Solved! SNES recap gone wrong. How to trouble shoot? No boil

[Issac Zachary]

Well. I give up. I think I'm going to call my project a good way to break a perfectly good SNES.

I very carefully tried to follow exactly what Voultar did. I used a hot air gun and carefully took off each surface mount capacitor. I cleaned up the whole board with IPA and a tooth brush and then rinsed the board in IPA. I checked each pad for damage and could find any. I replaced all the capacitors with the kit from Console 5. I made extra sure I used the right capacitors in the right places. I was very careful when soldering everything together. I used a multimeter to make sure all the capacitors were connected to something, somewhere on the board. I cleaned the board with IPA and tooth brush and rinsed it again. I let it dry good. I put all the RF shields and such back on before starting it up (I just don't have the case's top on).

I can't find anything wrong with it. I have no idea what I messed up or how. I also replaced the voltage regulator with one from Console 5. The power brick is putting out the correct voltage and has a new capacitor from Console 5 as well.

And it still won't start. No screen. No sound. Nothing.

Edit:

Wait a second! It started working after a while...

This is kind of what it has doen before. It won't start until I've left it on for a while. Then it works. In the past it has also stopped working after up to around 10 minutes of play. I'll keep trying it. Maybe it's fixed. Maybe I just needed to let the power capacitors fill up or something.

Anyhow... I don't know. I'm afraid it's still not fixed.

I also have a new crystal oscilator from Console 5 that I could also throw in. Would that help?

[jamisonia]

My technique was to twist the surface mount caps back and forth until they snapped off.

Don't ever do this. This is how I know you have lifted pads and probably traces.

[Issac Zachary]

My technique was to twist the surface mount caps back and forth until they snapped off.

Don't ever do this. This is how I know you have lifted pads and probably traces.

I only did that once. Still, it could be the reason it keeps acting up, although I couldn't see any visible damage. The pads are flush on the board and don't have any signs of lift anywhere that I can see.

I got the technique from The 8 Bit Guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlLDN2k ... s&index=33 I'll be using the hot air system I got from now on, though. Hopefully I never wreck another board.

If this Super Nintendo is trash, oh well, live and learn.

[Issac Zachary]

Well I tried the Super Nintendo again today, and it started right up and played fine for quite a while. This is looking good.

I noticed that the cart (Super Mario Allstars) I had tried right after recaping the last time needs to be reinserted several times in order to work. Since today I used a cart I had cleaned the contacts not that long ago the SNES fired up right away. So I'm wondering if this last time it didn't seem to want to start was just a false alarm, due to dirty contacts on the cart. Hopefully that's the case.

I also tried shaking the SNES with it running in order to see if it would stop working due to a lifted pad or trace under a cap, but I couldn't get the SNES to freeze until I shook it hard enough to unlodge the cart.

I shall continue to try it for the next several days before I decide whether it's a victory or not.

Questions and observations:

If it is a lifted pad, how would I know? As I stated, this last time I used a hot air gun to remove all the suface mount electrolytic caps and all the pads looked fine. Can a pad look fine and yet be lifted and not making contact?

This last time not only did I use Voultar's desoldering techniques, but his soldering techniques as well. I do think I'm getting better at soldering these things. I must admit it's a bit hard to solder underneath the surface mount caps. But Voutar's technique definitely is a lot better than my first attempts on my first go around. Let's hope that all it was was a bad soldering joint and not a lifted pad.

[jd213]

Yeah, a lot of SNES/SFC carts can be finicky in my experience, even after cleaning both the cart and the slot.

There's also a small possibility you boiled off the electrolyte on one or more of the replacement capacitors and they already need replacing again. For future reference, using through-hole capacitors is easier and recommended by people like Luke at console5 in many cases: https://console5.com/wiki/Converting_fr ... Capacitors
Have had good results with all the SFCs I've recapped using this advice.

[Issac Zachary]

Yeah, a lot of SNES/SFC carts can be finicky in my experience, even after cleaning both the cart and the slot.

There's also a small possibility you boiled off the electrolyte on one or more of the replacement capacitors and they already need replacing again. For future reference, using through-hole capacitors is easier and recommended by people like Luke at console5 in many cases: https://console5.com/wiki/Converting_fr ... Capacitors
Have had good results with all the SFCs I've recapped using this advice.

