Hi everyone. I signed up for the pcenginefx.com boards just to make this post. I wanted to thank everyone (especially d-lite, Duo-R and nat) for their hard work and many hours spent fiddling around inside their Turbo Duos. Because of their efforts, and this thread specifically, I've managed to fix the audio in my Turbo Duo all by my lonesome!
Now, I've played around with circuit-bending cheap Casio keyboards before, but that's all the experience with soldering I've ever had before now - and it was pretty shitty quality. (If I fried one, no big whoop. It was only a dollar at the thrift store!) However, when the sound in my Duo went out, I decided to get a little more serious because I was going to
do this myself, dammit! I've never opened up a console before, let alone ripped out capacitors and soldered new ones in, so it was a little daunting at first. Nevertheless, I ordered the 4.5mm gamebit, hit up the local Radio Shack, rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
In the interest of science (heh) and to add, however insignificantly, to the general base of knowledge, here's how the whole thing went down. I should mention the circumstances. My Duo is a September 1992 model that I got off eBay (no, not from GameSquadStore!
) a few months ago. It played beautifully up until last week when the sound went scratchy (ADPCM
and CD audio) and eventually went out altogether.
I also feel I should mention, maybe just for myself, that I got the TG-CD for Christmas the year it first came out. Yeah, the one that was 400 freakin' dollars and came with a CD+G disc with Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and Little Feat's "Representing the Mambo" and maybe some other songs. (Incidentally, I
never hear this CD+G disc mentioned on the interwebs.) God bless my mom for that. Anyway, I still have the TG16 itself (with stickers all over it), but have long since lost all the CD hardware.
ANYWAY......
Day 1: The gamebit finally came in (actually it only took three days to get here), so I went to Radio Shack and bought two 10uF capacitors, hoping that replacing the two "post op-amp" caps would do the trick. Performed the very first desoldering job of my life, put in the new caps, put the system back together and tried it. Nothing. I should note that neither of these caps had leaked. Cried myself to sleep. (Not really.)
Day 2a: Decided to go ahead and replace the three "pre amp" caps. Bought two 10uF and two 22uF caps (just to have an extra). Cracked her open again and replaced the three caps. This time, the original 22uF cap
did have leaky electrolytic goop under it. I cleaned it up with some isopropyl alcohol before soldering the new one on. Put her back together and tried it. Now I had ADPCM sound, but no CD audio. At least now I knew I was doing
something right.
Day 2b: Came back again to this very thread to see where to go now. Came upon Duo-R's post about the
other 22uF cap that Raven had mentioned and decided to have a go at it since I had a spare 22uF cap. Lo and behold, it had leaked as well. Cleaned it up, replaced it, and crossed my fingers that it would do the trick. I really don't have enough confidence in my skills (or time) to perform a complete cap replacement, so it
had to do the trick! It just had to, dammit! Well, the Turbo Gods smiled down upon me that night (last night, actually) because this time all of the sound worked. Crystal clear and
kick ass! Of course, Lords of Thunder was the tester CD.
So I just wanted to say thanks, guys. I've tried a bunch of other games on it since last night and it's still doing great. Thanks to this thread and the people in it, another Duo was saved from the scrap heap and I got a little console repair experience under my belt. Good show, everyone!
