Category: console hacking

SNES capacitor replacement

Measuring SNES capacitors

I had intermittent problems powering on the Super Nintendo, it would just black screen screen sometimes, turns out the electrolytic capacitors were bad. The yellow wires and PIC chip as seen on board is my SuperCIC install giving NTSC 60Hz and PAL 50Hz switchable using reset button, that modification is not related to this repair. There were no visible leaks from the electrolytic capacitors but several of them measured bad using the ESR meter so it was high time to recap.

SNES PCB and capacitor kit

I ordered a Super Nintendo PAL Capacitor Kit from Retro Upgrades via eBay, they shipped fast and also included a new voltage regulator which was nice. There are some good capacitors on the board, but I replace all of them since those are likely to go bad soon as well.

Removing capacitor from SNES main board

I like to use the “push down and turn” method using pliers to remove SMD type capacitors, some prefer using SMD rework station to desolder with hot air. In my experience bad capacitors sometimes explode when using hot air which can damage traces and be dangerous due to metal shrapnel flying around, so that’s the main reason I prefer using pliers. Besides, leaky caps sometimes smells like raw fish, especially when heated up (and exploding), so not recommended.

Desoldering leg remnants from bad capacitors

After removing all capacitors by turning in one direction while pushing down towards the board until the capacitor is removed it’s time to get rid of the broken off legs still soldered on the pads.

Capacitors desoldered, cleaned up the board

After removing the leg remnants with the soldering iron I add some flux and a touch of solder for each pad, and then clean up the board with IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol) to remove flux residue using cotton swabs (cotton buds) to make it clean before soldering the new capacitors in place.

New capacitors on the board

The new capacitors are installed, along with the voltage regulator. I added an extra 470µF 16V capacitor hooked up to ground and output of the voltage regulator to fix the potential vertical line issue, not sure if it really was an issue on this console but cleaning up the power rail voltage is probably good anyway.

SNES PAL (with NTSC using SuperCIC)
Pro Fighter X Turbo copier screenshot
Screenshot from the game R-Type

Time to test, moment of truth, seems to work.

PS4 controller for racing

My son has been playing Forza Horizon 6 on the PC. He plays it with a PS4 controller, so I modified one to include a 10k pot (potentiometer) as steering wheel replacing the left analog stick to improve steering.

PS4 controller disassembled

I’m using a 10k pot which roughly matches the X axis of the analog stick. The wired resistors as seen on the board is an old modification to fix stick drift.

Board with left stick desoldered

The hardest part of this was desoldering the left analog stick, had to add leaded solder first to make it easier.

Pot replacing left stick

The pot is replacing the cavity where the left analog stick used to be. I cut off the plastic top case for the left stick and drilled a hole to fit the pot, then glued it into place with epoxy.

Pot wired up

The pot is soldered in where the X axis of the left analog stick used to be, also added two 4.7k resistors to emulate a centered Y axis stick.

First prototype

This is the result; first prototype. My son has been testing the it for a while now and likes the improved control, but he wants a bigger knob for the pot so I will fix that.

Sega Master System power cycle mod

snaker has posted a complete hardware and firmware tutorial in the forums.

This document describes, in full technical detail, the complete process required to make a Sega Master System 2 work reliably with an EverDrive, a Mega Drive controller and the Light Phaser, without manual power cycling, without unreliable soft resets and without electrical side effects. This is not a simple mod, but a tightly coupled hardware and firmware project built on top of SMS++.

Forum URL: https://modrobert.org/forums/topic/sega-master-system-everdrive-light-phaser-and-true-hard-reset/

Marcan’s Wii Recovery Dilemma

This is what started it all, from Brakken’s post over at tehskeen.com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIzNfVm54vk

Marcan, one of the members of Team Twiizers has discovered if a device present in the GameCube memory card port identifies itself with an unique ID that it will turn the Wii into recovery mode therefor allowing a user to run a recovery disc or even their own code.

I’ve talked with Marcan and he’s being very closed about the device and would not go into detail about it’s purpose, other then the fact that it lets you fix certain very specific cases of bricking. He wouldn’t reveal any other details and I was told to wait until it’s officially announced.

This ignited a quick reply from Marcan over at hackmii.com which boiled down to this:

Apparently tehskeen took a month-old video, coupled it with a paragraph of reality and a paragraph of rampant speculation and nonsense, and made it into a news story. This is undoubtedly going to spread around as these things do, so I’m going to stop it dead in its tracks.

Finally it ended up at Engadget where they first interpret the whole thing as a way to run backups, and then later updated the story. In a way this is funny, because I truly think it can be used to run backups, infact, it can be used to run pretty much anything you desire to code. To quote Marcan again:

To clarify, this won’t actually fix anything. It just lets you fix it, using homebrew tools and/or newer retail games, depending on what exactly you need to fix.

The way I interpret this running any unsigned code will work, which means anything is possible. Some of you might think this can already be done via the ZTP exploit so what’s the big deal? Well, I suspect the difference is that this way you don’t have to worry about any nintendo updates blocking the code, as it seems to be done in a stage before the Wii menu is fully loaded. This should make it theoretically possible with an interactive “modchip style menu” like the GC modchips qoob and viper provides, simply a menu accessible at boot with various settings. If you read the youtube comments of the video, marcan42, who also posted the video, writes:

It’s in the system menu (right in the startup part, before it tries to load any data).

We might end up selling them ;)

Where’s the market for a recovery dongle which only works in some obscure cases and the user has to write their own software? I think the downplay of the whole thing is to prevent others with commercial interest from exploring this route.

This takes me to another dear topic which is not related specifically to Marcan; the whole black/white hat schizophrenia (in the split personality sense) flourishing in the hacking community where some people appear in public as nice homebrew folks with strict ethical rules of conduct, lashing out at anyone mentioning backups, and then acting quite the opposite when addressing the close circle of friends (eg. via IRC or private forums) while researching new console exploits. In my humble opinion, be proud of who you are and stand up for it.