9 replies to this topic

[bradhig1]

My Yurkie modded Colecovision has a dim picture on the composite connection.   I tried three power supplies and no change.   RF works but has static noise.  Can't open it without wrecking the label on the front of it.  I am sick of this.  First my modded 2600 fails because the internal power connector popped off the board connection and now this thing is acting up.   Mom worries about me soldering too much cause it could make me sick.

[chart45]

you dont need to wreck the lable to open the coleco remove 6 screews under then pry a little bit it will open.. there is video on youtube

[Swami]

My Yurkie modded Colecovision has a dim picture on the composite connection.   I tried three power supplies and no change.   RF works but has static noise.  Can't open it without wrecking the label on the front of it.  I am sick of this.  First my modded 2600 fails because the internal power connector popped off the board connection and now this thing is acting up.   Mom worries about me soldering too much cause it could make me sick.

 

 

you dont need to wreck the lable to open the coleco remove 6 screews under then pry a little bit it will open.. there is video on youtube

 

I and several others have done this and it takes some patience, but it works. Wish I had known it before I took the label off one of my three units.

[bradhig1]

Can't get shield off cause it is soldered on.   Can't get in rf box to see if anything is wrong.   I put the console back together.

Attached Thumbnails

• 
• 
• 

[-^Cro§Bow^-]

You don't really want to mess with that RF box. it is a royal pain to get inside it. Have to de-solder some pins on the bottom of the board that are attached to the top board inside the RF. I'm going to be recapping my CV soon but will likely skip the caps in the RF modulator since mine is composite modded anyway.

 

Also the title of the thread states dim picture on RGB but is your console actually just composite modded? If so, I don't see Yurkie's board that the AV connector is actually a part of? if it is the older composite method using the transistor, it is possible that transistor might be burned out and was one of the reasons I took that mod out of my personal one and replaced it with one of Yurkie's boards.

[ChildOfCv]

I agree that you don't want to disassemble the RF board, but that mod looks like one I saw where you lay some double-sided tape on top of the RF board and jury-rig a transistor and a few resistors on.  As such, you shouldn't have to disassemble the entire box just to get to it.  But whoever soldered the top on is a jerk.  It wasn't soldered on to begin with, and its side clips are plenty good to hold the lid on.  I'd permanently desolder that lid, even if I did nothing else.

 

Oh, wait... do you mean the main shield?  That's just soldered in that one place.  Grab a few miles of solder braid and suck the solder off, and the main shield can easily come off with it.  The RF shield lid ought to just pry off though.

Edited by ChildOfCv, Wed Feb 6, 2019 3:03 PM.

[-^Cro§Bow^-]

If it is a stock CV it originally was soldered on the side between the controller ports and on the front near the power switch. Or at least my top RF shield was and still is honestly anytime I've gone in there and put it back together. But yeah that is what I meant by the transistor burning out on the Ben Heck composite CV mod. That is what that circuit is usually known by as Ben Heck I think first sussed it out sometime back. It does work, but I found it was overly bright and washed out, and the +12 going into that transistor made it hotter than hades and is known to burn them out pretty quickly with repeat use. Yurkie actually had boards he made up that used the TRSS jack soldered directly to the board and all you had to do was punch out the hole for the jack and secure it in place with just a few wires running directly to it. IN fact the audio is usually best pulled from that ceramic cap on the edge of board near the word Coleco in your pic. I thought it was Yurkie who advised that so it surprises me that this is a Yurkie modded CV using what does appear to be Ben Heck mod?

Edited by -^Cro§Bow^-, Wed Feb 6, 2019 7:31 PM.

[cybercylon]

Ugh... that RF box. I pretty much trashed that area getting it off when doing Ben Heck's mod a number of years ago. My soldering skills are not very strong, but my guess it tests the patience of those that are more experienced.

 

I had to keep replacing that transistor. When controller port 2 died, I gave in and got a system from Yurkie with the VGA mod (would have gone with RGB if I had known better).

[bradhig1]

my system came from Yurkie.

[CatPix]

You can remove that main RF shield around the board, it was made to comply with stupidly stringent US rules about RF leaking and serves no purpose other than trapping heat.

This probably doesn't help you for your problem, but that's one less thing you'll have to worry about.

Note that it doesn't apply to the RF box itself.

Edited by CatPix, Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:11 AM.