These videos are the proof that I love what Vince does not because the result is always success, but because I just enjoy so much the process he follows and how hard he tries to fix every single device that he works on ❤️
Amazing mate! You just saved another Nintendo 64 here at my place. I went straight for the resistor and replaced it (without even removing the Isocoupler board from the main board) WOW that is the smallest thing I have ever repaired and I wasn't using great gear like yours, my eyes hurt! Well done Thanks.
Nice repair, I was screaming no "Don't plug it in " The reason it went bang is without the control board the power transistor or mosfet base or gate is floating, causing the full voltage to go thought the transformer,. You were very lucky you could have killed the power transistor or mosfet plus the transformer. The 3 variable pots on the main board are for adjusting the output voltage.👍👍👍👍👍👍
I was very lucky AR. I was expecting numerous blown components after seeing all that smoke!!!! I knew you would have the answers!!! Cheers for commenting. Are you still repairing stuff for a living AR?
@@Mymatevince I am, but I am so busy that I don't get time anymore, Thinking about getting a setup at work so I maybe just do a voice over of an repair, I am getting in 25 repair a day and is far behind
@@AnonymousRepair I fully understand. Good news that you have plenty of work to keep you out of trouble. If you do return I along with others will be glad to see you back 👍👍👍
What a fantastic video. Is exactly what I’ve been working on and mine had the exact same problem, now mine is also fixed. No aftermarket rubbish for me!
Any chance your power supply was also using a higher amp fuse instead of the proper one? My theory, in another comment was this: Complete guess, but maybe too much voltage/current went through the power supply because it had a higher rated fuse and caused those 2 resistors to burn out (basically the resistors became a fuse; after all, a fuse is just a calibrated resistor designed to go "pop" above a certain current).
Nice find Vince. Fuse in power cord is irrelevant. I am not aware of any other country putting fuses in the power plug. Board had a 2A fuse and it wasn't blown. Broken resistor was on the low voltage side.
@@jonathansharret4900 i'm in australia, our power cables dont have fuses in them. i think Vince's comment was correct, the resistor couldn't dissipate the heat. mine was also covered with the grey goop that was supposed to hold the pcb to the heat sink
Cap going up like that would be a/c across it. We used to play those pranks in the lab at Woolwich college when I was an apprentice in the early 70’s. These vids are so good Vince!.
Great work on figuring this out. Fantastic debugging skills too. Sorry it took so many purchases. That's a hard one. Something that I've seen other console repair channels do is for any faulty board, start by giving it an IPA clean. Doing so forces you to look for dirty spots and finding dirty spots. Best case scenario, the board was just so dirty that it wasn't working. Worst case scenario, you've now identified areas of potential corrosion when you did the cleaning. Any time I see grunge like that on a board, my first instinct is to clean that area up and then test it out. Impressed that you were able to diagnose the whole issue tho. When I run out of the obvious stuff, I'm like welp, I've done all i can do.
Fantastic. I have two N64, both with this power supply. I had one go dead, and switched to the other one, also dead. I gave up when I narrowed it down to the feedback circuit, so I am glad that you pushed on. I will give repairs another go now! Thank you!
@@mch2007uk I fixed one of them. Turned out in my case it was the resistor next to the one in the video. Man soldering those smd resistors requires a steady hand and some heavy duty magnification glass😄! I will give the other one a go also but it is currently not very high on my "to-do" list. So many projects and so few days in a year😁
Vince! You're an absolute legend! You just helped me fix my mates N64 power supply that coincidentally had the same power supply as yours and it had the same issue with the resistor! Thank you so very much!
I just love you Vince, I am in two minds when that power supply blew up, 1. It's very very sad for you buying so many of these power supplies and finding they're all different and then the one that's the same went kaput. 2. Its good to see you don't disguise any of your video's and you show us the good and the bad. But in reality doing the same thing on several occasions I feel so very badly for you and I definitely know how you feel. But what I love about you Vince is you never give up and you don't let these problems get you down for long, you seem to recover very quickly, and that is another good thing about you. An excellent video Vince, I have to say I didn't expect that power supply to go bang like it did, I actually thought it would just not do anything, but if it had been me I would have jumped 10 feet into the air when it happened, you remained remarkedly composed but boy did it blow up my goodness I have never seen anything quite so loud and produce so much smoke just because the high voltage wasn't connected to the low voltage, I really can't see why it would have been so dramatic, but then I'm no qualified electrical repair guy. One thing it's shown us by your endeavours is not to remove the coupler board in a Nintendo 64 power supply. It's a lesson none of us will forget and thanks to you we now know what not to do by showing us what will happen you have helped many people not to make the same mistake, thank you for an excellent video Vince, again sorry about your power supply.
Most people would've given up way before you did, I know it cost you £100 but you've just saved a lot of people a lot of money by sticking with it, love all your videos, your my go to for most stuff👍 I'm a white goods engineer so if you ever need advice on appliance repairs I will endeavour to help you, keep up the great work.
@@Mymatevince Hmm, maybe you can at some sparetime take a look on those not working and get life in them as well to get back your money on selling them! Cuz you won´t have any use of all these power supplys for a N64! /L
it made me laugh out loud when you kept showing more and more power supplies, amazing! l just fixed my psu, based on your findings. l had given up after recapping and even changing out the ceramic caps. thank you for your dedication and service!!!
The buying addiction paid off 😂 Excellent news that it fixed your one as well. Looking at the other comments as well s yours looks like it is a common failure point 👍
I just repaired mine thanks to this, it wasn't actually the 220 ohm, but the neighbouring 1.5k ohm resistor on mine that had died. I had already converted it into a working PSU with a figure 8 connector, by using a 12V 2.5A supply from something else, but this has given me a spare supply now. Thank you very much Vince.
I've been looking at different listings for the N64 this past week as I've been thinking about getting one again, and now a video from Vince about one. What timing
Always puts me on edge and gets the adrenaline going when you plug in a power supply. The capacitor popping was a good one! Great video as always Vince 👌🏼
The amount of time it takes for a cap to blow is measured in "ohnoseconds" it's a different scale than nanoseconds, and varies depending on how much caffeine you've had - the cap waits until precisely 2ns per mg of caffeine you've had that day, so you realize exactly what you did wrong between the OHno and BANG!!!
