It's fixable, but why the fuk go through all that trouble instead of just buying some 10 cent connectors??????

I see a Rottendog purchase in your near future.

I agree, I would just fork out the cash for a RD board. Especially if you plan on selling it in the future. Either way, I would get a new board if it s was me. Good luck.

Who knows?

You can see he lifted pads by using too much heat on one of the ICs in pic #2, so it's just someone who's first repair job was on a $300 board.

You are going to have to make sure that he did not pull out the "thru-holes" that connect the top of the circuit board to the bottom, too.

Wow is that some ugly soldering. I've fixed worse.

I've seen worse too! It could sorta be put back to normal, but you'd have jumpers on the backside for sure.

Here's a photo of a hack I ran across recently... Come to think of it, a "Hack Photo Thread" Would be a lot of fun!

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That's repairable. I've fixed much worse. I don't see any holes burnt through it

I'd rather fix any of these than deal with a WPC CPU, DE MPU, or Whitestar CPU that's covered in blue.

I wouldn't sweat it. It is fixable. If you are going to install pin headers, just be completely sure that BOTH sides of the solder points are good as these are double-sided boards, test continuity all over the place. You may still have to run some jumpers in the end on the underside if the traces are in bad enough shape, but that isn't the end of the world as long as it functions properly. My Laser War looked just like this and I got it up and running in under an hour.

Honestly, while a hack, that may be one of the most viable repairs i've seen ye on a system 7 GI connector.

Much better than what I usually see in that spot.

I agree. As long as it's sound in the execution, despite being ugly, why bother. If there are no concerns with working correctly, just play the game.

Lazy repair work. I've seen wires soldered to boards many times, but certainly not to this extent. On the plus side you don't have to worry about connectors failing! Not terribly difficult to fix, just time consuming.

I recently repaired a board where the wires were soldered to the PINS of the connectors. I agree with the THEDEFOG. I just repaired an TAF MPU board that had some pretty bad hacks. Some thru-hole connectors were bad. I found the schematic, and with my ohmmeter checked pin-to-pin continuity and used a highlighter to cross off each connection on the schematic. I found 2 missing runs (basically at the through holes where bad repairs were made).

If you don't have the right tools, I would be wary as you can do more damage than good. I recommend a good desoldering tool to clean up all the bad work (Hakko 808 is what I use)

Looking at it again, That driver board repair looks like the connectors were swiped from an old wiring harness from a redemption game or something. Sort of a "hmm, this harness should work, what the heck!".

I'd like to see the game side of the connections... Could be the icing on the cake!! I wonder if they used electrical tape or wire nuts?

Typical on-location repair to get the game running. The connectors would just fail again while hard wired will last longer.