u/hitmanmcc

Got this Game Gear from a friend to fix up. Arrived in a James Martin's Fine & Rare scotch whisky box with three cartridges, which was a first.

Condition on arrival: power LED only, nothing else. No display, no audio. The external PSU had a masking tape bodge over a broken wire joint at the cable, and exposed wires shoved underneath the battery terminals inside the case, a proper fire hazard. Inside, a dead fuse was preventing the backlight from running, cold solder joints at the power jack, and caps failing on the main board and audio board.

Cleaned all boards with a vinegar dip followed by IPA rinse, recapped the main board and audio/power boards, replaced the CCFL backlight, hit the button contacts with Deoxit. Later found broken vias on the audio board ground plane that were killing the audio output and bridged them with multi-strand wire.

Running The Lion King fine now.

Full writeup: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/game-gear-shenanigans

Got a Sony BVM-9045QD from Japan. Right away it was showing a problem I had seen before on another Sony: an entire color channel gone. Color bar test confirmed red was completely missing.

Diagnosis was faster than expected. A single broken solder joint on the neckboard was all it was. Reflowed it and red came straight back.

Then came the cleaning. Every board was yellowed and coated in nicotine and dust. Went through the whole thing: PSU had a bulging cap so the board got a full recap; deflection board caps replaced and joints reflowed; color board reflowed; red dropped out again mid-testing so the input board connections needed reflowing too; anode cap got dielectric grease.

450 TVL and crisp color on the other side of all that. Tested on N64, Mega Drive, and SNES.

Full writeup: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/bvm-9045qd-restoration

Got three Sony PVM-9040 9-inch Trinitrons from Japan, for 14€. Customs decided to hold the shipment and charge €47 in storage and inspection fees on top of everything. One arrived with a dent in the shell too.

Bigger issue: all three were showing only black and white. Known problem on these, trim potentiometers go out of spec and kill color. Replaced the trimpots, added ceramic caps, and color came back on all three. Then went through all the deflection boards properly: pulled several dead electrolytic caps across the three units, reflowed the neckboard joints on each one.

All three are solid now. Tested with Zelda OoT and SM64.

Full writeup with more detail and photos: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/pvm-9040-the-triplets

Both displays had the classic ribbon cable failure - screen lines across the image. Replaced them with a Virtual Ribbon 4.0 kit from SegaSonicFan (available through Stone Age Gamer).

The included soldering jig is single-sided, it only clamps on one side, so pressure is uneven across the contact pads. The fix was to lean the PCBs off the edge of the workmat with the lens assemblies hanging off the table, which distributes the load properly. Took patience but both ribbons went down clean.

Also fitted a Repair Box replacement stand. It arrived with the clip and spring detached from shipping, but reassembled without issues.

Clear picture on the first boot.

Full thread: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/virtual-boy-refurbishment-and-modding

Both displays had the classic ribbon cable failure - screen lines across the image. Replaced them with a Virtual Ribbon 4.0 kit from SegaSonicFan (available through Stone Age Gamer).

The included soldering jig is single-sided, it only clamps on one side, so pressure is uneven across the contact pads. The fix was to lean the PCBs off the edge of the workmat with the lens assemblies hanging off the table, which distributes the load properly. Took patience but both ribbons went down clean.

Also fitted a Repair Box replacement stand. It arrived with the clip and spring detached from shipping, but reassembled without issues.

Clear picture on the first boot.

Full thread: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/virtual-boy-refurbishment-and-modding

Six threads across three years. Motherboard had damaged traces and deteriorated through-hole plating. Recapped everything and bridged the traces, but a missed connection to a ceramic cap near C36 was still causing reboot loops. Fixed that, then hit a dead laser, so picked up a whole second FZ-1 just for its drive.

Street Fighter II as the first test after the laser swap. Had some CD-R media headaches along the way (Verbatim rejected, Philips worked fine). Eventually built and installed a mini 3DO ODE (TZMWXdiyer design), then added a 3D-printed SD card extender (humblebazooka) that routes through the AV expansion bay, no need to crack it open to swap games.

DOOM, Gex, Another World, Street Fighter II Turbo all running off the ODE.

Full log: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/panasonic-fz-1-restoration-and-modding-the-first

Picked up a Sega Mega-CD 1 that had been sitting for too long. Opened it up and found every single capacitor had leaked, all three boards. Pulled the lot, then ran everything through the ultrasonic cleaner.

Recap done, but it didn't fix everything, first power-on worked, then it started freezing on the BIOS animation every subsequent cycle. Traced it to the optical pickup: completely dead. Ordered a KSS-240A.

While waiting for the laser, installed an ML2032 coin cell holder on the mainboard, no more disposable batteries. Also fully stripped and re-lubed the CD mechanism with Molykote while it was all apart.

New pickup went in and it booted clean first try. Added a region unlock USA BIOS while I had it open.

First boot test: AX-101. Then Final Fight CD and Lunar. All good.

Full log: https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/sega-mega-cd-1-restoration-the-second

Picked up a Sega Nomad that had been "repaired" before. It came in with a wobbly aftermarket LCD causing a wavy picture and distorted audio. I thought it would be a simple fix.

