Don't send your boards to 'Retrosix' for repair.

[Ace`]

I've just had a Sega Mega-Tech motherboard in for repair after Retrosix has butchered it. Usually I wouldn't comment on other peoples repairs but when it's a company charging a premium and passing themselves off as a professional repair technician this is unacceptable.


Floating / unconnected pin on one of the large custom chips, he obviously had trouble tracking down the original problem as there's a bunch of rework.


The sockets were coming apart on the left side making poor connection on the rams, I remove them to find he has used cut down sockets! 28 pin sockets are the most common and cost what 10p each? if that.


Heatgun damage that has blistered / delaminated the board, anyone that knows what they're doing would use a desoldering station and not cook the board and everything on it with hot air.




You can really see how bad it is once I remove the rest of his mess, even the sockets that are the correct size are so full of flux they had to be removed.


A melted capacitor.


Trace damage where the chip was pried up.




Added bodge wires where he has broken / lifted traces, MT has enough factory bodge wires as it is without adding more.


Random bits of copper wire all around the custom chips, don't worry they aren't shorting any thing out, all the flux won't let that happen.

 

[Ace`]

More random copper.


And finally a logic chip making poor contact on one pin, as the pin was bent under the chip.


Doing this damage to someone elses rare and valuable board and charging them for it is completely unacceptable. It still didn't even work properly and has taken me a whole day to clean up this mess and there's still more to do.

 

[TheDaddy]

Shit thats bad !! I dont blame you one bit for blowing the whistle. We all lose tracks , pads and traces now and then but shit this is wrecked , and how much they charge for this ??

I suppose i dont need them to wreck my boards, i can do that all of my own ! Lol

Dave.

Oh just looked at his website , looks like he broadcasts his reapirs on TikTok. Wonder if this one on there yet ?

 

[DaytimeDreamer]

Damn, did you get a refund?

 

[Georgian2]

Maybe they have new people working there?

 

[sukhbir]

Clearly lack of experience 😦👎

 

[edwoodjnr]

Looking at the replaced 68000 chip, this looks like your repair:

TikTok - Make Your Day

 

[itruk]

819 comments on that "month long Mega Tech repair" !
He's either getting some abuse or well-wishers?

Anyway to watch tiktok videos without needing to download the app?

*Edit, got the direct, non account link:

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7352140149586660640

You can view the video but not read into the comments.

 

[Ace`]

This isn't my board so I don't know what he charged, I just offered to fix it and didn't know what a horror show it was going to be until it arrived.

You can actually see the blister / delamination damage in the video, and he shows himself using a hot air gun on it. With this video I don't think he can hide behind the 'a member of staff did it that wasn't me' excuse either.

 

[Phils Arcade]

So uses the heat gun to remove the chips by trying to melt all those soldered legs at the same time, then again to clear out the holes. Never mind blowing hot air all over the surrounding components at the same time. These boards are over 30/40/50 years old and are a little delicate, just like me, I'm not surprised other components fail as part of the repair.

I've been experimenting of late on using conductive liquid tin and copper on repairing tracks. Cleaning back to copper on the track, laying out a small template for the track and applying the conductive liquid. Once set, test the track and apply a protective coating and remove the template. So far it's been really good, and very hard to actually see the repair. RS do a range of these, though expensive, you are only using a very small amount. Will be interesting to see how these last over time.

This has far been the best, though silver, and easier to work with. I apply it with a micro syringe using a small template: Conductive Track Paint

 

[TheDaddy]

Yeh its not how i remove chips , I am assuming he had pre heated and removed solder from the solder side first but looking at the video it does not look like he did !!. I remove them by :-

1) Pre heat (Heat Gun)
2) Add a little solder to the pins
3) Pre heat
4) Use Electronic solder sucker to remove as much solder from solder side pins as possible.

