Sunday, April 28, 2013

Bunch of SAVAGES!

It is fair to say I enjoy collecting and playing retro game themed plug n play systems, and with the outlet store I've found tons of them. But given the conditions some of the items I find in the outlet store, some of them need a bit of work before they actually work. And today's example needed me to transplant a vital component that I've never had to do before.

This is an Activision TV Games system. Packed inside are 10 classic Activision games from the good old days of video gaming. But you may notice something missing already.

Yes for whatever reason, someone decided it would be a great idea to not only abandon this thing, but snip off the AV cables as well! A pretty vital item for anything that is a "plug n play" system. Being the ever nerdy, adventurous type of guy who never says no to a repair job, I undertook the project.

As you can see above all there was standing between me and repairing this were 6 simple philips head screws. Once inside I desoldered the remnants of wire hanging from the -lucky for me- labeled board. Another lucky thing was that the solder came right off the wires and stuck in the places the new wires needed to go.

After painstakingly removing the leftover wires from the wire guide, I prepared the cheap AV cable set that I happened to find at the outlet store. After all, if I make a mistake I'd much rather screw up a pair of super cheap cables rather than buy a good pair and fucking them all up. But with the wires all prepped and ready to be soldered into place, all I had to do was twist the wires, melt the solder, put the wires in the right place and wait for the solder to dry, how hard could it be?

Well I did make a bit of a mistake on my first attempt, but after a quick rethink and resolder of a couple wires I had everything in correct order. Sure the solder joints are dull, but it matches the rest of the cold solder joints some Chinese kid got paid 100th of a penny per hour to make. So after all my work and toil does it work?

Yes.

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