Wow, that was an awesome video Vince! I think you've got to the bottom of the common issue with these N64 PSUs! I still have the regulation board somewhere here for that PSU I gutted. I will check that resistor!
I thought of your video when watching this one, I was thinking ' I wonder if he solves it??' I've spent too many hours messing around with these PSUs, but just like Vince I never thought to test all the resistors on the board as they generally don't go pop. I still have a box of faulty PSUs, be interesting to see how many are due to this fault 🤔
RAW, I would love to know if any of them test open or in the megaohm range on the 220 Ohm resistor in the video or the 1500 Ohm resistor below it. It might be just pure coincidence that the one that went open was under the black sealant👍👍👍
I know that £100 is more than anyone would want to spend fixing an N64 PSU, but it's still less than a university course (at least here in the US). The knowledge gained will serve you (and us viewers) well in the future. Great work as usual!
Big thanks Vince. I've been a viewer for a while but came across this video after googling common issues with N64 PSUs - of course I should have just gone straight to you! I bought a faulty PSU ages ago to cannibalise for a USB power mod but never got around to it, and after recently coming across a second faulty PSU I thought I should at least open them up to have a look before I started ripping the first one apart. Fortunately for me my two Australian PSUs had identical boards (I also noticed that the cables are removable which would no doubt help with manufacturing - just make 110V and 240V boards and plug in the appropriate cable for each market). However, my boards had different faults to each other. One PSU had an issue with the same resistor as you replaced, but bizarrely mine was reading 6M ohms. The other PSU had that resistor reading 220, but the resistor below it was giving me an odd reading (it's labelled 152 which I believe means it should be 1.5k ohms). Anyway, I swapped the top resistor between boards and I have 1 functioning PSU. Now to go look at my parts boards to find some suitable replacements for number 2 and fingers crossed I will have two working PSUs. Thanks again!
Hi Vince, many thanks! You pointed me in exactly the right area. My board had the lower resistor blown open (1.5k) replaced it and now it works! Again, thanks!
Hi, when you say lower do you mean the one directly under the one Vince replaced ? My seems to have done the same but there are no marking on the resistor for me to be able to figure out the resistance 🥺
@@Gazzerdaman Yes Exactly that one. I was looking at other Videos as well, and found one where the marking was there. it was missing on mine as well, but be assured with 1.5k it works absolutely perfectly.
Isn't that just crazy. I guess it was bound to happen some day where it actually was just a tiny cheap resistor that needed replacing (and you didn't spend hours checking tons of them only to discover it's some 32 pin chip or something). Awesome video and amazing conclusion.
Excellent work! I needed to re-cap an N64 PSU a while ago and was surprised how little resources there online about the N64 PSU. I knew in US there were a variety of different PSU revisions but I thought in Europe there was just one. Those aftermarket PSUs are very shoddy and barely even clip into the N64, so repairing broken N64 PSUs is a worthy endeavour.
This is likely a flyback converter. Removing the opto board from the feedback loop will probably leave the feadback voltage input to the controller floating so when it see's that the output voltage appears too low (because there is no feedback) it'll keep increasing the duty to the primary side fet, which will proportionally keep increasing the secondary voltages. That cap is after the secondary and it's voltage kept increasing way past its max limit and thus it popped.
Thanks SJM, that cap was 25V and it probably received well over 100V. Thanks for explaining that, you really know your stuff. Cheers for sharing your knowledge on here and your own channel 👍👍👍
And that explanation ties in with the LED in the optocoupler being on the secondary side of the power supply. The optocouplers are there to provide feedback, telling the primary side what the secondary voltage is. I think Electronics Repair School has a nice video on switching mode power supplies and how they work. I don't remember all of it but some parts are easy to replace, others almost impossible, like the transformers. I suppose my first suspect after the secondary electrolytics would have been the one small electrolytic next to the optocoupler board, in my "stab in the dark" experience small electrolytics on the primary side can well cause SMPSs to quit working entirely and usually there's only one or two of them. Caps on the secondary side can cause complete failure too if they're shorted and the power supply goes into some protection mode, otherwise they just cause one of the voltages to go missing or unstable.
Damn, it worked So, for PAL fixers, in case yours is fried up (and it's the other one in the video, the resistor right next to it, not labeled, (mine were both unlabeled btw) ) the value you need to change it with is around 1.50k. I measured like 10 PSU's of this model and all of them had values ranging from 1.48 to 1.58. I got the resistor from a 360 fake broken controller. Good video, wasn't expecting to get this fixed since i never bothered comparing every part with a working one. Also, advice for everyone: Remove that weird goo, that's what I did with all of them to avoid this issue in the future. This PSU of mine had the goo right over the resistors. 9 of them had it UNDERNEATH them so it was probably not going to die off, one of them had the exact same placement so it was probably bound to die eventually some day. Thanks
23:27 - that's not the Model number, it's actually the German postcode of the former Nintendo of Europe headquarters where these European power supplies must have come from. As always great fault finding Vince! I'm so happy the N64 is working again, love that system :)
Back 40 years ago I was temping at an aviation parts supply store and we got a call from someone in the US demanding a replacement for Part No. T2E 4J5. That was the company's postal code.
*Has a chuckle at how many N64 PSUs you bought, trying not to think about the box of 9 I bought off Ebay that are gathering dust* I'm sure this video will be extremely helpful when I get around to those 😅 Thanks for persisting!
So I bought another one and it was different, then I bought another one and it was different so I bought another one and it was different again... Loved the ups and downs and the small jump scare too! So glad your persistence paid off!
Thanks, mate! That was exactly the problem with a power supply I have. Same resistor too. Now it’s working again. On a working power supply, the gunk was below the resistors. On the failing one, it was on the resistors.
Fingers crossed the same 220 Ohm resistor or the 1.5K Ohm (1500 Ohm) resistor below it might be the culprit on some of them. Both those resistors were completely covered with the black sealant on this one. If the resistors do test open would you reply to this message as I would love to know if this was just coincidence with the black sealant on this one or whether that was the cause of the fault. 👍👍👍
Most of them are from a big box of broken stuff I bought from a reseller years ago and I remember opening them up for basic troubleshooting and being surprised to find them all to be the same board layout - I don’t remember which. It would surprise me if I didn’t tried contact cleaner :) I will take a look over the weekend and report back.
