Twinbee Yahho! + Konami GX (Model 2)

[nassekova]

I recently bought these two from different sellers and both were sold in good working condition. And they were that! I have a custom that I usually just test the board that it works and then recap it. I have had so many faulty capacitors on my retro consoles, some handle them better and some worse. If it seems to work, it does not mean that it works as it should work etc. Especially these mid 90s are the worst (late 80s are the best usually ). I know there are two schools of people when it comes to electrolyte capacitors. Some say that don't fix if it's not broken (I used to be here), and then the other end recaps everything. Well enough about the preach, you know where I stand.

Back to Twinbee! This time I had some work to do, so I just tested that it worked and left it running there. I had it running about an hour and then went to play it. Got in to 4th stage and then the graphics started to glitch really bad. I shut it down and checked it by eye, nothing visible there. Then I started it again and ROM check failed on one EPROM...

Well today I removed all the old caps and gave it some new Panasonic low-esr ones with larger voltages. I thought that I might need to change that faulty EPROM too, but it seem ed to come alive just with the new caps

Ran it at good while and hopefully it now lasts another 20 years or so

Old caps

Removed

New caps

YAHHOO!

 

[andynumbers]

Hate to be "that guy" to criticize your work, but you should stick to the original cap voltage ratings for your new caps. Those tall capacitors are an eyesore and are completely unnecessary, even possibly dangerous if you were to accidentally drop the PCB. The caps could break off. It is silly to use a 50v rated capacitor on a system that will never go above 5v. Stick with the original 16v rated capacitors. If you want to use Panasonic low ESR, that's fine. Just know that you're not "upgrading" anything by using a larger voltage rating cap.

 

[nassekova]

No worries thats a valid point! I bulk order these in larger quantities and usually take those that I can use on most of the cases. If I had smaller ones I would have used them on those. I know I'm not "upgrading" anything, but usually larger ones last longer, so tend to stick on them. But yes, now I need higher box for it and it is more prone to get "hit" by something.

 

[andynumbers]

Unless you're planning on running your board 24/7 for the next 20 years you probably don't need to worry about longevity in caps. Replace caps once 20-30 years after the PCB was made, never replace again. (Either you'll be dead or a custom chip on the board will be dead by the time you need to replace caps again.)

 

[nassekova]

Yeah you are just stating the obvious. The case here was: I had these so used them rather than ordered new ones to save 2cm space on the top.