Way to start the new year with a Deathsmiles PCB failure.

[electricgrave]

Hi guys,

I hope someone can guide me in the right direction with this.

This morning I went to turn on my New Astro to play some DS, which was already in the cab from the previous night, and the PSU blew a fuse, I don't know excatly what 'cause that to happen but I replaced it and tested it with a cheap PCB just in case and everything worked well.  When I placed the DS board back in the SH3 board status LED didn't light up and nothing was going on the screen, so I took the PCB out and notice one of the small "electrolite capacitors" (I heard someone call them that but I could be wrong) near the jamma edge got burnt, then after further inspection I see a bit of a blemish in on of the small tiny chips on the left corner of the PCB near the jamma edge as well.

I'm hoping there's an option of getting this sent to Cave to be fixed but I really wouldn't know where to start such thing.  Worse case escenario I'll replace the cap and hope for the best that blemish on the chip is nothing 'cause it's quite miniscule and I can only spot it with a magnifying glass.  I'll post detailed pics later on today, any help or suggestions would be most welcomed.

I'm felling pretty bummed out, this is the game my GF plays the most  (She just broke the 25 mil mark the other day, I know is meh but for a casual gamer that's pretty decent given she's not using the powerup for milking, not a lot of men can say that about their GFs) the most and as you guys know this boards don't come cheap.

[electricgrave]

I know it may seem like I just got here but I was a member before for a while and when I came back I couldn't log in and I had to create a new account with the same user name.  I'm only saying this in case someone feels I'm being rude by not introducing myself or anything.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

I think you can get them fixed through Fujita but last I heard it was like 20000 yen plus shippings which is probably close to the price of a bare used one so I would probably just try to replace blown parts and cross fingers.

http://www.fujitacommunications.com/

How many years old was the power supply?

[electricgrave]

Oh man this is sad news, I was hoping cave was still supporting repairs for this newer PCBs.  Well I don't know how old the PSU is but I'll take a look and see if I can find any info, it seems to be working fine ATM but oddly enough the balast won't light up anymore either and I replaced the fluorescent bulb but haven't replaced the starter yet.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

They are, sort of. From the info I have, the boards do go to Cave for repairs, but need to go through Fujita first for some reason. You could try going straight to Cave I guess but I doubt the price will drop. They were charging the same amount a few years ago for a lot less of a job than repairs.

[SuperPang]

Got a quote from Fujita recently..

We can send it to CAVE for repair.
We can not tell you exactly repair charge before see it.
If there is not any damage , it will be cost as shown

Repair charge    Y22,000.-including domestic delivery fee to cave and return to Fujita comm ltd

EMS fee                3,250.-
paypal fee             1,300.-
----------------------------------------------
Total:                Y26,550.-

So it sounds like with physical damage it might be even more. Not going to be worth it for DS.

[Dave_K.]

Sounds like you plugged the PCB into the edge connector upside-down or wrong/shifted and +12 or +5 went to the wrong pins shorting out your power supply and burning those inputs on the PCB.

At least it wasn't as bad as when I did this, where the PSU fuse didn't pop and the edge connector started melting.



Thankfully it only happened with a console->jamma adapter I was building and not a PCB. It burned the jamma pins to a crisp.

Waiting for pics to see the full extent of damage to your DS board.