Trying to REPAIR a Nintendo GameCube - Black Screen - No Disc Spin 

Spoiler Saver I'm definitely buying a lottery ticket this week!!!!!!

I’m so glad you were able to fix it! My only explanation was the storage container it was stored in last year got pretty damp over the winter, so perhaps some condensation got in there and corroded that little spot on the board! Great video as always, thanks Vince!

What did I just see. Never have I seen a repair like that. Vince your mind works in a unique way. Keep it up.

That’s amazing. At first when I saw the drill I thought “oh no, man, that’s probably a multi-layered board” but the location of the via being right along the side of the cpu was perfect. Can’t believe this worked, that’s incredible, great job! BTW, first time commenting but been watching your vids for years. I love how you go all the way - you have to find the fault or it keeps you up at night. A lot of other people would just give up and say it’s not economical to fix, but you … you are a different breed my friend. Thanks for the entertainment. Cheers from Canada!

Miracle indeed! After seeing the mess from the drill, I thought no way is this working. Well, you showed me. Unbelievable

I'm speechless... I thought you'd ruined it for good. You are, at this point, *a mad tinkerer!* BONUS INFO: Capacitors and inductors have non-static resistance. When performing the continuity test on a capacitor, you will have a brief moment of very low resistance while the capacitor charges up. As it charges up, however, the resistance will increase, meaning at some point the resistance goes above the continuity cutoff. This leads to a beep-to-silence continuity behavior. When performing the continuity test on an inductor, it will at first appear to be open (or very high resistance). But as electricity begins to flow through the inductor, the resistance goes *down,* eventually leading to a situation where the resistance falls *below* the continuity cutoff. This leads to a silence-to-beep continuity behavior. Thus, you can sometimes determine what the component is by the way the multimeter beeps: Constant beep: Low-resistance resistor. Constant silence: High-resistance resistor. Beep-to-silence: Capacitor. Silence-to-beep: Inductor. Not all of them will behave that way, however: If the capacitance of a capacitor is too low, you won't hear the initial beep, thus appearing as a high-resistance component. If the inductance of an inductor is too low, the beep will begin immediately, thus appearing as a low-resistance component. In other words: Beep-to-silence or silence-to-beep *almost always signify* it's a capacitor or inductor (respectively). There may be some special non-standard components that exhibit these behavior, but I don't know _that_ much about electronics. Constant silence or constant beep *doesn't necessarily signify* a high-resistance or low-resistance resistor; it may simply be a capacitor or inductor (respectively) with a very low capacitance or very low inductance (respectively).

Unbelievable. I honestly thought you would throw in the towel. The joy in your voice when it worked. Amazing

Not going to lie I was kind of livid when you started drilling like a mad man. I thought you had killed the board for good. What an amazing result!

Hey Vince, you were "on the ball" with this one 😂😂😂😂 Nice job. I wasn't confident that it would work but it appears that it did! Well done 👍

A miraculous bodge job! The perseverance and patience of Job.

I have a "part finished" of the exact same issue - on this one here I removed the CPU to fix the trace, OMG is it the most painful thing to re-fit the CPU... I need to try and motivate myself to re-try fitting it again... Totally amazed you managed to fix this after drilling through the layers lol!!! A "just before Christmas" Miracle =D Great work Vince!!! It shows that determination sometimes beats all the odds! I think if that proves to be reliable over hours of testing - it could be sold as a working Gamecube - other than how large that hole was, you've joined up what needs joining (properly) and secured it properly. So its a fix that should be reliable imho.

wow when I saw that hole in this several layers board i really had no hope for it working in the end that's really a miracle :D :) vince did a great job there ;D have a good day whoever's reading this...

What a fix. I would have given up on that completely once the via was no more. Well done Vince!

root canal treatment on the board... well done for the fix Vince!

You are one of a kind Vince, you drill a big hole through the PCB, and when you did, i said for myself, "you fucked it up Vince, just swallow the pill and give up"! And still, you manage to find the very right ball an get it to work! Am amazed! Great job!❤ /L

Tut Tut Tut, The old saying, "Measure Twice, Cut Once!". You never checked before drilling, there is a moral to be learnt here :D

That thumbnail looks so cool 😀 The upgrades on this channel make me glad that I watched your videos for 5 years One video that I’m thankful of you making is the video 6 years ago of a tutorial called *How to set up a Nintendo Switch* (because when my mum bought me a switch, I had no idea how to work it because the last Nintendo console I used was a dsi from 2009 lol)

I can't believe that actually worked, Vince! Wow. How lucky is that. Would poking a wire through the damaged via and heating it with the soldering iron perhaps have worked? I would imagine it would poke through to the ball and perhaps solder to it? Would perhaps have saved the drill. That drill looked so terrifying under the microscope. :O

Vince, that was some excellent PCB digging you did there. Great job and a very fun video to watch. Concerning the corrupted SD cards: Always be sure to shutdown your microscope before you power it off by holding the Standby button on the front pressed. It've heard of it corrupting files when power just cuts out (e.g. by switching it off using the cord-power-control of the lamp for instance). I do have an Andonstar microscope myself and keep on forgetting to shut it down propely from time to time myself.

