V-System Aero Fighters Repair Log

As many of the people who know me personally might have discovered, I'm a big fan of the shmups made by Psikyo and V-System. So I was very pleased when I was able to snap up a cheap original defective Aero Fighters on evilBay };-P The listing text said "only small graphic error during play", and already when unpacking the PCB from the box, I got a strong feeling of what might be wrong with this poor PCB.

It had a corner full of rot (corrosion)!

And at the bottom of the box, I found this

the main smoothing cap for the 12V rail. However, I tried to connect the board anyhow, to see how much damage this rot made to the actual game.

Many of the graphic elements in the intro and in-game, had stripes through them. This is often caused by poor pin connection on either RAM or ROM ICs. The ICs in the rotten area are MASK-ROMs, so I was pretty sure I'd found the culprit causing these errors. So I decided on desoldering the 2 MASK-ROMs with the "V-System"-logo on the silk screen.

I can't say that the sight that met me underneath the desoldered ICs was pretty }:-S So I started by giving that part of the PCB a good scrub with rubbing alcohol

and a toothbrush

That actually did fix up the PCB a lot, but it didn't remove all the rot

Now I didn't quite know what to use, but I had this can of WD40 };-P

So I sprayed the infected area, waited about 5mins to let it work, and then started rubbing the individual circuit tracks with a swap.

After that I gave it a good scrub with rubbing alcohol and tooth brush again, as WD40 is oil based, and that actually made the area look a lot better };-D
Next I went through the area with my continuity tester checking the tracks, and found two broken. Both of them were at places where the track had a via on it, and then only one end made proper connection. So I carefully scraped a bit in the via holes with a Stanley knife, uncovering a little bit of copper. I then took a piece of kynar and stuck into the via hole from the parts side, used a lot of liquid flux

and soldered it into the via hole from both sides

The other ends of the kynar, I just stuck into the normal PCB holes.

That way, they'd get soldered in place automagicly, when I soldered in the sockets for the MASK-ROMs };-D And here is the final result, with the sockets (header strips) fitted

and from the solder side

Hard to see just how rotten this corner was just a while ago };-P The MASK-ROMs themselves, also had a scrub with WD40 and rubbing alcohol, and actually ended up looking quite decent.

As a last thing, I needed to fit a new smoothing cap for the 12V rail. I didn't have one as big as 2200uF, so I dug up the biggest one I could find

and just fitted that

And last but not least: The Big Test };-P

I'm very pleased to say, that game now plays perfectly; one more original V-System shmup added to the collection };-P

V-System Turbo Force Repair Log

Now I did do a mock-up of this somewhat easy repair with just some hook-up wires a few months ago, but always had a feeling that it could be done nicer. And now it just bugged me so much, that I had to do it...and why not make a log for others to see, I thought };-D

Got this original Turbo Force as untested in a larger batch of untested boards.

It wouldn't do anything just black screen and no sound.
This construction immediately caught my eye; the sub board had a loose wire hanging from it.

And when I pulled the sub board from it's socket, I saw that the thin bit were broken off of 2 of the pins

and one of the pieces were still stuck i the socket.

I managed to remove that with 2 needles and alot of patience.

Now my first plan was to saw a bit of the 2 broken pins and pacthing them with 2 pins of header strip by soldering them on.

But I must have been too eager when sawing and wiggled the pins too much, cause they broke off at the end soldered to the sub board, also taking the pin beside them in the fall with them };-(
So that plan was out. I then remembered that I had a strip of these from a batch of scraped components I got from a shop once

I straitened 3 of them out and pulled them out of the socket. Cleaned the holes on the sub board, soldered them in, and cut them down to the right lenght.

Now I had to deal with the loose wire. Putting the sub board back in place, the lenght of the wire gave my an obvious radius on the board to investigate. I quickly found a pin on a socketed IC with a blob of solder on it

Tried connecting the board just pressing the wire against this pin, and viola:

Now I soldered the wire on

Case closed.

Actually it's a great vert shmup only using 1 button; smart bombs can be picked up, but are fired immediately upon pick up. The board also have a molex for a 3th controller so you could play 3 players simultaneously; I'd like to have a try at that some day };-P