ITC#54 - Model 1 Genesis Capacitor Replacement 

Many techs do wear gloves and I do on some occasions. But my hands sweat terribly inside them so I use a anti static wrist strap when working on most electronics. This is how we did our board level repairs in the 90s and I've just stuck with it. The main time I wear gloves these days is when I handle the RF shielding and don't want to add extra finger prints to it or other glossy surfaces of the console. Thank you for the comment and for watching I do appreciate it!

Howd it go?

@@rdaws73 Broke one of them (later fixed traces and pads after getting better at soldering), then bought just a replacement motherboard. Since then I’ve done 8 of them on many different revisions. And about 6 triple bypasses. This really helped me improve my soldering and diagnostic skills. Since, I’ve worked on a few NES, NeoGeo, PC engine, Game Gear, etc… No more fear about this kind of job. It’s pretty easy after you have some practice, but at first it can be super intimidating.

Thanks for the comments and for watching! First thing is that it really helps to add fresh solder to the cap leads. Additionally when I'm desoldering caps, I keep my index finger ontop of the cap I'm removing with my other hand and wiggle the cap as I use the desoldering gun. This helps to prevent the cap from trying to stick with any residual solder that is left aftewards. I keep my FR-300 on the 2 setting for about 90% of the stuff I do.

@@IvoryTowerCollections Thanks for replying! When you’re using your desoldering gun, is the gun over the legs of the capacitor? I find in my experience, the legs are so close to the board, it’s hard to get the gun over the legs (the leg inside the vacuum). Most of the time it’s impossible haha.

Hehe. Yes, I actually did the va2 recap as you see in the video, but realized afterwards I hadn't videoed the process to take the Genesis apart so I did that after with a different model 1 console I had on hand. I've never ran across any with riveted heatsinks? But that would really not make for a good time because it would require you to have to find some nuts/bolts to secure it back onto the board in some way afterwards.

@@IvoryTowerCollections I believe Dubesinhower drilled one out in his Triple Bypass v2 3BP install video. Out of the five VA6 consoles I have on-hand, only one is riveted. It’s a Japanese Mega Drive that I picked up in Thailand but I believe the one Dubes showed was American.

I do own a JPN va3 model 1 but didn't pay attention to weather the sink was riveted on it. I've not really done anything to it as it is in really good condition so it actually doesn't get used much. I was more surprised by the cart lock (I disabled this), and the fact there was no RF shielding of any kind on it.

@@IvoryTowerCollections Yeah. All the shielding was added for FCC and Euro regulations. Neo-Geo AES is the same way with JP versions missing all the shielding. Even PCE CD-ROM² drives are missing extra shielding found in the Turbo-CD drive, like the wire that grounds the bottom half. I’ve always wanted to see the cartridge lock since the Super Famicom and early SNES consoles had it too. I remember noticing it on Sonic and Knuckles way back then. They just didn’t bother making an updated design. I wonder why they bothered with Virtua Racing. Regarding Nintendo’s removal of the SNES locking mechanism: Supposedly Americans were hurting themselves and/or the hardware by trying to remove locked carts so they redesigned the games to defeat the lock in 1993 and stopped putting the lock in new systems possibly even earlier. It was originally there because it was possible to blow a fuse if you insert or remove with the power on but they weighed the cost/benefit of a few extra warranty claims and determined that the lock was causing a bigger issue for them than it solved. Obviously, they didn’t remove it anywhere else so it seems we were the only people who had an issue with it. ;) I did check that Dubesinhower 3BP video and his was an American VA6 with those rivets. Technically (and according to the service manual) they are eyelets but they are only serving as rivets here since they don’t run any screws or anything through them.

As long as the capacitor has the same capacitance and the voltage rating on the capacitor is the same or more, and physically can fit, it can be used. Console5 as an example will usually provide capacitors that meet the capacitance but usually have larger voltage ratings than might be needed because it is easier to just provide a bunch of say 10µf caps rated at 50v even if the console itself only used 16v or 25v capacitors originally.

@@IvoryTowerCollections Great man! Seriously made my day, thank you so much! Then it is the perfect set(high five). Quite new to soldering mostly soldered batteries. Found my Mega drive(european name for genesis) on my parents attic some time ago. Have given it new regulators to see if it would turn on, now I'm onto caps hopefully these are the problem area, even though non of them look defective. I'm usually not nostalgic, but seeing it was made on February 20th 93 and then remembering I got it for Christmas 93 the same year as well, loads of good memories. Thanks for the help. :D

Hey there thanks for the comment and question! Console5 actually pretty much only uses Nichicon, Panasonic, or Rubycon capacitors in their kits. And, they always use 105C rated caps. While I'm sure it would be a little cheaper to source them separately, getting the kits from a place like Console5 saves me the time to not have to do that and saved time is also saved money. That said, console5 has a wiki that shows the capacitor listing values and locations with cap maps in their wiki. Just look for the link to the wiki at the bottom of their main store page. Great info to be found there.

@@IvoryTowerCollectionsthat's great to know. Another reason I ask is because I guess console5 has gone under etc. Seeing this video is 5 years old maybe that's the case. Doesn't seem console5's website is available any longer. So I'm still on the hunt :)

Update: NVM, had my VPN on and was getting an "access denied". I'm having a look at them now, thank you for the help!