@@Mymatevince I have now tested 4 of the power supplies. Tree of them had the dead 220ohm resistor and on the last one the 1.4k bellow was bad. I moved the one good 220ohm resistor (didn’t have any in my stash) to replace one of the bad and the psu now works. Thanks again :) P.s. it’s possible (not easy) to do the operation without removing the daughter board :)
Ahhh the N64, so many memories with my younger brother playing Mario Party and Golden Eye. Good to see you persevere with the repair. PSUs are generally the most difficult to troubleshoot because you often have to do so with no power applied to the device.
@@Mymatevince I've learned a lot (what not to do, lol - and also how to safely use my multimeter) from watching your learning process. I remember when I first started watching your videos - I watched them out of chronological order, and bouncing from where you knew how to use an ESR meter and had successfully reballed a BGA setting.... to when you were fixing a load of cheap knockoff handheld consoles from eBay and didn't have spare electrolytic caps and said 'u f" instead of microfarad :-D You've come a long way! Keep up the great work and progress! Can't wait to see you using a scope! I have one I have no idea how to use so I'll be learning with you! :) 🤠
Well done on the result. The lesson on this one is if you had persevered with the broken PSU originally and done the really boring troubleshooting of checking every surface mount cap for a short and every resisitor for aprox value you would have found the problem without needing another PSU. Easy to say I know, but that is the slow boring process needed to try to repair electronics that you don't have a clue how/where they failed. After those steps it would be inductors, diodes, transistors and finally if at all possible chips.
This is a more of a general tip about a smps that has 330v dc on the filtercap but doesn’t do anything: 9 times out of 10 they use a high value resistor (220k and higher) to supply the gate driver ic of the switching mosfet , just follow the ‘plus 330v rail’ to this high value resistor, they do fail alot because there is ~300v dc across it, very common resistor to go open circuit. They don’t burn up because there’s hardly any current flow through them, but high voltage across them makes them go open circuit.(optically the always look fine, so you have to measure them) Also glue and all other kind of crap can become corrosive and/or conductive and can ‘open circuit’ a resistor.
Got one of these boxed in mint condition bought to play super mario 64 and goldeneye back in the day completed both games and packed it away, seeing super mario 64 on an episode of Bad Influence (that ITV games program) for the first time was one of them jaw dropping moments, looking forward to seeing how this repair goes 😊
what a journey! I have that very same N64 "side board" power supply in a tapperware on a shelve, looking at me resentfully as it is been sitting there for ages. Mine is working, but the voltages were slightly low and the console resets itself after a few minutes play, so I thought it was the PS... I might be wrong now I see those 11v workin on yours. I actually found a resistor failing in a power supply area of a board. It was my childhood 14" Sony CRT and that bastard was hidden under the main transformer. To this day it is the repair I am most proud of, and I leart quite a lot about vintage power supplies then (I actually paid for a course on CRT repair with an online school in Colombia). Resistors never fail... until they fail, apparently. Funny thing, in this case my slightly higher knowledge would have been not that useful, as some of the probing has to be done with the thing connected and this board is placed in a really inconvenient way for that. Anyway, thanks a lot for the commitment and the effort. The "I bought one more" part was terrific. One tiny advice: to work and test in mains AC, I would suggest to use a "serial" safety arragement. Just place an old 45-60-90w filament bulb in series with the mains (ideally close to the power of the device you are testing), so all current going to the device you test passes before through that bulb. If there is a bad short the bulb will light up, and save your device from burning. I have saved a lot of fuses and way more delicate components doing that. Cheers
Hallo Vince, vielen Dank für das tolle Video! Bei meinem Board war der untere Widerstand durchgebrannt (1,5 kOhm), ich habe ihn auch ersetzt und jetzt funktioniert das Netzteil wieder! Noch einmal vielen Danke!!! Mein Arbeitskollege wird sich freuen.
44:30 - this is the part of repair most people forget - whilst you may be able to repair something for pennies, there are the hidden costs of time (in tracing the fault), knowledge (which also takes time!) and having access to spares or working units!
One of mine doesn’t work and is the exact same board, thanks for working this one out (and taking the hit), I’ll need to take another look at mine and see if it’s the same fault!
Had to revisit this video I had the same problem last week. I think 30 years of gunk + heat is what does it (the resistor that failed on mine is the one next to the one in this video). Cheers Vince!
You are totally right about the danger of caps, years ago I had a faulty modem so me being me I took it apart and noticed two caps had blown so I replaced them both with what I believed were like for like, turned it on and one exploded in my face, luckily it was not a large cap but still I felt the hot cap liquid burn my face and it almost went in my eyes, not wanting to risk further issues like that I got rid. Never knew what caused the issue in the first place.
I have seen conductive gunk on pcbs, it does indeed happen, there was some stuff used years ago that was beige and flexible, when it gets old it goes darker and rigid and starts to get corrosive and conductive at that point.
Nice fault finding :) It's almost funny how tiny component like this can prevent the whole console working at all. Now you have working power supplies for future Nintendo 64 repairs :)
Good analyses, fix. Something worth investigating with power supplies is to check semiconductors (diodes, transistors, FET's etc) shortly after checking fuses, bridge etc. Although many may have diodes or coils across, it can narrow down faults. Of course, comparison is usually faster, assuming you have additional PSUs. I am no Nintendo expert but 10.9V seems too low for a 12V output, even without a load, so there may be other issues (capacitors, resistors, feedback etc). Next episodes, Smalltown Boy PSUs (no feedback) and ring-welding for beginners, ho, ho.
A clear face shield wouldn't be a bad idea when working on high voltage components. That could have gone horribly wrong mate and we need you in one piece for good repair videos. So glad it was face down but still i recommend a full face shield
Awesome! Not very much specific repairs on the N64. Your channel helped inspire me to pursue my newly found passion! I started repairs 3 years ago, and your content was one of the ones that helped the most! 😊
The model numbers were to simplify which console they went to. You have to get one within the manufacturer date to get one that is similar. This stuff went under multiple revisions as it's lifespan went on.
