Safe to operate TG-16 without metal casing?

[Tupin]

I just took all of the metal casing off my TG-16 to get an idea of what the cart pins looked like in person, is is really necessary to have this casing? I noticed that something related to power seemed to need it, maybe the heat sink? I think I can take the heat sink of the shielding, though.

[Tupin]

Any advice? I tried it for a few minutes and noticed that the power thing gets hot in the absence of a heat sink, I don't want it to overheat...

[Tatsujin]

http://www.techterms.com/definition/heatsink

[Tupin]

I guess I'll put the shielding back on...

[D-Lite]

You could remove the shielding as long as you leave that heat sink.  Use some aviation shears and cut that part out.

[nodtveidt]

Definitely leave the heat sink on the 7805, but the shielding itself can be removed. My unit doesn't have it, and it runs just fine.

[Arkhan]

the shielding is usually useless for the most part....

in nearly every computer/console I have ever taken them out of.

but if there are heatsinks attached, they need to stay.

They are not useless


some C64 models used the shielding as a heatsink, and it was strange.

[nodtveidt]

I had a C64 that had a shield over the VIC-II with a heatsink "strip" attached to it, then thermal compound on the chip which was supposed to bind it to the heatsink strip. I don't know if that was common or not.

[Arkhan]

yeah some of the revisions had that, and the thermal goop was all goopy and hilarious.


The original shielding was silver spraypainted cardboard, and all it did was trap in heat and f*ck your chips up

[kattare]

It's not a safety issue, so if it runs well enough for you with it off, it's fine.

It's there to protect the unit from outside EM interference and to protect other devices from any EM interference the TG might generate.

Usually the EM interference is harmless, but sometimes it'll mess with the picture.

[Arkhan]

and even then, you only really notice EMF nonsense with consoles if you are using RF

[ApolloBoy]

I just wanted to add that I removed the shielding on my TG-16 and it's suffered no ill effects whatsoever. The picture quality through RF is a bit fuzzier, but I use it with a TG-CD so it doesn't matter.

[nat]

Anyone using RF in 2010 needs a, uh, kick in the nuts or something.