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I refurbished this PC-FX I recently got from japan, and it ended up working great 😁 I always buy "junk" items and many times they look bad but end up working just fine, although other times repairs I needed. Want to see what I did? Check it below! 👇

The PC-FX was the 32 bit entry to NEC's line of consoles, which peaked with the 8/16 bit PC-Engine . The PC-FX never left Japan, probably due to its commercial failure, and was the last console NEC released. The PC-FX can't really do 3D graphics in a generation where 3D was king, like PS1 or N64.

This unit was visibly dirty but I didn't know if the laser would work or not. Rather than testing it, I decided to recap the console first just in case. That of course meant to disassemble the console... this must be the most complex console to disassemble after the Panasonic Q 🫠

And the two boards also have a soldered extra shield, which took a fair amount of super-wick to remove 😥

The main board has through-hole caps and the sub-board mostly SMD caps, apart from two "hidden" through-hole caps installed as surface mounted, a la GameGear style. There is also a super capacitor. Thankfully Console5 had the right kit.

Does the capacitor plague also apply to SMD caps?

Having suffered the pain of disassembly, I decided to wash and retrobright the console before reassembling. I had to remove the switch that tells the CD that the lid is closed, and thought I'd sand the contacts slightly to ensure good connection. That's a lot of plastic parts to wash...