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Repair Log: Kaneko Air Buster Audio

NFGx

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Like many or all of these Kaneko boards out there, the audio on mine gave up and made almost no sound. The problem, as is usually the case, was on that little PX4460 sub board. The two capacitors had expired and needed replacing.

They are, FYI, 47uf 6.3V.

Of course I could have ordered one of @caius great replacements, but when I compared that $55 price tag vs the buck fiddy two capacitors cost... Well, I am nothing if not cheap.

Kaneko-1.jpg

I scraped off all the black stuff with a tiny screwdriver. It took about 20 minutes in total, and when the bottoms of the caps were revealed they fell off of their own accord, as a result of all the physical trauma with the scraping and the scratching.

Update! @hrvat9 says you can use paint thinner to soften the black stuff.

Kaneko-2.jpg Kaneko-3.jpg

I ordered two new SMD parts, but after they arrived I immediately lost them. While searching I found a couple of NOS Rubycon caps and figured they'd do.

And they did! The board audio is 100% again, and I forgot how great this game is to play. Come for the secret X68000, stay for the cheerful graphics.

Kaneko-4.jpg
 
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Thanks for posting this, I have a couple of Kaneko boards with low audio that probably need that.
 
It's a fairly straightforward repair. I just put on a good show or podcast and scrape that stuff off while it plays. Easy. 😊 👍
 
Great work on the repair! I believe this is the same audio module present on Snow Bros boards and it often fails there too

An alternative option there is to populate the components directly on the board - if I’m not mistaken I can see the silkscreening on the board you have repaired here for that option as well for those people who would prefer not to strip back and repair the custom
 
Great work on the repair! I believe this is the same audio module present on Snow Bros boards and it often fails there too

An alternative option there is to populate the components directly on the board - if I’m not mistaken I can see the silkscreening on the board you have repaired here for that option as well for those people who would prefer not to strip back and repair the custom

I think you're right about that. I've never seen this board explicitly mentioned when talking about replacing the sub board with mainboard components, but yeah, there's some clues there. But when I was investigating the issue I figured that lifting the sub board would risk breaking the legs that connect it to the mainboard, and if it wasn't going to work, then I'd have to fix those legs too.

And doing the scraping it's two components instead of five, for the extra $0.25 that costs. ;)
 
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