Typical frequencies used in switching PSUs are in KHz range thus almost any oscilloscope will do. Important thing to know when working on switching PSUs with oscilloscope is to either use differential probe or to use two channels in math mode to calculate the difference while keeping "ground" ends of probes well away from the PSU PCB. There's an easy and high chance to blow up the oscilloscope otherwise. There is a good video on this by Dave Jones from eevBlog.
@@flusensieb244 Isolating transformer is a double edge sword tool that you need to be very careful with. Having a galvanic isolated high power/voltage source would render non-working protection mechanisms that are based on PE connection. Best way to handle such situations/measurements is to use differential probing. That said isolation transformer is a possible and OK workaround for some cases so what to use depends on the "risk appetite", knowledge and caution of the user. For Vince to be of a safer side I'd suggest to trade money for safety and choose an affordable differential probe over messing with galvanic isolation.
I'm an amateur enthusiast and one thing that surprised me is that you didn't try to backtrack the voltages. I would have thought that on the opto you would have seen a floating voltage indicating open circuit. But everyone does different logic
Hello. I am an electronics teacher and my students and I were trying to fix various power supplies for the N64. One of them was fixed just by changing a fuse. But with the other one we had lost hope, until we saw your video. Thanks to your effort in detecting the problem, we have been able to detect the damaged smd resistor. In our case it was the second from above. Do you know the exact value? We have used a 330 Omn and it seems to work. Thank you very much and keep up the good work.
Thanks Retro Krazy, I haven't checked on your channel in a while. I'm going to enjoy perusing it after I have gone through the rest of these comments 👍👍👍
The gunk seems to somewhat keep the octo board in place. If the board experiences mechanical stress by the power supply beeing dropped or something, then the stress will be applied to the area of that resistor or to the resistor itself. Maybe it broke that way.
Well, thats how u do it! You dont give up and finally gets rewarded for it. Well done. This was a very interesting and entertaining video. Hope you can resell some of those ac adapters though…😉
Thank you!!! Well I have already bought 2x N64 consoles that need work so hopefully eventually I can pair them up with faulty N64 eBay buys if I have any success with them 👍👍
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"Local man spends $200 on working N64 power supplies to attempt to fix one broken one". Great video Vince!
😂
And blows one up in the process anyway.
😂
What a marathon
These videos are the proof that I love what Vince does not because the result is always success, but because I just enjoy so much the process he follows and how hard he tries to fix every single device that he works on ❤️
Amazing mate! You just saved another Nintendo 64 here at my place. I went straight for the resistor and replaced it (without even removing the Isocoupler board from the main board) WOW that is the smallest thing I have ever repaired and I wasn't using great gear like yours, my eyes hurt! Well done Thanks.
They look so big on the screen, but in reality they're tiny. You did well to fix it without any magnification 👍👍👍
Vince, you are my Hero!
I have the exact same PSU revision with the same fault and spent DAYS without finding anything.
I can finally fix it! :)
Nice repair, I was screaming no "Don't plug it in " The reason it went bang is without the control board the power transistor or mosfet base or gate is floating, causing the full voltage to go thought the transformer,. You were very lucky you could have killed the power transistor or mosfet plus the transformer. The 3 variable pots on the main board are for adjusting the output voltage.👍👍👍👍👍👍
I was very lucky AR. I was expecting numerous blown components after seeing all that smoke!!!! I knew you would have the answers!!! Cheers for commenting. Are you still repairing stuff for a living AR?
@@Mymatevince I am, but I am so busy that I don't get time anymore, Thinking about getting a setup at work so I maybe just do a voice over of an repair, I am getting in 25 repair a day and is far behind
@@AnonymousRepair I fully understand. Good news that you have plenty of work to keep you out of trouble. If you do return I along with others will be glad to see you back 👍👍👍
What a fantastic video. Is exactly what I’ve been working on and mine had the exact same problem, now mine is also fixed. No aftermarket rubbish for me!
Any chance your power supply was also using a higher amp fuse instead of the proper one? My theory, in another comment was this: Complete guess, but maybe too much voltage/current went through the power supply because it had a higher rated fuse and caused those 2 resistors to burn out (basically the resistors became a fuse; after all, a fuse is just a calibrated resistor designed to go "pop" above a certain current).
Nice find Vince.
Fuse in power cord is irrelevant.
I am not aware of any other country putting fuses in the power plug. Board had a 2A fuse and it wasn't blown. Broken resistor was on the low voltage side.
@@jonathansharret4900 i'm in australia, our power cables dont have fuses in them. i think Vince's comment was correct, the resistor couldn't dissipate the heat. mine was also covered with the grey goop that was supposed to hold the pcb to the heat sink
@@mattski6969 Same here, fixed it. Had the exact same setup but mine was the other resistor. It was a 1.50k valued one
N64 Power Supply addiction, now that is a new gambling habit on me. You never fail to amuse, entertain and inform Vince. Keep up the great work.
The bang and smoke was soo satisfying but the fix and the excitement at the end was great also nice fix vince!
Nice fix, it goes to show how patient you are whilst trying to track down a fault.
Thanks Scott👍👍
The amount of dedication this guy has in fault finding is amazing! Thoroughly enjoying these videos
Cap going up like that would be a/c across it. We used to play those pranks in the lab at Woolwich college when I was an apprentice in the early 70’s. These vids are so good Vince!.
Great work on figuring this out. Fantastic debugging skills too. Sorry it took so many purchases. That's a hard one. Something that I've seen other console repair channels do is for any faulty board, start by giving it an IPA clean. Doing so forces you to look for dirty spots and finding dirty spots. Best case scenario, the board was just so dirty that it wasn't working. Worst case scenario, you've now identified areas of potential corrosion when you did the cleaning. Any time I see grunge like that on a board, my first instinct is to clean that area up and then test it out. Impressed that you were able to diagnose the whole issue tho. When I run out of the obvious stuff, I'm like welp, I've done all i can do.
Fantastic. I have two N64, both with this power supply. I had one go dead, and switched to the other one, also dead. I gave up when I narrowed it down to the feedback circuit, so I am glad that you pushed on. I will give repairs another go now! Thank you!
