Game Gear recap-madcap.

Not the worst Sega Game Gear I'd ever seen, but was already prepared for the smell of removing these old caps (the blocky rectangular black and beige things above). They stink of fish. 

I recapped with surface mount ceramic caps, much smaller surface area than the originals, will never leak, and you can't mess up polarisation with them. 

I did go back and retouch some of the soldering afterward, as I ended up removing the dead fluorescent bulb, and trying an LED backlight mod, which you can see below, running Golden Axe Warrior on Master system (I was testing with an AliExpress flash cart.)

note the pink line on the right side and no power LED. I went back to fix that, and things just got uglier and messier, which is common with these old screens. So... This project is officially going to get a proper modern screen, likely a hispeedido. Update on that later. 

Long time. bit distracted between kids and delivery job.

Today, Colton brought me five pokemon gen 2 carts. 4 needing replacement batteries. One... The very expensive Crystal version, that was booting to a black screen. 

There was some tiny issues with the board. Which I cleaned. I started poking the pins to check for continuity to the chips, and found all traces had perfect continuity. Noticed a few suspect looking solder points though. So reflowed the chips with my Atten 862D, and... We have life. (Shoved it into my Hamtaro Shell to test)

Sorted the other carts out with their battery mods, and all was good!