Let's Autopsy my Dead Saturn

[Blaine]

Well... she's dead alright. I spent hours polishing and cleaning. And I killed it in less than 3 days.

I had to take pics with my cameraphone so, obviously crappy pictures but... it's not hard to see what happened and where it happened.

Picture of the mod. Six wires, all still securely wired. No bridges or shorts. When the wires lay flat they don't touch anything or each other.

Here's the burn mark on the heat sink...

Blurriest picture ever, yet, no problem spotting where the resistor blew.

It looks like it's resistor 142. Clear on the other side of the board from where I was working.

So, if anyone is interested...

What could I have done to cause this?. It'll be a fun game, I'll go first.

Somehow +5 and GND touched and it was a defective DPDT switch!

*old post*
In what is most likely my last mod, gracefully exiting with my tail between my legs, I stupidly assumed I could manage a region switch on my Saturn. An exercise not fit for morons like me.

So... now my Saturn dimly pulses the green power light, echoing an I.Q. parallel to my own, which is to say 'brain dead'.

Any ideas?

[kendrick]

You are too hard on yourself. The fact that you're willing to experiment means that you deserve praise for the attempt. For every mistake you've made, I've probably wrecked ten computers or consoles.

A dim LED indicates a short of some sort, not bad enough to blow the fuse but enough to cut the net voltage that the board is receiving. Any chance there's a blobby piece of solder fallen into the PSU or onto some part of the CD control board?

[Blaine]

You are too hard on yourself. The fact that you're willing to experiment means that you deserve praise for the attempt. For every mistake you've made, I've probably wrecked ten computers or consoles.

A dim LED indicates a short of some sort, not bad enough to blow the fuse but enough to cut the net voltage that the board is receiving. Any chance there's a blobby piece of solder fallen into the PSU or onto some part of the CD control board?

Thanks, you're a sweet kid.

Box is dead, though.

Blobby piece of solder could have landed near R142...

[ken_cinder]

If you do figure out what has happened and you are able to repair the motherboard, I have some spare parts should you require them (Power supply, complete CD drive, some of the internal ribbon cables).

I have no use for them, and I can't see selling them anywhere (Even on Ebay, I'd have to sell them as untested as they HAVE been in a box for years) and I don't want to just throw them out because "I" know they were good when I put them there.

As an aside, if you are on the "Theres no way I can repair this" wagon, you could send it to me. I've repaired FAR worse than that. The last thing I repaired was a Dreamcast that I would SWEAR saw a war somewhere. AV port totalled, some resistors blown, dead controller port fuse.....went back to it's owner working save for being able to do VGA (I had to rework the pins in the AV port, and some were actually broken right off!)