SEGA Master System with No Display - Can I FIX it ?

Your desoldering gun technique is almost perfect...Apparently you are supposed to only go in circles around the pin while not touching the pad. Probably your most epic repair!

Just in time. Merry Christmas everyone. Sitting here drinking hot chocolate in 75 degree weather watching vince

Awesome repair. Capacitors can test good using a tester and still not be in spec. They might become faulty under load. Just a thought.

A one hour video Vince!? It's a Christmas miracle. Best present ever.

Could be a host of things. Replacing 30 year old caps wasn't a bad idea anyway. Excellent repair. I have learned more from your repairs than just about anybody out there.

Your genuine explosion of joy when the Sega Logo showed up on the screen just made my day. Thank you very much for your videos!

Was I the only one shouting at my screen when Vince powered the Sega up without the heat-sink on the voltage regulator? I was waiting for the volt-reg to go bang, lol. Merry Christmas to you Vince and family plus everyone here, from me (Robz) in Scotland.

As a kid, this was my first gaming system. To be honest....i wanted a NES. (parents back then thought that all video games were the same) BUT years later I realized that this system was great. The card port was for stuff like the 3d glasses, and a few games. I still have the card adaptor for the 3d glasses, but the actual glasses I dont have anymore.

Who else wanted to see Vince put all the old capacitors back just to prove that it wasn't the old capacitors. But as they were likely original I suspect many were faulty, just impossible to test under load. Another piece of retro tech brought back to life.

@31:30 a trick you can sometimes use to make it easier to follow a trace is to shine a torch through from behind the board to view them in silhouette.

Hey a bonus video! Merry Crimbo Vince and family

In my experience, caps are usually bad to a degree on vintage equipment, so once I've checked for obvious visible issues, and that the correct supply voltages are there, I swap out electrolytics almost as a matter of course. Old caps can appear to test OK and yet still be bad.

I had a lot of memories with the Sega Master System. I remember owning the second version of it with Alex Kidd built in and had a lot of fun.

Holy mother of god! i have a same model master system that's doing the same thing and its been driving me bonkers for years, my first and favourite console, Thank you Vince for this amazing gift!

Awesome repair, its nice to see these classics saved from the trash heap. It was cool to watch your troubleshooting process and to be honest when I saw how easy that tool made taking the chips I excliamed out loud Why don't I have one of those! Great video looking forward to more.

Update: I've resurrected a 5.1 PC surround sound system, a Kenwood radio and a video card. Thanks to you, Vince, I went out today and bought my first ever soldering equipment. Between watching your videos and my brief previous experience soldering/microsoldering, perhaps now I can resurrect some dead electronics I have laying about.

Great to see the old Master System being featured. At the time this came out in the 80s, Nintendo were very much playing second fiddle in Europe, while Sega reigned supreme. The Master System has the best 8-bit version of Space Harrier without a doubt. Lovely old console and they tend to be very reliable too, with most problems being related to dirty contacts on the cartridge port.

Fantastic repair Vince =D I bet it was that trace, and the resoldering around the RAM and ROM there (could be the electrolyte though as you say) =D Thanks for the mention =D So pleased you fixed this! Have a wonderful Christmas! Great to see you get the Duratool there - invaluable when working with through-hole components!

For cleaning vents and other holes in cases, I've found a spray with a garden hose works very well. Great job on the restoration! As for those memory chips, one of them, with the MPR- prefix in the part number was the game ROM. The other, as you looked up, was RAM. Position on the board WILL matter because although Data and Address lines are shared between the chips, they will have separate lines for bus arbitration signals, especially Chip Select. This is also why you shouldn't expect every single pin to be continuous on those chips.

The sawtooth sound you heard when you first started audio probing was the video sync. Unmistakable. And yes, modern TV's won't play audio with no video present. Part of the input select/noise mute logic that's been present since CRT's incorporated OSD's and blue screen for no signal instead of static or blank raster.