What I found when I opened it:

The screen was glued in with hot glue. The insulation between the screen and the board? A literal crumpled piece of napkin. Whoever had it before also left a factory bodge wire detached from a capacitor and a bunch of poor solder joints on the screen wiring — which promptly broke during disassembly.

Thread 1 — Screen and initial cap work:

• Reattached the factory bodge wire to the cap it had come off of
• Binned the napkin, replaced with kapton tape
• Replaced the cap the wire had detached from
• Resoldered the broken screen connections
• Picture stabilized and audio came back — though the aftermarket screen still has that inherent smeary quality they all seem to have. Not a lot you can do about that.

Thread 2 — More cap trouble:
Found two more electrolytics with legs that could be wiggled freely, zero actual bond to the board. Cleaned up the power jack joints too. Tested with Castlevania: Bloodlines on a Sony PVM and it passed.

Thread 3 — Audio restoration mod:
The Nomad famously drops Master System and Mega-CD audio. Did the mod: 10µF caps and 10kΩ resistors on each channel. Tested with Hang-On and Streets of Rage 2 (MSU-enhanced ROM). Both sounding correct.

Thread 5 (2023) — Full recap:
Came back to this one the following year for full maintenance, the removed caps had a smell. Did a full electrolytic replacement using the twist method, no pad damage, clean removal all round.

Thread 6 (2025) — Battery pack:
Finally, installed a PointerFunction aftermarket battery pack. Internal lighting, USB power, takes 18650 cells. Major quality of life upgrade for a handheld that was otherwise permanently tethered to a wall adapter.

The Nomad is now almost certainly in better condition than it left the factory. Bare Knuckle II (Streets of Rage 2) on the Mega Everdrive Pro as the final victory test.

Helped a friend pull his PVM-14L1 from "composite + S-video" into the RGB era. Wrote it up properly with all the photos here:

https://hitmanmcc.com/entry/pvm-14l1-rgb-mod

Quick rundown of what's in the post:

• Maintenance first. Pulled the neck board, cleaned the tube pins (IPA → Deoxit → fiberglass pen for the oxidation), recapped the neck board, reflowed every joint, fresh dielectric grease on the anode cap.
• RGB board is based on Martin Hejnfelt's design over at immerhax.com — pulled RGB + GND + blanking off the chroma-cap legs (after lifting the MLCCs), 1K resistor on the blanking line.
• SCART input via a breakout board. Audio + composite sync routed back to the input board with heat-shrink joints. Service menu set to RGB on Line B.
• 3D-printed enclosure to house the SCART connector. Couldn't get the exact switch I wanted locally so I bent the outer pins on what I had and ran wires off them — works fine.
• Tested on a Sega Nomad running Castlevania and Streets of Rage. Looks the way a 14" PVM is supposed to look.

Photos + the full step-by-step are on the blog. Happy to answer anything in the comments.

This LT came in non-functional. Powered on but displayed nothing.

Cap electrolyte had leaked all around the 5V regulator and power input jack with corrosion above and below the board. Vinegar to neutralize, ultrasonic clean, full recap, fuse swap. Then the M5291FP 6.5V regulator turned out to be dead, swapped that. Then the T500 transformer had a broken output wire on the negative voltage rail for the LCD. Repaired that in an interesting way.

As voltages weren't right in certain places, so I looked up a replacement voltage inversion and boost circuit and fitted it into a recess in the shell.

Now displaying games correctly. Street Fighter II running in the final photos.

Full thread-by-thread breakdown with all 22 images and the diagnosis at each step: hitmanmcc.com/entry/pc-engine-lt-necromancy

This Beovision 1 was acquired for my collection. After a few weeks of light use, powered it up and within seconds it started fizzing and emitting visible smoke. Picture and audio kept working perfectly throughout the smoke show, which was unusual enough to warrant a proper investigation rather than just unplugging it and walking away.

After ESR-testing every cap on the chassis, went on a few side quests like, reflowing the neck board and SCART joints, cleaning the CRT pin connectors with DeoxIT, and checking the HOT and the diodes. I finally tracked the smell to an X2 safety cap on the mains side that had gone supernova at some point. Massive thermal damage to the cap itself, but no charring, arcing, or visible damage to anything else on the main board. Other caps tested clean.

Replaced with a KEMET (over-spec rating since I had one on hand), cleaned the PCB debris field where the dead cap had been, and disconnected the Velocity Scan Modulation circuit while I was in there. Picture is actually noticeably better now than it was before the smoke incident.

Full thread-by-thread breakdown with all 23 photos, the ESR readings and the full diagnostic path: hitmanmcc.com/entry/beovision-1-magic-smoke

Picked this PVM-14M4J up for €37 with the classic retrace lines and a completely missing blue channel.

Most of the work was a Savon Pat cap kit on the C board, a full PSU recap, and reflowing the C and A boards. The dead blue turned out to be a cracked solder joint at the KB pin on the tube neck.

Halfway through I gave myself a solder bridge on the main board that killed sync. Took me longer than I'd like to admit to find that one.

800TVL of clean color now.

Full thread-by-thread breakdown with all the images and test patterns: hitmanmcc.com/entry/sony-pvm-14m4j-trash-to-treasure