Recapped my TurboExpress

[Splain | 2,569]

So I wanted a TurboExpress, and discovered the thing that everyone discovers... that they're not cheap. Of course they're cheaper if you buy them "for parts" but I didn't want to buy something I couldn't fix, and I've been burned before by overestimating my own chops as a repairman. After some reading, I find out it's common for the TurboExpress to stop working because of bad capacitors, which is a common problem for lots of electronics. I can replace caps all day long, so the next trick is finding a broken TurboExpress that just needs new capacitors, not something that has a deeper problem, being sold as "untested as-is" by someone who has already opened the thing up and wants to get rid of it.

I've never seen these things locally but I found one on ebay being sold by someone with a bunch of listings with the same "estate sale" description, and it was in good shape, so I gambled. And I bought a whole set of new capacitors for it. This was years ago. I guess having a broken one took the edge off of wanting one, but I finally got to actually fixing the thing.

So I read a few guides and opened it up.

There's a handful of ribbon cables you have to unplug that run from the front to the back. Then flip the motherboard over to get to most of the capacitors.

That big RF shield is in the way, so I had to remove it. Not super fun but it's gotta be done.

Nice Hudson Bee on those chips. The kit had a replacement for every capacitor. Some of the new ones had higher voltage ratings than the old caps, which is fine. You can see that the board had + and - labeled for every capacitor, which was helpful. The dark side of each cap is the negative side.

Action shot. Surface mount electrolytic caps. There was no replacement for that blue ceramic-cap-lookin thing, so I guess there aren't commonly problems with that one. I admit that some of the caps were hard to access, and I removed them by just twisting them off. Don't tell anyone.

All done. I had to cut out some of that white insulator stuff to get to those 2 in the lower right. There were also 3 through-hole capacitors on the controller PCB. The next step was to button everything back up and pray to Odin that the caps were the only problem.

Wooooo! Sound works as well.

People do screen upgrades on these, to a 3.5" screen, since there's all that unused space in there. It would be nice to do that someday, since this screen is tiny. It's definitely dropping pixels to display on the low-res screen. But it's original and working fine, so I'm not in a hurry to do it yet.

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 540]

Good work, I've done a few of those and they can be a little tricky. It's super important to get started with replacing pc engine/turbo grafix caps because they suffer from the cap plague. It seems like they didnt leak a ton, so that's good news.

[Splain | 2,569]

3 hours ago, SNESNESCUBE64 said:

Good work, I've done a few of those and they can be a little tricky. It's super important to get started with replacing pc engine/turbo grafix caps because they suffer from the cap plague. It seems like they didnt leak a ton, so that's good news.

Yeah, there were a couple that had leaked, but not bad enough to damage anything, so that was lucky. They smelled terrible though. Made the room smell like old fish.

[Nes Freak | 584]

ive recapped one of these.  its a pain in the crack though.  nice work!

[xelement5x | 65]

Have to agree with others that the TurboExpress can be a pain to work on. This was one of the more delicate jobs I did since I've heard it's very easy to loose/lift a trace if you are not careful when recapping, thankfully I got through mine without any issues as well.  Thought about a screen mod but couldn't bring myself to.

Edited March 1 by xelement5x

[a3quit4s | 4,098]

Ah you replaced the dead caps with SMD caps. I just made an order to console5 to replace caps on a console I got from eBay but went with the leaded radial caps instead to make the job a bit easier. I don’t plan on putting the shield back on

[Splain | 2,569]

7 hours ago, a3quit4s said:

Ah you replaced the dead caps with SMD caps. I just made an order to console5 to replace caps on a console I got from eBay but went with the leaded radial caps instead to make the job a bit easier. I don’t plan on putting the shield back on

I didn't put the shield back on. Maybe that's lazy, but it's a step that people skip, and I haven't seen problems yet.

[Splain | 2,569]

7 hours ago, xelement5x said:

Have to agree with others that the TurboExpress can be a pain to work on. This was one of the more delicate jobs I did since I've heard it's very easy to loose/lift a trace if you are not careful when recapping, thankfully I got through mine without any issues as well.  Thought about a screen mod but couldn't bring myself to.

Someday I'll find a good deal on a unit that has a busted screen, then I'll do a screen mod on it.

[xelement5x | 65]

12 hours ago, Splain said:

Someday I'll find a good deal on a unit that has a busted screen, then I'll do a screen mod on it.

I've thought the same but in the end I wound up just getting a cheap GT since it's pretty much the same thing.

[a3quit4s | 4,098]

Successfully recapped one I got on eBay today. Screen wasn’t displaying the game when loaded but it was on. Swapped mine out with radial caps. The old caps are pretty easy to remove with a reflow station. There were a couple that are hard to reach and that white insulation on those two caps is a pain to clear away partly to get to the caps. $325 for the non working one was expensive but a $6 cap kit from console5 and two hours of time probably saved me about $300 on a working one. Came with the OEM AC adapter as well.