Just received my MVS bought from good ol' Aliexpress! Not sure what I was expecting, but there was a few things notable about it.
1) The outer ABS plastic shell was scratched to hell and back. I removed it and scrubbed it down with soap, a toothbrush and melamine sponge to see if some of that could be alleviated, but I might have to use some plastic scratch remover and a buffing wheel to get some results. I'll also be coating it with 303 Protectant, but I might wait a little bit since I just realized there's one with a matte finish. Could make it less of a fingerprint magnet which would be nice. Also going to add a little bit of velvet or tape (or velvet tape) where the cartridge slides to make it less scratchy.
2) The board itself was a bit dirty. Put the thing through an ultrasonic cleaner cycle in distilled water, currently waiting for it to dry since I gave it another rinse of distilled water afterwards. Will address the rest later with a brush and some alcohol or contact cleaner.
3) Battery was missing. Going to do a bit of research to find a suitable replacement, but I know I can't use a CR2023 since it's apparently a rechargeable one and I'd have to remove a circuit if I did want to use it.
4) Bah. NEO-BUF chip had a bypass bodge ribbon cable installed. Gonna replace that with one of Furrtek's.
5) Huh. What are you? Evidently, they figured out a Neo-ZMC2 with a slightly different design from Furrtek's. It also appears to be on a castellated ribbon cable to adapt the pins rather than on a PCB. Interesting, and I haven't seen any other mentions of this being done to other people's boards.
So this definitely appears to be a board that had failed chips and got repaired then resold to me. I paid $66 shipped which was... Not bad I guess? Haven't actually tested it for functionality yet. I'll probably also look into getting a stereo mod installed, but it looks like there isn't a steady supply of the recommended PCB. Worse comes to worse, I might try and make a small production run to make the shipping of the sourced parts worth it.
Cheers?
1) The outer ABS plastic shell was scratched to hell and back. I removed it and scrubbed it down with soap, a toothbrush and melamine sponge to see if some of that could be alleviated, but I might have to use some plastic scratch remover and a buffing wheel to get some results. I'll also be coating it with 303 Protectant, but I might wait a little bit since I just realized there's one with a matte finish. Could make it less of a fingerprint magnet which would be nice. Also going to add a little bit of velvet or tape (or velvet tape) where the cartridge slides to make it less scratchy.
2) The board itself was a bit dirty. Put the thing through an ultrasonic cleaner cycle in distilled water, currently waiting for it to dry since I gave it another rinse of distilled water afterwards. Will address the rest later with a brush and some alcohol or contact cleaner.
3) Battery was missing. Going to do a bit of research to find a suitable replacement, but I know I can't use a CR2023 since it's apparently a rechargeable one and I'd have to remove a circuit if I did want to use it.
4) Bah. NEO-BUF chip had a bypass bodge ribbon cable installed. Gonna replace that with one of Furrtek's.
5) Huh. What are you? Evidently, they figured out a Neo-ZMC2 with a slightly different design from Furrtek's. It also appears to be on a castellated ribbon cable to adapt the pins rather than on a PCB. Interesting, and I haven't seen any other mentions of this being done to other people's boards.
So this definitely appears to be a board that had failed chips and got repaired then resold to me. I paid $66 shipped which was... Not bad I guess? Haven't actually tested it for functionality yet. I'll probably also look into getting a stereo mod installed, but it looks like there isn't a steady supply of the recommended PCB. Worse comes to worse, I might try and make a small production run to make the shipping of the sourced parts worth it.
Cheers?
