Vectrex Capacitor Replacement

This is how I received my "farm fresh" vectrex, it looks like it had been stored in a garage for years and at one point a paint brush had been set on top of it.



Here is the back, the air vents were pretty dirty.



This shows the game is functioning, but off center. I still need to fix this.



Another shot of the dirty case, at one point there had been duct tape on it for some reason.



This is the main logic board. It was covered in dust, fly wings, and who knows what else.



This is showing the basic layout of the vectrex with the back off.


Another shot to see the caps I am going to replace.


The first thing I did was ground the CRT and remove the annode.



I had to cut this piece so I could remove other components on the vectrex.






I had to desolder three connections and a ground connection connections two of the boards



This is a shot of the power board that I needed to replace the caps on. The caps must have been almost 30 years old.



Just showing dirtyness.



The back of the power board.


I started removing these caps. As you can see, the ones on the left are the news installed ones.



Here are all the installed caps, they look a little off center, but I adjusted them.









The caps I removed.



Before

After

Damn the traces on the power board look like they're going to break at any moment. The ac adapter for my digital camera had a trace on the pcb bubble just like your traces and it broke right off a connection to a cap causing it to stop functioning.

Did replacing the caps fix or improve anything? :scratch:

It also looks like the vetrex board has all the chips socketed.....god I love old hardware and the ease of swapping out the parts.

I can! Before the image on the screen was an uneven brightness. This evened it out.

Excellent work. I'm glad to see such old yet classic hardware getting this much love. This sort of thing is what console mods is all about, showing love to retro gaming hardware

Great write-up and result! I was very relieved to see you cleaned everything off before reassembling.

I really should go back and completely remove the bottom pcb and clean it properly. I would also take out all the IC's and clean them along with the sockets too.

That's not a bad idea. I'd love to see pictures if you end up doing that!

Reminds me of back when I bought a bunch of el-cheapo playchoice arcade pcbs just for the rgb ppu chips. One ppu had been sandwiched so hard all the pins were bent in. When I removed the chip from the socket I found a dead spider underneath haha. Anyway I bent all the pins back and the chip worked perfectly.

I bought a Vectex in the first week it was launched in the UK, back in 1983, cost me £129; I remember because I was 17 at the time. Minestorm and Skramble are excellent games on the system. Sold mine back mid 90's though.

Nice to see system opened up and see the internals, interesting.

Nice trip down memory lane bac-man? I'd laugh if someone made a vectrex portable. What does it store games on carts?

If it were possible i'd be integrating into my Unity project; however as we all know, the Vectrex uses vector graphics from its built-in monitor. The vector graphics were quite hit and miss with lines not joining up correctly however worked well with some games.

bacteria wrote:

If it were possible i'd be integrating into my Unity project; however as we all know, the Vectrex uses vector graphics from its built-in monitor. The vector graphics were quite hit and miss with lines not joining up correctly however worked well with some games.

Oh so if someone made a portable they'd have to use the original tube screen from the console then? That's no good. Oh well atleast gooniesman has shown it love!

Yes, the screen is vector graphics, hence part of the name "Vectrex". The image isn't like a normal screen so would need an emulator to work with scripts to replicate line drawing.

bacteria wrote:

Yes, the screen is vector graphics, hence part of the name "Vectrex". The image isn't like a normal screen so would need an emulator to work with scripts to replicate line drawing.

Basically too much work to make into a portable. Are there vectrex emulators out there?

There was one a while back, wasn't good; no idea about new versions, i'm not interested in emulation per-say.

bacteria wrote:

There was one a while back, wasn't good; no idea about new versions, i'm not interested in emulation per-say.

Well I was trying to think of a way to enjoy vectrex on the go. Emulation seems to be the only solution for that.