Boiling off the electrolyte sounds very plausable. Before I was basically hitting the joint several times or for long periods trying to get the solder to go where it needed to go. I also wasn't always using a tip that fit down in there correctly.

This last time though I was able to just hit the joint for less than a second and get a good soldered joint with no need to hit them a second time. I also held the caps down with my fingers and never felt much heat, if any.

For the record it took me a total of 4 cap kits. One pieced together from Digikey and 3 from Console5. I'll probably need another solder wick after this too.

That video about how Voultar does his surface mount caps that was posted earlier by @ShootTheCore sure helped a lot.

Anyhow, I'm feeling really good now that the SNES starts up and runs every time I turn it on, with the exception of a cart or two that needs a reseating or two.

May I take this moment to thank everyone that has helped me with my project!

Thank you @TooBeauCoup for your help, especially on getting the board cleaned up!

Thank you @jd213 for your observations on SFC and SNES board differences and similarities and the possibility of electrolite evaporation and that I could just do caps with leads!

Thank you @ShookTheCore, especially for getting me to purchase a hot air setup to properlly dosolder the caps as well as the encouragement to just buy a new cap kit and try again!

Thank you @NewSchoolBoxer for your recomendation for Console5 and the posibility of a bad voltage regulator!

And thanks to you too @tongshadow and @Jaminonia for the observation of the possible lifted pad!

This was definitely a learning experience for me and you all definitely helped me keep going at it, or at least trying to prove I didn't lift a pad (fingers crossed). So thank you! And the best news is I think it's good to go! New caps and works! That's all I wanted out of it! And still in time for my niece's wedding! I'm still going to keep testing it for a while though to make sure, as I'm not entirely convinced yet.

And don't think I'm entirely unselfish. Her boyfriend has given me a N64 just because I got him a Wii. I'm super happy! But if this SNES stops working I'll get her another one and have a professional recap it. But I do believe that thanks to all of you I got this one finally recapped properly (after 4 cap kits).

[Issac Zachary]

Well, I'm going to call this one a victory! So far I just can't seem to get it to malfunction. The SNES starts right up. I've unplugged it, put it up on a shelf, taken it down, hooked it all up, and it starts every time. Even after a couple times I ran it for a few hours it still didn't have any glitches, except one where Mario's nose looked a bit odd for a moment at the end of a boss fight. But I'm sure that one had something to do with the game itself and where Mario landed, not the console.

Thanks again!

Review:

1. Use a hot air gun to unsolder surface mount stuff. I did use a pair of pliers and twist the caps off and don't think I hurt the board, but I'm never going to do that again! Even this cheap eBay hot air gun works wonders!
2. Clean, clean, clean, clean with isopropyl alchohol. The cart slot comes off so you can clean under that. Cleaning and rinsing the board did make it work better when I still had some bad caps.
3. Use Voultar's technique for soldering the surface mount caps on, or just use regular capacitors with leads. I do believe this was my problem, the tendancy to overheat the surface mount caps. You have to get the solder joints just right and done quickly in just one, maybe two tries. But that can be hard to do with very little place to put the soldering iron, even with a large assortment of tips to choose from. I do believe that my fussing with the new caps as a novice overheated them and boiled the electrolyte out of them causing all of my problems.
4. Don't give up! In my case the SNES worked perfectly fine before I opened it up. My suggestion is if you're recapping a working console, and it doesn't work aftewards, recap it again. Chances are you didn't cap it correctly, like in my case. You should be able to see a lifted pad. You can check the pico fuse with a multimeter in case you blew it testing the voltage regulator or something. Try to avoid ESD, but if your console doesn't work after working on it, I wouldn't automaticlly assume that that's the reason either. So recap, and try again, even if you end up recapping it a total of 4 times like I did.
5. And enjoy what you're doing! Yes, this was frusterating for me, and could be frustrating for you. But in the end I learned a lot and the console works! So take your first recapping as an opportunity to learn something new. You may spend a bit more on tools and parts than you first thought. And you may start out like I did thinking "it can't be that hard, I know everything because I googled how to do it." Well, don't let your YouTube tutorial knowledge get to your head. Realize that they don't always cover everything in those videos, but you'll come out knowing a lot more from the experience once you've tried and tried until you got it.

Thanks again to everyone!

Ciao!

[TooBeaucoup]

I'm glad you kept at this. LOL! And good to hear it's working and nice updates to have. Could be good resources for others in the future.