Retro Repair Bear, Rosemary Road, Halesowen (2026)

07/03/2026

Hey everyone 🕹️🪛🐻

Still here! 👋

I know it's been ages. Just really busy and trying to keep up 😅

It's come to light recently that Microsoft Hotmail, Live and Outlook email accounts have been having issues, erroneously sending emails to spam.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/04/users_fume_at_outlookcom_email/

If you've been expecting a reply and don't think you've had one, you will have done.

Please check your spam 📨

13/11/2025

Bluetooth'ing 🟦🦷💥📦

This one has been requested for the Bluetooth treatment from some I've picked up over the years to fix up and Bluetooth. One day I'll get to them 🙄

BluetoothBoombox.co.uk

It's unusual to find boomboxes with a box. Saisho was a Dixon's brand, back in the day.

It's going to be serviced first before Bluetooth'ing. The controls are all a bit scratchy and iffy so have had a good cleaning. Moving on to the belts for the cassette decks. There are 4 belts on this.

It's actually quite difficult to work on as nothing is plugged in. It's all twist connections and only just long enough. You need a special thing to do twists like that.

Released enough to be gain access to the mechanism.

The pause mechanism seems to have come loose on the left deck, which probably means the right deck will be the same. It's a nylon cap holding a spring in place, over a plastic pin.

Over time the nylon shrinks and cracks, so the spring springs up and the cap rubs on the back of the flywheel. It'll affect the sound, cause warbling and make a scraping noise as the flywheel turns, so has to be done.

With the capstan and flywheel removed you can see it better. Just needs a drop of glue to hold the cap on when you get this far.

On we go.

12/11/2025

Unreliable Xbox 🕹️🪛🐻

The Xbox came in with intermittent issues booting and sometimes reading disks after some time being used.

It's been modified with upgraded heatsinks, sata SSD and been worked on here and there.

Heat related issues point to possible capacitor problems, but the main culprits in the Xbox are the large ones near the CPU and power connector, and the clock capacitor.

They've been changed in this one already. Reflowed the soldering on these to tidy them up but they were actually soldered.

Top tip: if you buy a soldering iron to have a go yourself, throw away the solder that comes with it and get some cheap leaded solder instead.

We may look at the optical drive capacitors if needed but I noticed the IDE to SATA adapter used is a jmicron type.

The Jmicron type boards are only partially compatible. They can be modified themselves to be more compatible but a good quality properly supported Startech one is only £15, which seems like a better option.

So this is waiting on parts now too. It should hopefully be here tomorrow.

11/11/2025

Bad caps 🕹️🪛🐻

Brand new bad capacitors. Was wondering why I was having difficulty getting the GameCube to read 🙄

Best order another kit.

I don't use very many surface mount electrolytic caps, so haven't yet built a collection of them. Just purchase cap kits when I need them.

I'll start to put an order together with the wholesaler I think. Get some good quality Japanese surface mount caps.

Nothing is ever straightforward 🤷

10/11/2025

GameCube recap 🕹️🪛🐻

This one is struggling to read games discs. That usually means the capacitors on the drive are aging. They do actually leak on these, so it's always the first place to start.

Ignore anyone who tells you to increase the laser power. That's really a last resort!

Will there be Play testing? Hopefully! 🤞

07/11/2025

Dead SNES 🕹️🪛🐻

This one came in as having sound problems and not loading games from an Everdrive.

It was actually not loading any games. Just a black screen. It would load a low level very basic menu, but not an actual game.

It has a "dead bug" style region mod installed which makes it quite fragile to handle. Found some signs of corrosion around the cartridge slot but nothing major.

Using the SNES Burn In test cart, which performs done basic checks of the chips, it showed APU BB Fail. That points to a communication problem between the CPU/PPUs and the sound system.

The sound in these has its own processor, sound processor and two ram chips, above the cartridge slot, so a fair bit to go wrong. It's usually pretty reliable though.

Replaced both the processor and some processor one are a time from a donor board, with no progress.

Checking traces around the two RAM chips died the connections between them were good, but two address lines between the RAM and the sound processor were broken.

There's a small patch of corrosion in that area. Looks like probably an old liquid spill of some sort. The traces were broken right beside the sound processor.

Joined them back up again with some tiny wire and it's back up and running.

The Everdrive seemed to just need the contacts cleaning after that and it loads games fine again.

We're going to recap this board, now it's working, before it's ready to go home.

There may yet be Play Testing 😁

06/11/2025

Big B&O Fixed 🕹️🪛🐻

It was last chance for this one, using the last replacement transistor.

