I recently replaced power connectors on two DSi XLs. Both couldn’t charge, and one worked on the battery while the other didn’t. I replaced the connectors and a dead charging circuit fuse on one of them (only one dead fuse).
Now both are dead, and one only has an orange flashing light like the power fuse is burnt when plugged in, while the other is just … no life.
New Power connectors all beep out just fine for continuity. All fuses beep out just fine. All ribbon cables are seated.
What the hell did I do or fail to do? Any guesses? My soldering was accurate, no stray touches, etc. Just wondering if there’s a common other issue that I might have overlooked beyond power connector & fuse replacement.
As mentioned, fuse was blown on battery board. There was also battery corrosion. Reflowed solder on corroded solder joints, used fiberglass scratch pen to expose traces next to the absent fuse solder pads, and used a wire fragment/solder blob to bridge the gap for testing. It worked. Now need fuses. Overscratch area was covered with clear nail varnish (not visible but it’s there). Someday I’ll get myself some proper solder resist and a UV light.
Three items of note:
(1) the power connector (red/black wire connecting battery board to main board) disconnects by LIFTING the connector out of the socket, not by pulling horizontally.
(2) the D-pad left button didn’t work well. I blasted the rubber pad and external d-pad button with contact cleaner (even though there is no electrical connection involved with these items). There was hardly any dirt, so I didn’t think it would work. Holy shit was I wrong.
(3) the blue power LEDs don’t light. No idea if my board work broke the LEDs or if it happened when the fuse blew.
https://savemii.net/troubleshooting.html
Do you wonder "what is the appropriate goop to use in this repair?" Let's talk about it. First things first:
petroleum based products risk degrading plastic and should not be used
WD-40 is a petroleum based solvent and is not a good lubricant in any situation
Plastic on plastic interfaces (e.g., microswitches in a joystick) can be lubricated with white lithium grease spray
Rosin-containing (amber colored) "no-clean" flux liquid is good for solder rework but HOLY FUCK it is hard to clean up even with IPA
Hot glue is NEVER THE RIGHT CHOICE. Use kapton tape to hold wires and for the love of god if you are doing a mod that adds a port through the case, use a compatible 2 part epoxy or a 3d printed bracket (or hell, a spacer made of paper) to friction fit it, because that glue is going to give way, it's just a matter of when.
Your turn - share your hard earned lessons regarding the right and wrong goops to use in different repair situations.
How long does it take for a properly working Nintendo DSi softmodded with Twilightmenu++/nds-bootstrap to load a game from the SD card? It seems to take nearly a minute to load a game for me. Everything works perfectly, it just seems to take a stupidly long time to get through the nds-bootstrap process (the first load of a game takes the longest, but subsequent loads of that game are only slightly faster).
Meanwhile I have a Nintendo DSlite with a flashcart that is wicked fast to start a game, but the power consumption of the thing in standby mode is out of control to the point that standby mode is essentially unuseable.
Is the trade-off really between stupidly long game loading times if using nds-bootstrap to start a game on the DSi but great power consumption, and wicked fast game loading but terrible battery life on a DSlite with a flashcart? Or is something wrong with my Twilightmenu++/NDS-bootstrap install?
There was no coordinated effort to relocate r/consolerepair to a lemmy community, so we're starting from scratch. The community is open to console repair questions for all generation consoles, as well as functional mods (e.g., ODE/RGB/HDMI mods). Come on over!
@DarthBueller
@lemmy.world