Picked up a dead Sega Genesis at a garage sale for $5

Found this Sega Genesis at a yard sale in Austin last Saturday, looked clean but no power at all. Opened it up and saw some corroded traces near the power jack from an old leaky capacitor. Cleaned it up with vinegar and a toothbrush, replaced the cap with one from a donor board I had laying around. Fired right up and played Sonic for 20 minutes straight. Anyone else find good luck fixing retro consoles with just a basic cap swap?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona13025d ago

Oh come on, is it really that simple? I've seen people act like replacing a capacitor is brain surgery or something. Sure, maybe you got lucky with a visual issue on the power jack, but most dead Genesis boards have bad solder joints on the voltage regulator or a fried 7805 from someone plugging in the wrong power supply. I fixed one last month where the issue was a cracked solder joint on the cart slot that took me an hour to find with a multimeter. Cap swaps are fine for leaky caps but acting like it's the universal fix kind of ignores all the other common failures like dead RAM chips or bad cartridge connectors.

rileyl6725d ago

Oh man, @fiona130 you totally nailed it. I had a Genesis 2 last year that drove me nuts - perfect voltage at the 7805, clean caps, but nothing on screen. Turned out to be a hairline crack on one of the trace legs under the cartridge slot. Took me three days and a scope to finally catch it. Cap swaps are like the first thing everyone screams but half the time the problem is something stupid like a dirty switch or a broken pin. I've also killed a couple of 7805s myself from testing with the wrong brick, so yeah, that one's a real common killer too.