A little over a year ago I had a customer bring up the subject of the Casio Loopy and they ended up sending in an even rarer 32X-style attachment called the magical shop for a recap, cleaning and retrobright.
Along with it was a spare Loopy I wanted to use to test going through a recap and RGB mod which I finished earlier this year. Having vetted a good solution for RGB Scart output (off the back of work done by PartlyHuman) this customer wanted the same exact refurb and upgrade done to their personal Loopy, with an added bonus of a custom LED!
No cleaning selected for this console and I see why, It was honestly in great shape. So once it arrived, started with internals teardown to get both boards up and ready for decap.
Made quick work of the AV/PSU board as its all TH caps and only a half dozen or so. It was brough to my attention last time that one of the capacitors is soldered in backwards due to an error in the silkscreen so for this one I installed the new cap in correctly ignoring the marking.
The mainboard is mostly SMD so takes a tad bit longer but I am still able to make overall quick work of it thanks to my hot tweezers! Wicked away all remnants of old solder, deep cleaned both boards top and bottom and then using a Console5 Loopy cap kit, got all the new SMD and TH caps installed on both boards!
Once done, I quickly reconnected everything for a simple test to confirm stock operation before even considering RGB mod, and it worked great!
Partlyhumans orginal tutorial is for a 9 din with NO components internal on the Loopy for use with HDretrovision cables. I made the assumption that since Genesis 2 scart cables have components in them as well those cables would work fine with that setup so I had originally installed a 9 din and custom PCB he sent me to wire direct from encoder. HDretrovision cable DID in fact work ok, Genesis 2 scart did not. After a little while of talking to Ed who made the Scart cable, he deemed because it was csync with 470ohm resistor and 220uf caps in line on the cable this was causing a problem with the mod which uses composite video for sync.
The options then seemed to be plan to use a composite sync Genesis 2 cable which I do not have and therefore would be unable to test, or switch to a standardized 8 din install with components internally and use an 8 din scart cable. This is how I had wired up my previous Loopy mod and after talking to customer, made the most sense so they acquired a cable and I pulled the din and wiring and re-did to match my previous work.
The install itself is quite simple, tapping RGB/Sync/GND/5V and Audio left and right from the encoder chip and audio board, I use 220uF caps and 75ohm resistors in line from the encoder on the R/G/B/S lines to the din. I have plans to whip up an SMD buddy board that can solder on to the rear of the din AND include the components for a much cleaner install, but for now im just securing the caps and TH resistors in line and I think it still looks pretty clean overall!
Quickly fired it up and tested everything before securing the DIN to shell and securing heatshrink tubing to the wiring in case anything needed to be done.
Lastly I quickly swapped out the stock LED board for the custom one that comes with Floopy Drive and offers color changing effects, its just a simple LED install, resistor and solder to the existing harness but it looks great!
With all work done and RGB mod testing out properly I secured din, heated shrink tubing and re-assembled shell while also giving a quick wipe down and application of UV protectant spray
Any time I do any sort of video modification I always grab captures of the final results. This customer had created a custom Loopy profile for the RetroTink 4K and shared it with me, which I used on the RGB input line.
Not a ton of game choices and all but one are fully in japanese but I was able to click around enough for testing and grabbing captures from 4 different games. Thank god for the Floopy Drive as the games are not cheap or easy to find!
Once my 4K captures were done, order was complete and on to the next!
Thank you for the amazing work as always! The Loopy has never looked this good!
You’re welcome!
Thank you for trusting me with your Loopy AND Magical Shop and getting me hooked on collecting and tinkering with weirdo systems 😆