First console up in a dual order was an Atari Jaguar! Been seeing quite a few of these lately almost all for the Zaxour suite of mods (check out his 64BP, JaguWATT and Hairball!)
This one was in for just the 64BP and a Full Recap Service. Since a deep cleaning was not ordered I didn’t have to disassemble shell ahead of time to prep cleaning, I just dove right in and removed mainboard from the cage and reflowed all cap joints and desoldered with my Hakko gun, which makes pretty quick work of them!
This was actually the first time I have received one of Zaxours flexes for install which is pretty cool, very clean and saves a lot of time on measuring and trimming wires. It’s an older version of the flex kit and he advised me to toss out the 9V/L6 flex which is too short but otherwise the main flex aligned great and results in some super clean joints!
The Jaguar is a pretty easy recap overall, just have to make sure the two audio-grade capacitors are installed in the correct location per Console5 instructions. On my initial testing before work I noticed a very audible “whine” coming from the coil area near U38. I would have expected the JaguWATT to remedy this for sure but not the recap however when it was reassembled the whine was almost completely gone so seems it must have been related or possibly due to component removal for the 64BP? Either way, customer should be happy!
Above is also a shot of the 3 wires you run to the underside of the board for S-Video and Composite, via the “Trench” under the 64BP board
No surprises on the 64BP, done enough of them at this point it’s pretty simple. Like the last install I did, I quickly designed a simple plug for the old unused RF hole because without it, you see inside and the flex which isn’t a huge deal but this helps give the rear a more finished and clean look I think!
10 pin din aligned very well, the key here is patience and making sure the DIN board is pushed back to the rear metal frame as tight as it can be and also away from the corner as far as possible before bumping into the SMD resistors/caps so that its aligned center horizontally
I applied my JRG sticker and left top shell off during initial testing to make sure all was ok… and it was!
Ran the Jag for a few hours to ensure no audio or video problems and everything was behaving as expected. Then sat down and played 4 games to capture some 4K footage. You really can’t tell how nice the image quality is from the above thumbnails, the full quality 4K PNG files will be shared when making the post on social media!
All in all, a nice straightforward service request, on to part 2 of the order!