Did you fix them?
@@mch2007uk I fixed one of them. Turned out in my case it was the resistor next to the one in the video. Man soldering those smd resistors requires a steady hand and some heavy duty magnification glass😄! I will give the other one a go also but it is currently not very high on my "to-do" list. So many projects and so few days in a year😁
In my experience, resistors very rarely go. That was a great fix! Glad you didn't permanently damage the board from that explosion!
Looks like the gamble payed off. Thanks for not giving up on this. It was a pleasure to watch.
Vince! You're an absolute legend! You just helped me fix my mates N64 power supply that coincidentally had the same power supply as yours and it had the same issue with the resistor! Thank you so very much!
I just love you Vince, I am in two minds when that power supply blew up, 1. It's very very sad for you buying so many of these power supplies and finding they're all different and then the one that's the same went kaput.
2. Its good to see you don't disguise any of your video's and you show us the good and the bad.
But in reality doing the same thing on several occasions I feel so very badly for you and I definitely know how you feel. But what I love about you Vince is you never give up and you don't let these problems get you down for long, you seem to recover very quickly, and that is another good thing about you. An excellent video Vince, I have to say I didn't expect that power supply to go bang like it did, I actually thought it would just not do anything, but if it had been me I would have jumped 10 feet into the air when it happened, you remained remarkedly composed but boy did it blow up my goodness I have never seen anything quite so loud and produce so much smoke just because the high voltage wasn't connected to the low voltage, I really can't see why it would have been so dramatic, but then I'm no qualified electrical repair guy. One thing it's shown us by your endeavours is not to remove the coupler board in a Nintendo 64 power supply. It's a lesson none of us will forget and thanks to you we now know what not to do by showing us what will happen you have helped many people not to make the same mistake, thank you for an excellent video Vince, again sorry about your power supply.
So cool that you stuck with it. Like others have said, most would have gotten a new power supply and threw the old one out. Thanks!
Most people would've given up way before you did, I know it cost you £100 but you've just saved a lot of people a lot of money by sticking with it, love all your videos, your my go to for most stuff👍 I'm a white goods engineer so if you ever need advice on appliance repairs I will endeavour to help you, keep up the great work.
Thanks Stu 👍👍👍👍👍
@@Mymatevince Hmm, maybe you can at some sparetime take a look on those not working and get life in them as well to get back your money on selling them! Cuz you won´t have any use of all these power supplys for a N64!
/L
@@lifooz2955 hmm, maybe Vince will find a few broken N64s on eBay missing their PSUs!
it made me laugh out loud when you kept showing more and more power supplies, amazing! l just fixed my psu, based on your findings. l had given up after recapping and even changing out the ceramic caps. thank you for your dedication and service!!!
The buying addiction paid off 😂 Excellent news that it fixed your one as well. Looking at the other comments as well s yours looks like it is a common failure point 👍
Quality work!! Love how devoted you are to figuring out the problem. Love your videos. Been watching for awhile. Keep up the great work. 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
I just repaired mine thanks to this, it wasn't actually the 220 ohm, but the neighbouring 1.5k ohm resistor on mine that had died. I had already converted it into a working PSU with a figure 8 connector, by using a 12V 2.5A supply from something else, but this has given me a spare supply now. Thank you very much Vince.
Excellent news, thanks for letting me know. That 'black goop' covers up both of those resistors so I suppose either one can fail 👍👍👍
I also have a dead 1.5 kohm resistor on my board. Do you know the size for your replacement resistor, 603, 805? (can't find my calipers)
@@Mymatevince And now mine is fixed too, thank you Vince! Before this video I had lost all hopes of fixing the PSU.
(For future reference - the resistors behind the blob are size 603)
@@kurtkomet Thanks Mats👌
one of the most amazing youtuber ever i have been watching you for years, i think my first video was the 360 controller on xbox one!, Great videos!
your are amazing vince . so much love you put in your work. I'm studying eletronics at 41 . you are inspiring. keep the good work
Totally worth it Vince. Im always so lost on power supplys. Im glad you found the fault
Thank you so much, I was very lucky on this one with the end fault considering my capacitor mishap 👍👍👍
I've been looking at different listings for the N64 this past week as I've been thinking about getting one again, and now a video from Vince about one. What timing
Always puts me on edge and gets the adrenaline going when you plug in a power supply. The capacitor popping was a good one! Great video as always Vince 👌🏼
The amount of time it takes for a cap to blow is measured in "ohnoseconds" it's a different scale than nanoseconds, and varies depending on how much caffeine you've had - the cap waits until precisely 2ns per mg of caffeine you've had that day, so you realize exactly what you did wrong between the OHno and BANG!!!
25:44 Jeez, Vince..... be careful brother, that looked so dangerous. I almost felt that. WOW!!
Wow, that was an awesome video Vince! I think you've got to the bottom of the common issue with these N64 PSUs! I still have the regulation board somewhere here for that PSU I gutted. I will check that resistor!
I thought of your video when watching this one, I was thinking ' I wonder if he solves it??' I've spent too many hours messing around with these PSUs, but just like Vince I never thought to test all the resistors on the board as they generally don't go pop.
I still have a box of faulty PSUs, be interesting to see how many are due to this fault 🤔
Thank you Gadget 😎
RAW, I would love to know if any of them test open or in the megaohm range on the 220 Ohm resistor in the video or the 1500 Ohm resistor below it. It might be just pure coincidence that the one that went open was under the black sealant👍👍👍
I'm learning so much while enjoying these videos. Great work!
I know that £100 is more than anyone would want to spend fixing an N64 PSU, but it's still less than a university course (at least here in the US). The knowledge gained will serve you (and us viewers) well in the future. Great work as usual!
Big thanks Vince. I've been a viewer for a while but came across this video after googling common issues with N64 PSUs - of course I should have just gone straight to you!
I bought a faulty PSU ages ago to cannibalise for a USB power mod but never got around to it, and after recently coming across a second faulty PSU I thought I should at least open them up to have a look before I started ripping the first one apart. Fortunately for me my two Australian PSUs had identical boards (I also noticed that the cables are removable which would no doubt help with manufacturing - just make 110V and 240V boards and plug in the appropriate cable for each market).
