Warning: Images not 56k Friendly.

So when i got home, my new PSX to Jamma adapter was here, which caused me to be excited. I was finally goin to be able to play Arcana heart with decent sticks. I hook it all up, get ready to play, and flip the switch... nothing.. Mess around with it for a bit... still nothing. Not entirely sure if its broken, but its certainly not working.

So, I'm really frustrated at this point because I thought I had something that would have taken up my night.. er morning, but instead I have aggravation
I figure, well, I don't know if i have all the tools I'll need for tomorrows Monitor discharging, so let me look around a bit.

Can't find the things that I would normally be looking for which is to say, alligator clips so I could use a normal screwdriver. but i did find this

"Warning: Scary part has arrived!"
Get a 3 ft. length of lamp cord, strip 1/2" off each end and attach alligator clips to the ends. (kind of looks like midget jumper cables, except that there is only 1 clip on each end!) Clip one end to the metal chassis of the monitor, and the other end to the shaft of a very long, thin, plastic or rubber handled screwdriver.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, we happen to have some lamp cord kicking around in the basement. (http://partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1554.JPG - my super anti zap cord)


I take that, and think... hmm, well I could try to do the monitor now. Unfortunately, I think, well if i mess up, and zap myself, no one will know till morning, that would be bad. I'd be dead! Fortunately I see Giles online so I say, hey, if I dont respond again in 5 minutes, I got zapped, call the house. I run downstairs to do it get all ready to do it and my cord is too long. At like 4 min 30 seconds I get back upstairs, tell giles not to call the house.

I then go back down, fix the cord, tell him again, ok 5 minutes go and do it, and it was very non-exciting. The monitor is now able to be taken out of the cab, and i could theoretically, work on the stuff that night. I figure, what the hell, I'm not doing anything now. so i start trying to get the anode cap off (http://partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1560.JPG) I must have pulled at it for like 15 minutes before i managed to get it off

I start attempting to take the monitor out of the cab. And there are a bunch of cables I've never unhooked before, so i make careful note of them and unhook them, and then take the monitor out of the cab. (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1567.JPG) Next step is disconnecting the monitor chassis from the monitor, which involves unhooking even more cables I've never played with before, so i make careful note of how those ones go on also, and go ahead and unhook that.

At this point, i need to find 2 things, my soldering iron, and my cap kit, neither of which I really had any idea where was. After another 20 minutes of searching I've found them both, plus some solder. So I take the newly disconnected chassis upstairs, and take a look at it (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1559.JPG) Its pretty freaking disgusting!

If you were ever wondering why people say you should replace capacitors in a monitor chassis, its because shit like this happens : http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1562.JPG this cap has exploded all over the board. So I take my trusty cap kit, and set it up so I can easily find all the caps that I will be needing for the kit (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1561.JPG) . at this point I need to teach myself how to solder!

Basically, you take your trusty sheet (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1571.JPG) and find the location C Whatever, and find the cap on the board, then you use a soldering iron, unsolder and pull out the old cap, and put a new cap in its place, making sure to put the right size and the right polarity (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1563.JPG) is the back of the board, looks pretty uggy.

After about an hour, and suprisingly only one burn, I have a completed chassis, with shiny new blue caps (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1569.JPG) which looks a whole lot better than the old, ugly caps (http://www.partingvisions.com/zap/IMG_1559.JPG) So I'm finished, I try my best to hook the chassis back up to the monitor, then the monitor back up to the system

At this point, I'm honestly expecting it to explode or something equally as awful. I turn it on, and I'm behind it because you are supposed to look for black smoke and popping noise in case you've put a capacitor in backwards. I hear the monitor hum, and nothing else, but i dont see any smoke. I figure that I must have fucked up pretty badly if theres nothing happening at all

So I walk around to the front of the monitor, and the image is there! and its not bouncy anymore! somehow on my first try I've fixed the monitor and it looks awesome now