@@motleypixel They are very much still alive and well! They have lots of new products they offer along with some older stuff no longer being available. But their URL is console5.com/store/

@@motleypixel Okay, that's odd, this reply doesn't appear within the actual comments as I'm viewing them so I can only reply to it via the notifications icon. But glad you got it sorted. And yeah, C5 is an amazing source for information along with them being my #1 source for most kits and other items I purchase for my service work.

Well, I order ready to go capacitor kits for all of the consoles I work on that already has that additional info figured out LOL. But, if you don't have a 6v or whatever voltage rating the original capacitor was. You can use a capacitor of the higher voltage. What is most important is to match the capacitance. But yes you can go with a higher rated voltage capacitor that isn't a problem. In fact, many of the capacitor kits I tend to order will come with quite a few capacitors that are of the same capacitance and voltage, but supplied to replace originals that were the same capacitance, but might have had different rated voltages on them. As an example, you might have capacitors in a console where some are 16v and others 25v but have the same capacitance. As a result, the kit will just come with all 25v rated capacitors that can be used for all of them.

Pretty sure the actual cap #s are silkscreened on the board yes. On the model 1 unit like that shown here, it is only printed on the top side of the board as can been seen in the video. At least they placed the numbers off to the side of the components. Atari had a wonderful habit of putting their silkscreen identifiers within the component section so when the component was installed, that information is obscured by the component itself. For those I have to rely on scans of unpopulated boards so I can verify where a component is exactly.

@@IvoryTowerCollections big oof, Atari - that sounds like a giant hassle..

Using Google Translate so... "Console5.com tiene una wiki con esa información para todas las variantes, creo." wiki.console5.com/wiki/Mega_Drive_/_Genesis#Capacitor_Lists

Console5 pretty much only uses Nichicon and Panasonic whenever possible. Sometimes they will have a Rubicon or other good quality brand if they aren't able to get Nichi or Panni caps in the values they need at the time. They might cost more, but as I don't want or need a large bulk stack of capacitors since I only do this work in my spare time, it is more cost effective to me timewise to just order the ready made kits.

@@IvoryTowerCollections Well at least they use good caps. Regarding time effectiveness, I don't know... There aren't that much caps in genesis. But if it works for you, that's great :)

Well, I mean currently it is only about $6 for the model 1 cap kit. There are over 40 caps that get replaced out in the model 1 units so that is quite a lot of capacitors compared to other consoles I usually work on. So yes, that $6 is worth it to me so that I don't have to buy in large bulk to have to keep on hand somewhere. I really don't get many requests for Sega console work, so it is better for me to just have a few ready to go kits on hand as needed. The irony is that I have a radio hobby shop locally that has capacitors. But they are actually much more expensive as I believe they just buy them in bulk from Mouser or Digi and then mark them up for sale in their shop. But all of that said, I have bought some caps of certain values in bulk that I use for nearly all projects and acquired quite a lot of spares from Console5 kits since their kits tend to cover a variety of models for a console and thus you end up with a few spares in some cases. I keep all of those as I've needed them for other stuff sometimes.

@@IvoryTowerCollections got it. I said so because I was just recapping Genesis 2 va1.8 which has meggamp mod installed (so 7-8 caps already removed) and it was like 15 caps in total I needed to replace. I ordered nichicon and panasonic caps and it only was near 2.5$ shipped for me. But I'm in Ukraine, so price might be different here. In your case it definitely woth it.

I'm not sure the capacitors are to blame in this situation. What other work has been done as one of the first things I check in a situation like this is to make sure that both of the voltage regulators in the Genesis appear to be working properly.

@@IvoryTowerCollections willing to bet it's a voltage regulator. In fact, I think most places that sell re-cap kits include the regulators as well.

@@motleypixel I stated it was likely the regulators but the person that posted that commented never made a followup to let us know what if anything they might have tried.

Well the loud and distorted audio on the front headphone jack of the model 1 is usually due to the volume slider itself going bad. I've had to replace those sliders more than once. Not sure of a source for new ones, so I've resorted to taking them out of va7 model 1 units in the past. But I don't believe that volume rheostat has anything to do with the rear AV out audio port? The first chip I would look at replacing if the volume rheostat isn't the issue would be the 1034 amplifier IC. I state that because there are actually two chips in the system that produce the audio you hear. It would be unlikely for both of them to go bad but they are mixed in that 1034 IC. So, those are my two suggestions would be to look at replacing the volume slider if you can and then the 1034.

Sounds like the soldering iron you used was at much too high a temperature. Having an adjustable temp iron is really quite key to working on not only these older consoles but lots of stuff. I've had this happen when working on Colecovisions years ago because I had the iron temperature set too high. For most of my soldering work, I can usually set my iron to about 325 - 350C. I will use a lower temp if what I'm working on is surface mount or has really small and tiny pads. Depending on the amount of damage done, you can still usually attach the leads of the capacitor to part of the trace that the pad was attached to, have to scrape some of the green solder mask off it to expose the copper on the trace and solder to that, or find the next component in circuit it attaches to from that trace and solder the capacitor leg to that or use lengths of wire to reach as needed.

@@IvoryTowerCollections Really, you are 100% right, my soldering iron have 60w to much high like you said. I think that was pulled of almost 10 islands from motherboard but still with a little material to athach the capacitor there. I will buy one soldering station and set it to work like you do 300-350°C. Thanks a lot for a big help, here in Brasil have peoples that have a big knowlead about it but they dont like share like u do for me!

Look through my about section to contact me and I'm happy to help if I'm able.