With everything all unfolded and all disturbed I was able to physically access the components and physically wobble them, looking for bad solder joints.

Found a few but the chief suspect was a high voltage snubber capacitor on the flyback, in the pics, which is what I wanted to check really.

It was still making a connection to the trace but it can't have been a very good connection. Ground the trace back to the copper and resoldered it to give it some extra support. Same on the other end.

Reflowed the diodes and a few other bits and bobs across the board, which were a bit dodgy too. Gave it a bit of a mini vac as well to remove the sooty dust that builds up over the years.

It's turning on and off ok now and ready for home 🙌

05/11/2025

Big B&O pt4 🕹️🪛🐻

aka Why I usually say no to domestic TVs.

You can see on the last pic why. They're a law unto themselves. Much more complex than an arcade monitor or even an old computer monitor.

There's usually very little information available to work from, they're filthy dirty, heavy, cumbersome and hugely time consuming.

Unless you're familiar with the particular brand or chassis, it's a plod to try and work out how it's been designed. Reverse engineering it.

This one is proving to be no exception, apart from being hugely heavy too.

Going over the primary side of the power supply again and replacing the freshly bad transistor and fuse again, found a couple of bad solder joints that could account for the transistor shorting. One other looked to have been bad from the factory.

Tried it again and it came on again. When turned off though it's blown the fuse and transistor, again.

I now suspect something on the secondary, but none of the supply rails are shorted. It must be something to do with the way it switches to standby power.

Standby on this is not a separate supply, it's not always there. It reduces the main supply output instead. Something in the way it does so is causing it to blow.

I've been trying not to disturb too many of the jungle of black wires but need to unfold it all and look deeper inside.

There's one remaining replacement for the main power transistor. Fingers x'd 🤞

03/11/2025

Big B&O TV pt3 🕹️🪛🐻

Success and failure.

Worked through the switching power supply, checking the components after the main transistor was shorted. It had taken out one other transistor along with it.

Replaced both and after checking diodes etc, looking for a reason for it shorting, put it all back together.

You can see the result!

I know. Just teasing. It worked.

The only problem is, it worked right up until I switched it off. It then went pop and blew both the fuse and transistor again.

*sigh*

When a switching power supply turns off, or any pulsed coil really, the collapsing magnetic field in the coil is dissipated as a relatively high voltage pulse.

It's how they work. Also how the high voltage is created for the CRT in the flyback transformer.

When turned off though that excess power has nowhere to dissipate.

There is usually some protection in the form of a snubber network or freewheel circuit, who's job it is to use the unwanted energy, to prevent it from burning out the switching transistor.

I'd already checked this but for some reason it still did so.

The transistors are not cheap, and not hugely available either, so really need to find a fault before powering it again.

I did find a bad joint on one of the high voltage safety capacitors that link the secondary to the primary side. It's not clear why that would cause this though.

It may be that the similar circuitry of flyback transformer is failing and sending a pulse back through there, affecting the power supply.

That's more deeply buried though, so back in we go 🙄

31/10/2025

B&O bits 🕹️🪛🐻

The last of the parts I was waiting for arrived to continue with the big beefy B&O TV.

Initially this seemed like it could be something come loose or a bad solder joint disturbed during a house move.

Unfortunately, after finding a schematic and making a few preliminary tests, it seems likely that it wasn't working before it was moved.

Just one of those things with old gubbins.

There's an issue with the switching power supply circuitry. The main switching transistor is completely shorted, all the pins, which is kind of unusual.

It rapidly switches a high voltage. Around 340 volts, thousand of times per second.

Being shorted the way it is means it fed that 340V to the circuit that controls it too. First checks showed at least two other transistors shorted but we'll need to check for possible damage to other components too when we get in there.

These transistors are now obsolete but can still be obtained from specialist suppliers.

The area we're interested in is right at the bottom at the back of this jungle of black wires. It should all unfold, once I remember how they go together.

In we go!

29/10/2025

Workshop upgrade 🕹️🪛🐻

Waiting on parts for the B&O still, so having an admin day.

We've used Linux everywhere at Bear Towers since the naughties but the little workshop computer came with Windows 10 installed when it arrived.

I became used to the restrictions and shortcomings and found workarounds for most of them. Never really found a good enough reason to format it.. until today!

I've not used Mint for years. It's nice 🙂

Retro Repair Bear

07/03/2026

13/11/2025

12/11/2025

11/11/2025

10/11/2025

07/11/2025

06/11/2025

05/11/2025

03/11/2025

31/10/2025

29/10/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category