Original PC Engine (White) RGB Amp Installation & Overhaul Guide

[blueraven]

Congrats on that insane repair procedure, that PCE deserves to live after all that. This makes me grateful all I've had to do recently with my white PCE is replace all the capacitors. Strangely, it doesn't have any vertical lines.

Thanks , I had a lot of help with this one, both in chat and on the thread... It does deserve to live! I've put so many hours into it (24? a lot of it banging my head against a wall and not having a multimeter, which I now do) and at this point I'm using it as my main unit. I will play the heck out of it until further notice. Spent an hour or so today with Shubibinman, Ninja Warriors, Atomic Robo Kid and TaleSpin to get back in the Hu-Card groove.

I'll post pics of the graphics from the PVM2030A the next time I edit the post.

No vertical lines? what do you mean by that HuMan?

(Tats would have laughed at this post if he were still around.)

[HuMan]

I hear from others that various PC Engines suffer from vertical lines in the display. In this case, it'd be faint noise that resembles lines or "jailbars". It's more frequent on Famicoms. So far I haven't owned a PCE with that problem, maybe it's my TVs?

[blueraven]

Here is the "Jailbar Fix", that involves installing two capacitors on the back of the board. I had to do that to this unit, I used electrolytic caps instead of SMD's, but you are supposed to use the SMD ceramics. Mine worked out fine, but its not the recommended cap type. If you search for "Jailbar Fix PCE" or something like that you will get a few threads..

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=20347.0

Direct link: http://etim.net.au/av-driver/pcebars/

...A few people here have also come up with their own variation of the repair to fix the issue, or maybe they came up with it first I don't really know.

Good luck with it.