I was cringing the whole time you were drilling.. Can't believe it worked out!! Great job!

Well done Vince your persistence paid off, a good thing to remember you can’t break something that doesn’t work ☺️ Keep up the good work

Hi Vince that was incredibly difficult to repair, well done 👍

Well kudos for having the nuts to try this method of repair. You've shown people who are curious and don't have the knowledge what mistakes can be made when trying to fault find. But that said it wasn't working so nothing would have been lost, but you did it! The best option would have been to push a wire down without drilling and try to solder it in place. If this didn't work then maybe drilling would have been a last ditch attempt - as I am sure you realised. You were incredibly lucky not to totally destroy interlayer connections or short pins on the underside of the BGA chip when you flowed solder through the hole you made. You could do that 100 times with disastrous results before it actually worked as a fix on one item. I'm so happy it worked for you. Maybe being careful on this occasion would not have worked as the through-hole seemed to be totally corroded.

I'm legit impressed that you managed to get it working after making a huge mistake it just goes to show sometimes it does pay not to give up.

You crazy madman! Congratz!

Another awesome video. I thought for sure you had bodged the whole thing up drilling that hole, but you succeeded! Best wishes from the USA. Keep up the great work.

Vince! I’m always ready to watch you work on stuff; especially retro consoles. Keep up the good work brother! 👍

Wow!!...full of twists and turns, literally. I loved to see the laser. Also, you were real lucky there heheh!.

I'm surprised it worked out (and glad it did so) but I admit I was mortified when you took the drill to the board😅 I personally might have explored the other side under the heat sink first. PS: I don't trust SanDisk cards any longer, after going through a number of failures...

Insane! Seldom have I felt more uncomfortable watching a video than seeing you drilling a "huge" hole through the board and I thought there was no way it could work so what a surprise to see that Gamecube screen come up! I think I was almost as excited as you were when it worked.

Wow, good job, we really interesting to see the laser move around 🎉

Painstaking to watch with no flux the suspense is killing me and I'm not trying to be sarcastic I love your videos

Crying at the screen while u trying to solder dry ass solder to the bga flux, flux, flux 😂

I can't believe that worked, i thought for sure, you had hit some wires in the other layers in the board. But glad it worked out!!!

To chime in with what other folks are saying about sd cards, there are high endurance sd cards for cameras if you weren't aware. They're slightly more expensive, slightly slower, but designed to record tens of thousands of hours of video without failing.

Good job Vince. Perseverance paid off.

That was absolutely crazy! Nice work! Kudos!

Nice fix Vince! While you should have tried to get the heatsink off the outcome was still good and at the same time lucky. The fact the chip balls are spaced so much helped a lot.

What a nice repair I didnt even notice that until I saw it in the close image and saw something that looked off and you spotted it as well

Amazing job Vince. Well Done 🤩🤩🤩

That was a LUCKY fix! Nice.

Interesting fix 👍 good job

Dude that was suuuuuuuper sketchy, I love it!

Vince - that was INCREDIBLE!!

I have to be honest here and thought you destroyed that board BUT, Great Job Vince!!!

crazy repair !! but excellent video as always

Now that was a stunning repair. I actually held my breath when the wire stuck and you measured it. Drilling through a board to get a wire on the ball, ballsy move Vince.

Great repair, I thoroughly enjoyed the video, thank you for taking the time to make it and posting it.

Brilliant fix Vince. Well done 🎉

Chip off 100%. And Vince, you can sell this as working even with that fix. Just mention that in auction. I have bought consoles from Ebay u.k that was sold as mint but was damaged. The worst was a Amiga CD32 that was sold as in great condition. Did get it to Sweden and first thing i saw was that the whole console was glued shut with super glue. Seller acting like ”oh i did not know that”. Seller was a retrogame seller at Ebay so he knew. Then when i startup the CD32 there was graphic glitches that he did not know either. So now i was not able to fix that problem (cap replacement) without break the whole console cover. Anyways, keep up the great videos Vince. Greets from Sweden❤

Wow.. I wouldn't even dream about the Game Cube has a multi layer Board.. also a really nice and also really lucky fix.

@Mymatevince About your microscope: Clean/Check the ySD card slot for contact issues. The Microscope is getting hit by heat, dust, smoke and shit and SD cards react strange when having contact issues. And since you remove and insert the card frequently you "clean" the contacts a little, so it starts working again for some time. About the fix. Great fix! I love it, when the brutal way is the best way to fix stuff. :D

Great job, Vince

Video game repairs! Back to the roots.

You haven't ended up buying a fake SD card have you? It's what it sounds like to me. Even places like Amazon are riddled with them. Usually state to be a certain capacity but is normally only 1/4 or so of what's stated. Once it reaches actual capacity the files just delete/overwrite themselves and come out corrupted. You can use something like H2testw to find out/test it's capacity.

Well done. Amazing fix!

AMAZING VIDEO as always!! Keep up the great videos coming!!!