However, my boards had different faults to each other. One PSU had an issue with the same resistor as you replaced, but bizarrely mine was reading 6M ohms. The other PSU had that resistor reading 220, but the resistor below it was giving me an odd reading (it's labelled 152 which I believe means it should be 1.5k ohms). Anyway, I swapped the top resistor between boards and I have 1 functioning PSU.
Now to go look at my parts boards to find some suitable replacements for number 2 and fingers crossed I will have two working PSUs. Thanks again!
Hi Vince, many thanks! You pointed me in exactly the right area. My board had the lower resistor blown open (1.5k) replaced it and now it works! Again, thanks!
Excellent, looks like it is quite a common problem on these boards. Thanks for letting me know 👍
Hi, when you say lower do you mean the one directly under the one Vince replaced ? My seems to have done the same but there are no marking on the resistor for me to be able to figure out the resistance 🥺
@@Gazzerdaman Yes Exactly that one. I was looking at other Videos as well, and found one where the marking was there. it was missing on mine as well, but be assured with 1.5k it works absolutely perfectly.
@@eddy42109 thanks ! I got a replacement yesterday and managed to swap it over
I love when My Mate Vice doesn't give up or curiosity gets to him.
Finally got a chance to view this one and wow Vince, perseverance paid off! Good job!
Nice one Garth, thank you 👍
Isn't that just crazy. I guess it was bound to happen some day where it actually was just a tiny cheap resistor that needed replacing (and you didn't spend hours checking tons of them only to discover it's some 32 pin chip or something). Awesome video and amazing conclusion.
What a legend! Thanks for not giving up Vince!!!
Love that you caught the magic smoke on camera. Nicely done!
Well done Vince. Credit to your perseverance and not giving in.
Awesome video as usual!! Love it!! You chatted with me on The Cod3rs video the other night. I appreciate you!!
Thanks Shane, I really enjoyed taking time out on Phil's stream, it was good fun 👍👍
You are a legend! There is no information on the whole internet about this problem. THANK YOU
Thank you 👍👍👍
Probably the first one to discover this
Excellent work! I needed to re-cap an N64 PSU a while ago and was surprised how little resources there online about the N64 PSU. I knew in US there were a variety of different PSU revisions but I thought in Europe there was just one. Those aftermarket PSUs are very shoddy and barely even clip into the N64, so repairing broken N64 PSUs is a worthy endeavour.
What a video, great work, and so glad you persisted to find out what the issue was. Amazing!
Thank you 👍
This is likely a flyback converter. Removing the opto board from the feedback loop will probably leave the feadback voltage input to the controller floating so when it see's that the output voltage appears too low (because there is no feedback) it'll keep increasing the duty to the primary side fet, which will proportionally keep increasing the secondary voltages. That cap is after the secondary and it's voltage kept increasing way past its max limit and thus it popped.
Thanks SJM, that cap was 25V and it probably received well over 100V. Thanks for explaining that, you really know your stuff. Cheers for sharing your knowledge on here and your own channel 👍👍👍
@@Mymatevince damnit, have I got to sub to another channel 😁🙄😎
Hahaha, yep 😎
And that explanation ties in with the LED in the optocoupler being on the secondary side of the power supply. The optocouplers are there to provide feedback, telling the primary side what the secondary voltage is. I think Electronics Repair School has a nice video on switching mode power supplies and how they work. I don't remember all of it but some parts are easy to replace, others almost impossible, like the transformers.
I suppose my first suspect after the secondary electrolytics would have been the one small electrolytic next to the optocoupler board, in my "stab in the dark" experience small electrolytics on the primary side can well cause SMPSs to quit working entirely and usually there's only one or two of them. Caps on the secondary side can cause complete failure too if they're shorted and the power supply goes into some protection mode, otherwise they just cause one of the voltages to go missing or unstable.
Damn, it worked
So, for PAL fixers, in case yours is fried up (and it's the other one in the video, the resistor right next to it, not labeled, (mine were both unlabeled btw) ) the value you need to change it with is around 1.50k. I measured like 10 PSU's of this model and all of them had values ranging from 1.48 to 1.58.
I got the resistor from a 360 fake broken controller.
Good video, wasn't expecting to get this fixed since i never bothered comparing every part with a working one.
Also, advice for everyone: Remove that weird goo, that's what I did with all of them to avoid this issue in the future. This PSU of mine had the goo right over the resistors. 9 of them had it UNDERNEATH them so it was probably not going to die off, one of them had the exact same placement so it was probably bound to die eventually some day.
Thanks
Glad you have friends in the great city of Bristol, we are a friendly city.
Great video, as usual
Awesome job Vince. Real sense of accomplishment getting this fixed.
23:27 - that's not the Model number, it's actually the German postcode of the former Nintendo of Europe headquarters where these European power supplies must have come from.
As always great fault finding Vince! I'm so happy the N64 is working again, love that system :)
Back 40 years ago I was temping at an aviation parts supply store and we got a call from someone in the US demanding a replacement for Part No. T2E 4J5. That was the company's postal code.
I'm very skeptical about that. German Postal codes consist of a 5 figure number no letters. The Japanese power supplies were made in Deutschland?
Always look forward to your videos! When your opening music starts it puts me in a good mood! Thanks for all you do!
Excellent, thank you Michael 👍
Amazing video as always. Vince you never cease to amaze. Best wishes from the USA
*Has a chuckle at how many N64 PSUs you bought, trying not to think about the box of 9 I bought off Ebay that are gathering dust*
I'm sure this video will be extremely helpful when I get around to those 😅 Thanks for persisting!
Great job, Vince ! Always enjoy watching
So I bought another one and it was different, then I bought another one and it was different so I bought another one and it was different again... Loved the ups and downs and the small jump scare too! So glad your persistence paid off!
😂Cheers Treena!
Thanks, mate! That was exactly the problem with a power supply I have. Same resistor too. Now it’s working again. On a working power supply, the gunk was below the resistors. On the failing one, it was on the resistors.
I think I have 10 dead n64 power supplies I think you have just saved a lot of them - can’t wait to test :) thank you!!
