Arcadecomponents.com

11/24/2025

We carry a lot of ICs that aren't on our web site. A local drove over tonight to pick up a WD1791 floppy drive controller chip and a couple of 7407 buffers.

The result? A TRS-80 Model 16 computer lives and boots again!

11/21/2025

It's always fun to unscrew what someone else did when trying to fix a board. 😳

Neo Geo with a Backup RAM error came in. Disassembled it, repaired it, and when putting it back together, it shut down the power supply.

Notice anything wrong with the riser board? The metal support was installed upside down and was shorting all the connector pins!

11/16/2025

It's always a pleasure to receive pictures from customers of their running games after repairs are done by us!

11/03/2025

Sometimes you luck into unicorns.

In this case, I picked up a large lot of vintage electronic components from a retired Tandy engineer. Included in that was a NOS sample box of switches from a manufacturer. In it was the OEM red push button switch needed to fix a TRS-80 Deluxe Joystick.

10/30/2025

You never know what to expect when you work on a board that was "repaired" by another tech.

This time it was a Galaga boardset. Not only did it have a bad 74LS107 being used as a clock divider (bad bond wire inside the chip package), it had three resistor packs that were not soldered down to the board. The tech put them on the board, but left legs unsoldered.

Have you ever had to follow behind another tech and fix their work?

10/08/2025

Collecting odd pieces of test equipment means storage and organization are a must... But when you need them they are nice to have around.

No green light = bad crystal. Hard part is finding a 10.475MHz one to fix an old HTX-252 2-meter amateur radio and I've emailed about a half dozen companies. I picked that radio up in the original box in like new condition from Computer Reset years ago.

08/12/2025

Corrosion under chips is always fun, especially when the trace meets the pad. This was causing the game board to not recognize any cartridges.

A quick pinch with some duck billed pliers flattened out a small bit of 30ga wire to slip down the thru hole in the PCB and it was soldered into place to patch the break.

The result? Success! A Neo Geo 4-slot was returned to service.

Although, I think I need to clean my bench monitor... :)

07/28/2025

Did the unthinkable and found a stash of NOS Neo-Geo custom ICs.

They are up on my web site at: https://www.arcadecomponents.com/neo-geo.html

Hope these help you keep your systems alive and well!

All images and documents content Copyright 2005-2025 Arcadecomponents.com / Raymond Jett. All software available for downloading is copyrighted by its respective owner.

07/17/2025

A Mortal Kombat II sound board with 10 bongs came in for repair.

10 bongs = Sound RAM failure.

This was a b*tch to track down... normally it's one of the 74HC541 chips causing headaches. Nope. All good. .RAMs were good too...

Found corrosion on the 7406 and a couple resistors. Cleaned up the mess and replaced those... Then found a cluster of corrosion on the bottom side of the PCB where it migrated through the solder downward to corrode traces. One was separated.

The broken trace went from the CPU to the GAL to the 74F00 as a part of the /RAMCS control signal. This explained why the signal on pin 20 was only giving small blips while the other enable pin (22) was very active.

Patched the trace and another sound board lives.

07/17/2025

How do you view schematics in your shop?

On my two main benches I put 42" 4K HDTVs on the back of them and use a simple computer to access the files over the wireless network.

I find it makes them easier to see and follow.

06/09/2025

Second video on the SOL-20 restoration is up!

https://youtu.be/N-nXwxGKRIM

In this one I clean then check the tantalums on the 4 S-100 expansion cards then rebuild the Keytronic foam and foil keyboard.

Join me as I work to restore a pair of SOL-20 computer to working condition. These two were rescued from a shed and entrusted to me with the expectation that...

06/02/2025

Published my first YouTube short!

https://youtube.com/shorts/y_69dFiSHeE?feature=share

Do you have questions on things you'd like to see that are quick to answer - under 3 minutes?

you have to pull custom chips off another board to fix a game worth a lot more. Here I prep a surface mount chi...