig 1" pic)

That's all so far as i need to stock up on some supplies

Solder, Wire, Flux, etc.

Thoughts So Far?

Big Job! Big Board!  But all being well, achievable i really hope i can bring this board back to life. first of many? prehaps i would like to work on some smaller boards eg 1 2 and 4 slot or dedicated(no slot game built in), and other arcade hardware.