Fingers crossed the same 220 Ohm resistor or the 1.5K Ohm (1500 Ohm) resistor below it might be the culprit on some of them. Both those resistors were completely covered with the black sealant on this one. If the resistors do test open would you reply to this message as I would love to know if this was just coincidence with the black sealant on this one or whether that was the cause of the fault. 👍👍👍
Check to see if the pins/sockets are corroded. I found contact cleaner/deoxit brings them back to life...
Most of them are from a big box of broken stuff I bought from a reseller years ago and I remember opening them up for basic troubleshooting and being surprised to find them all to be the same board layout - I don’t remember which. It would surprise me if I didn’t tried contact cleaner :)
I will take a look over the weekend and report back.
@@Mymatevince I have now tested 4 of the power supplies. Tree of them had the dead 220ohm resistor and on the last one the 1.4k bellow was bad. I moved the one good 220ohm resistor (didn’t have any in my stash) to replace one of the bad and the psu now works. Thanks again :)
P.s. it’s possible (not easy) to do the operation without removing the daughter board :)
Excellent news, thanks for reporting back JJC, so it looks like the black 'gunk' is responsible in these instances. Well done 👍😎
Absolutely amazing fault finding there Vince honestly you are a true pro love it when such a small component stops something working
Thanks RM, my favourite fixes are when tiny components like these fail and cause the whole think not to work 👍👍
A great archive of a potential repair for this component!
Ahhh the N64, so many memories with my younger brother playing Mario Party and Golden Eye. Good to see you persevere with the repair. PSUs are generally the most difficult to troubleshoot because you often have to do so with no power applied to the device.
Imo GE is still one of best games ever made. I still play it occasionally with PC emulator, although i have original 64 and GE as well.
Omg ! Golden eye ! Best game ever ! Also Mario cart 64 was awesome !
Thanks Shawn, I really struggle with them after the first few components after the incoming mains 👍
@@Mymatevince I've learned a lot (what not to do, lol - and also how to safely use my multimeter) from watching your learning process. I remember when I first started watching your videos - I watched them out of chronological order, and bouncing from where you knew how to use an ESR meter and had successfully reballed a BGA setting.... to when you were fixing a load of cheap knockoff handheld consoles from eBay and didn't have spare electrolytic caps and said 'u f" instead of microfarad :-D You've come a long way! Keep up the great work and progress! Can't wait to see you using a scope! I have one I have no idea how to use so I'll be learning with you! :)
🤠
@@russmelanson6038 Thanks Russ👍
Well done on the result. The lesson on this one is if you had persevered with the broken PSU originally and done the really boring troubleshooting of checking every surface mount cap for a short and every resisitor for aprox value you would have found the problem without needing another PSU. Easy to say I know, but that is the slow boring process needed to try to repair electronics that you don't have a clue how/where they failed. After those steps it would be inductors, diodes, transistors and finally if at all possible chips.
This is a more of a general tip about a smps that has 330v dc on the filtercap but doesn’t do anything: 9 times out of 10 they use a high value resistor (220k and higher) to supply the gate driver ic of the switching mosfet , just follow the ‘plus 330v rail’ to this high value resistor, they do fail alot because there is ~300v dc across it, very common resistor to go open circuit.
They don’t burn up because there’s hardly any current flow through them, but high voltage across them makes them go open circuit.(optically the always look fine, so you have to measure them)
Also glue and all other kind of crap can become corrosive and/or conductive and can ‘open circuit’ a resistor.
Best. Video. Ever. Magic blue smoke released. And you are brave enough to show the world.
Thanks Margie 👍👍👍👍
Got one of these boxed in mint condition bought to play super mario 64 and goldeneye back in the day completed both games and packed it away, seeing super mario 64 on an episode of Bad Influence (that ITV games program) for the first time was one of them jaw dropping moments, looking forward to seeing how this repair goes 😊
what a journey! I have that very same N64 "side board" power supply in a tapperware on a shelve, looking at me resentfully as it is been sitting there for ages. Mine is working, but the voltages were slightly low and the console resets itself after a few minutes play, so I thought it was the PS... I might be wrong now I see those 11v workin on yours.
I actually found a resistor failing in a power supply area of a board. It was my childhood 14" Sony CRT and that bastard was hidden under the main transformer. To this day it is the repair I am most proud of, and I leart quite a lot about vintage power supplies then (I actually paid for a course on CRT repair with an online school in Colombia). Resistors never fail... until they fail, apparently.
Funny thing, in this case my slightly higher knowledge would have been not that useful, as some of the probing has to be done with the thing connected and this board is placed in a really inconvenient way for that.
Anyway, thanks a lot for the commitment and the effort. The "I bought one more" part was terrific.
One tiny advice: to work and test in mains AC, I would suggest to use a "serial" safety arragement. Just place an old 45-60-90w filament bulb in series with the mains (ideally close to the power of the device you are testing), so all current going to the device you test passes before through that bulb. If there is a bad short the bulb will light up, and save your device from burning. I have saved a lot of fuses and way more delicate components doing that.
Cheers
Hallo Vince, vielen Dank für das tolle Video! Bei meinem Board war der untere Widerstand durchgebrannt (1,5 kOhm), ich habe ihn auch ersetzt und jetzt funktioniert das Netzteil wieder! Noch einmal vielen Danke!!! Mein Arbeitskollege wird sich freuen.
Its amazing how much magic smoke the manufactures can fit in capacitors these days. good effort.😂 really enjoy you videos 👍
Wow your persistence amazes me. The result though is an awesome video. LOVED IT!!
Thank you Brendan 👍👍👍
44:30 - this is the part of repair most people forget - whilst you may be able to repair something for pennies, there are the hidden costs of time (in tracing the fault), knowledge (which also takes time!) and having access to spares or working units!
Yeah, I was working on this over 3 days!!!! Not full time but many hours was sunk into it 👍👍
One of mine doesn’t work and is the exact same board, thanks for working this one out (and taking the hit), I’ll need to take another look at mine and see if it’s the same fault!
Had to revisit this video I had the same problem last week. I think 30 years of gunk + heat is what does it (the resistor that failed on mine is the one next to the one in this video).
Cheers Vince!
