Chronicling Console Restoration From a Workbench in Aswan
A small circle of collectors documenting board-level repairs, hardware mods, and the slow revival of forgotten machines, one unit at a time.
Read the StoryWhat Drives This Archive
No sponsored teardowns, no filler — just the work, documented honestly
Every recap, trace repair, and PCB revision we touch gets photographed and logged, so readers can follow the actual repair path, not a summary.
We don't pad posts with buying links or sponsored parts lists. If a mod chip or capacitor batch underperforms, we say so plainly.
Restorations here take weeks, not hours. We'd rather post a correct writeup late than a rushed one full of guesswork.
Written by people who grew up chasing cartridge dust and dead solder joints, for readers who care about the same rare hardware variants we do.
How a Restoration Log Gets Built
From dead unit to published writeup
Intake & Diagnosis
Each incoming console gets a visual inspection, continuity checks, and a power-on test before we touch anything, and we note every fault we find along the way.
Board Work & Mods
Recapping, corrosion cleanup, region-mod installs, or composite-to-RGB conversions happen here, with photos taken at each stage for the archive.
Testing & Notes
We run the restored unit through game and video output tests over several days, logging anything that drifts, to make sure the writeup reflects real behavior, not a one-off success.
Writeup & Publish
Findings, part numbers, and lessons learned go into a full log post, cross-referenced with prior restorations so the archive stays useful to other collectors.
From the Community
Followed their AV famicom recap log step by step and finally understood why my unit had that faint hum. Took me a weekend but their photos made the trace repair obvious.
I've read a lot of teardown blogs and this one actually shows the failed attempts too, like the mod chip that didn't fit right the first time. That honesty is rare.