Recapped Turbo Express...

I don't recall when I got it, but it was when I moved to our new house. So that'll make it...about a year or 2 ago.

It's a Turbo Express, something I've been wanting to add to my collection for ages. The cost of these things, even not working, its ridiculous! I got this thing for a steal!...the pic is the finished work, I just didn't take a before shot when I got it.

Story goes:This guy in a FB group I was in posted this up. He got it as a non-working system with a game for cheap. He wanted to use the shell for a Raspberry Pi project for Retro Pie...I wasn't having that and mentioned that he should just recap it and have it as a working unit. He PM'd me and offered the unit at cost to him minus the game. I couldn't say no.

So there it was. Preliminary tests showed no image, just the backlight.

I ordered a capacitor kit for it from eBay, using mainly SDM (or SMT) ceramic capacitors. After I got the capacitor kit, I put it with the TE, and sidelined it. That was about a year ago.

Then C19 hit...now I figured I should do something with it.

I started by cracking the case open (again) and removed whatever caps that I could get to with my hot air rework station (thanks to Voultar for the technique) before I had to take out my desoldering station to take out the through hole cap and the shielding.

Most of the larger ones have already leaked and it spread all over the board. After removing them, I took some alcohol and an old toothbrush and cleaned off all the gunk.

Here's all the caps replaced with SMT capacitors. No worries for leaking caps in the future...I hope.

I didn't take a pic of it, but there was one more capacitor on the controller board that was popped. That was also changed out with an SMT cap.

After double checking the replaced components, I put the TE back together to test. In the first test, it didn't turn on. I though a small component I chipped by accident caused it to not turn on. Turns out, it was one connector that I forgot to plug back into the board.

After plugging that connector in, I was greeted with working sound and screen!...albeit a little washed out, but working nonetheless.

I'm already planning on modifying it to use a larger LCD as the final mod to it. Hopefully that will come soon.