Awesome vid! The grid of vias that you see are unlikely to be the location of the actual ball on the IC. They are adjacent to the balls and allow the signals to immediately connect out to the other PCB layers. If the balls were on top of the vias, the solder would likely wick down the hole and cause a bad ball connection.

Utilizing a setup with split screen (video´s mid section) is greatly beneficial when microscoping. I’d personally never considered to work an a PCB with a drill, but hey, Indiana, well done!

Hope the Rolls - Royce going tru the inspektion on OMT ! You have done a greth work on this !!,👍👍👍👍👍

Amazing fix! I was fully expecting a mess of corrosion under the heatsink. If the SD card woes continue, it might be worth getting a microscope you can capture from externally via HDMI/USB and trying that instead.

Stunning work Vince.

That was an awesome fix, I would have tried going from the side with an small wire first and trying to melt it with an hot air gun + lots of flux and if that would have failed i would reball it as i'm trying to learn reballing abit atm

Great fix. Well done. A quick fix for solder-masking, is to run over it with your air gun after applying the uv light.

I’ve gotta admit Vince, a bit of me died when you were drilling in to the motherboard.

Holy smokes! Unbelievable. I assume you immediately bought lottery tickets?! Nice one Vince. I agreed with the approach but figured it may or may not work. How could I have doubted you oh master? Thoroughly entertaining.

Nice Vince! That was an excellent find and repair. I was worried a little when I saw you drilling it out but success at the end is all that matters.

I'm going out this morning but I'll make sure to watch when I get back home keep it up mate

Just some advice for the future when repairing these, the metal heatsink is always the trickiest bit but it's actually really easy. Just stick a small screwdriver in there and pry up. You might have to do it on both sides but I've only had to pry up on one in my few times opening gamecubes. It's perfectly safe but there are thermal pads under there that you may need to replace before using the gamecube heavily. Happy repairing!

Haha 😂😂 I'm happy to see your caveman tactics worked. Just drill a hole through 4 layers and solder everything that will fix it. 😅

“Touch of corrosion “ would be a great metal band name😁

I suspect board corrosion like that is leftover contaminates from the factory, slowly eating away. I'm sure they use some water wash flux and I guess that could show the importance of thorough washing.

Vince, when using SD cards, in cameras, after filming, pull the data off the card, then reformat the card. Each and every time, this resets the file allocation table. When you erase from a card, it leaves the FAT alone, and that can corrupt your files.

If you ever do something like this again, I’d recommend getting a grinding pen, it’s for drilling thru pcbs, and for scratching solder mask off traces/vias. Might work better and be cleaner than using a drill. Awesome to see that you got it working :)

Cool fix. Interesting how it corroded in just one tiny spot in the storage. Maybe that spot had some manufacturing defect even before putting it in storage, making it more prone for corrosion?

Hi Vince, I gotta say that was a nice fix. Cracking job! You might want to try sd cards from Transcend. I've never had any problems with their SD cards even in very cold conditions. Worth a punt. Since SanDisk was sold to Western Digital, I've noticed their QC (quality control) has dropped significantly. I've had many failed micro sd cards and full size sd cards unfortunately.

It's crazy. following your video, I found some corrosion on my gamecube on the same area, almost the same spot.

Very ingenuitive fix 👏 and a great video as always!

What a crazy repair great job

Awesome repair vid!

Vince, it wasn't a pretty repair job, but it worked! ....a Hail Mary success!👏👏

You're a mad man, Vince. Glad you got her Gamecube working. That was a great idea and a considerable amount of bravery.

Man, I think you killed the board 😂😂😂 just amazing 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

My wife just ask why is the bip bip guy is having a yellow map now😂😂

Nobodys perfect vince 😀 great vids inc the roller keep up the great work 😀

You rolled a D20 and landed perfectly XD

generally on a 4 layer pcb it'll be signal-vcc-gnd-signal in terms on layer order

hya Vince, love your videos, but i have to say that every time i hear the jingle that starts your videos, im reminded of the Head and Shoulers ad "I didnt know you had dandruff...I dont." song. So good luck getting that out of your head.

Just a quick one vince. If your microscope has a USB port you should be able to capture its output "live" on a laptop and record it. Saves the hassle and faff that comes with SD cards.

Great fix!

Love your videos! May I ask where you purchased your desoldering gun? I would like to purchase one like it. Thanks

Great video, thank you!

Good discovery, though the drill made me weep. Loving the colour-coordination, can we expect to see yellow top, blue mat or yellow and blue-striped top, red mat? Maybe an NF (non-flimsy) microscope for Christmas?

Lol good ole Vince, making a complete mess of something relatively routine once again.

Always great content Vince 😁

For the amount of butchery on this one... you definitely have all the reasons to punch the air haha. Great save!

One Word - Legendary!!

With regards to your microscope currupting. I run my scope through a capture card in to the PC and use obs to record what I'm doing. Might save you some time and you can have your scope in to a big screen making it easier to see. 😁

Great Work!

Vince. Love you, bro. But look up some teardown videos before you work on these popular consoles.