Now this goes one of 2 ways for me :-

way 1 - Socket lifts out ok

1) Check pins
2) Slowly prise the chip up , do not force add a little more heat if needed.
3) Pre Heat and suck holes clean ready for socket

Way 2 - Wont come out with gentle persuasion !

1) Find pins with issues and and cut until chip comes out.
2) Remove the stubborn pins
3) Pre Heat and suck holes clean ready for socket

How do you all remove yours ??

One things that sinks my boat is when people dont clean the board after fluxing and leaves it to go hard , Looks awful !!! JUST CLEAN IT YOU LAZY B*****DS !

Dave.

P.S Maybe the guy is on here (Sure he will be) and can explain what happened, Must be an explanation to as why this is such a mess.

 

[NivagSwerdna]

Personally I do use hot air when I need to get a device out of an old board intact for testing. On some older boards there is plenty of solder around the legs on both sides of the board so a desolder gun on just the bottom side doesn't always do it. I have used those needle things but with limited success so instead I desolder the bottom and then flux the top and then apply some hot air around the top and pull the device. The secret is to keep the hot air to as low a temperature as you can get away with. The top side solder can be a real pain as it will be attached to the pads and traces on the top side. I'm open to other suggestions.

And no... I'm not the guy who did the 'repair' above 😀

 

[TheDaddy]

Personally I do use hot air when I need to get a device out of an old board intact for testing. On some older boards there is plenty of solder around the legs on both sides of the board so a desolder gun on just the bottom side doesn't always do it. I have used those needle things but with limited success so instead I desolder the bottom and then flux the top and then apply some hot air around the top and pull the device. The secret is to keep the hot air to as low a temperature as you can get away with. The top side solder can be a real pain as it will be attached to the pads and traces on the top side. I'm open to other suggestions.

And no... I'm not the guy who did the 'repair' above 😀

I probably should have started a new thread and not too hijack this one , Doing it now .......

How do you suck yours ????

Ok so following on from the ' Dont use retrosix' Thread , How do you remove chips ?? My repsonse :- Yeh its not how i remove chips , I am assuming he had pre heated and removed solder from the solder side first but looking at the video it does not look like he did !!. I remove them by :- 1)...

www.ukvac.com

Dave.

 

[Ace`]

I use a Hakko 474 desoldering station for most stuff, no need for hot air with this thing and it only heats the pins one at a time so no chance of board damage. Just have to make sure every pin is completely free before you pull the chip.


There are times like you mention where there's too much solder on the top for a desoldering station to work, in this case I use low melt solder which stays liquid for 5-10 seconds plenty of time to remove the chip. It used to be really expensive but it has been coming down in price and you get quite a lot now.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08YH9B7SF

I used it to remove those machined strips and fit proper sockets on the mega-tech board then clean up the holes with the desoldering station.

 

[TheDaddy]

Just found out a few more things , He apparently steals other peoples designs for boards ect and flogs the ideas as his. And he does not live far from me !! A friend of mine has heard a lot of bad things about retrosix and there antics ! He is very very well known in the Retro console world, All for the wrong reaons.

Check this out :-

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/ktbgnf

Dave.

 

[Jimboi]

Thanks for the heads up, good to know. I have quite a few high value non workers that have stayed that way for years as it’s hard to trust folk to do a straight job. Heard stories of people over the years not even receiving boards back.

 

[Symphony]

Yeah, they have a poor reputation in the Gameboy modding community for a multitude of reasons, including more recently awful "repair" work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/186yq1s/_/kt9l7ct

 

[Vorbis]

So, on balance would you recommend them?

 

[big10p]

I posted recently asking about RetroSix as I needed my PC Engine Duo repairing. No-one had anything bad to say so I sent it to them, and it was repaired, but I haven't looked inside to view the quality of the work.

I got the impression from their website that they have various people doing the repairs, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[jimmerd]

I guess to have some balance, it would be good to hear from the original customer or RetroSix what the situation was.

You would imagine in general if something went wrong with a repair for whatever reason most companies would try and make it right with the customer?