Nice, just when I hoped for, Vince uploaded
N64, suspense, explosions and finally an unexpected ending!
Better than many movies imo
😂👍👍👍👍
Wow great job. Hard work paid off in the end.
Great fix and fault find! Your videos helped inspire me to follow a career in electronic engineering ✌️ Keep up the awesome work!
I repaired now a N64 psu, same issue. Thanks you man! great content as always
You are totally right about the danger of caps, years ago I had a faulty modem so me being me I took it apart and noticed two caps had blown so I replaced them both with what I believed were like for like, turned it on and one exploded in my face, luckily it was not a large cap but still I felt the hot cap liquid burn my face and it almost went in my eyes, not wanting to risk further issues like that I got rid. Never knew what caused the issue in the first place.
I love how that Board was screetching for help before that cap blew
I've got a few of these with a couple not working. This video is very helpful.
Thank you for this video Vince.
Mine has exactly the same fault. That resistor. Much appreciated xxx
No way!!!! Excellent 🙏👍👍👍
Just fixed my n64 with an identical problem. Both my resistors at top of that opto board were bad. Thank you.
I have seen conductive gunk on pcbs, it does indeed happen, there was some stuff used years ago that was beige and flexible, when it gets old it goes darker and rigid and starts to get corrosive and conductive at that point.
Interesting, thanks for sharing the info 👍
Nice fault finding :) It's almost funny how tiny component like this can prevent the whole console working at all. Now you have working power supplies for future Nintendo 64 repairs :)
Exactly JSV 👍👍👍 I have just received 2 faulty N64s from eBay!
Brilliant Vince methodical diagnosis at its best 😊
Thanks Gary, I got lucky with this one after my little capacitor incident!!! All's well that ends well😎👍
@@Mymatevince lol I did chuckle a lot 🤭 but we’ve all been there Vince 😊
Amazing fix, great video.
Fantastic video. I enjoy the repair as much as your elated-ness. 😁
I hope you get to a million subs man, great video👍
Good analyses, fix. Something worth investigating with power supplies is to check semiconductors (diodes, transistors, FET's etc) shortly after checking fuses, bridge etc. Although many may have diodes or coils across, it can narrow down faults. Of course, comparison is usually faster, assuming you have additional PSUs. I am no Nintendo expert but 10.9V seems too low for a 12V output, even without a load, so there may be other issues (capacitors, resistors, feedback etc). Next episodes, Smalltown Boy PSUs (no feedback) and ring-welding for beginners, ho, ho.
A clear face shield wouldn't be a bad idea when working on high voltage components. That could have gone horribly wrong mate and we need you in one piece for good repair videos. So glad it was face down but still i recommend a full face shield
Awesome! Not very much specific repairs on the N64. Your channel helped inspire me to pursue my newly found passion! I started repairs 3 years ago, and your content was one of the ones that helped the most! 😊
Excellent, thank you 👍👍👍👍
truly truly awesome dedication at its finest. Well done..
The model numbers were to simplify which console they went to. You have to get one within the manufacturer date to get one that is similar. This stuff went under multiple revisions as it's lifespan went on.
Thanks Dtr 👍
Typical frequencies used in switching PSUs are in KHz range thus almost any oscilloscope will do. Important thing to know when working on switching PSUs with oscilloscope is to either use differential probe or to use two channels in math mode to calculate the difference while keeping "ground" ends of probes well away from the PSU PCB. There's an easy and high chance to blow up the oscilloscope otherwise. There is a good video on this by Dave Jones from eevBlog.
Thanks Alexey 👌
You can avoid blowing the scope by using an isolating transformer.
@@flusensieb244 Isolating transformer is a double edge sword tool that you need to be very careful with. Having a galvanic isolated high power/voltage source would render non-working protection mechanisms that are based on PE connection. Best way to handle such situations/measurements is to use differential probing. That said isolation transformer is a possible and OK workaround for some cases so what to use depends on the "risk appetite", knowledge and caution of the user. For Vince to be of a safer side I'd suggest to trade money for safety and choose an affordable differential probe over messing with galvanic isolation.
I'm an amateur enthusiast and one thing that surprised me is that you didn't try to backtrack the voltages. I would have thought that on the opto you would have seen a floating voltage indicating open circuit.
But everyone does different logic
Hello. I am an electronics teacher and my students and I were trying to fix various power supplies for the N64. One of them was fixed just by changing a fuse. But with the other one we had lost hope, until we saw your video. Thanks to your effort in detecting the problem, we have been able to detect the damaged smd resistor. In our case it was the second from above. Do you know the exact value? We have used a 330 Omn and it seems to work.
Thank you very much and keep up the good work.
Excellent news 👍 On my UK power supply the 2nd resistor from the top is a 1500 Ohm resistor (1.5K).
Thanks for the comment.
@@Mymatevince Thank you very much.
Today I have fixed my second power supply thanks to your vídeo and your answer. Thank you again.
Thank you, well done. Those 2 resistors seem to be a common problem with this board revision👍
This had everything I love about repair videos!
Its been soo long since a my mate vince bang! :D
😂
Good job and nice find! Agreed that it's usually caps that fail but finding that resistor was a good effort.!
Thanks Retro Krazy, I haven't checked on your channel in a while. I'm going to enjoy perusing it after I have gone through the rest of these comments 👍👍👍
Nice fix Vince. persistence paid off a great video 👍👍👍👍
The gunk seems to somewhat keep the octo board in place.
If the board experiences mechanical stress by the power supply beeing dropped or something, then the stress will be applied to the area of that resistor or to the resistor itself. Maybe it broke that way.
Love the fact you just don't give up no matter what lol
Cheers Phil, like yourself, you take customers repairs far further than most people, hand reballing chips etc. 👍👍👍
@@Mymatevince indeed mate. Has to be done if you want to gain an advantage these days
@@TheCod3r 👍👍
A true classic never go out of style
I agree
Well, thats how u do it! You dont give up and finally gets rewarded for it. Well done. This was a very interesting and entertaining video.
Hope you can resell some of those ac adapters though…😉
Thank you!!! Well I have already bought 2x N64 consoles that need work so hopefully eventually I can pair them up with faulty N64 eBay buys if I have any success with them 👍👍