Worklog Ashida Rescue! eBay Disaster

[Goodie175]

I bought an ashida from ebay a while back it was in terrible condition to say the least. The shell halves were super glued together (common theme in this build) the console was overheating anytime it was on and unknown to me I may have bit off more that I wished to have attempted to even chew but I'm going to attempt to bring this thing to the full glory that WESK had designed in the first place. This was after I had opened the console somewhat to reveal the adventure that awaited.

I did buy a new shell for it in a smooth black that I think will be very nice.

Photo of the internals after I had separated the 2 halves from each other. I had already started cutting wires and cleaning up the system at this point.

Cleaned up the LCD driver some here.

Next was the controller PCBS. These were also super glued into place and held with hot glue.

cleaned them up some and made sure that the superglue and hot glue was gone as best I could get it. The super glue doesn't want to come off too easily. I've heard that heat works well but it just forms new crunch globs. Might have to shell out for a new set of controller pcbs but would like to restore these if I can.

As for now this is how it sits. I will be working on it more tomorrow and updating the status as I go along.

 

[Wesk]

Not going to lie, this was hard to look at. Kudos to you for actually trying to recover it rather than throwing it into a furnace.

 

[Goodie175]

Not going to lie, this was hard to look at. Kudos to you for actually trying to recover it rather than throwing it into a furnace.

Yeah I figure it's worth it. I don't think I can make it any worse than the condition it was still in and I like a challenge now and then. I'm currently going over the wiis motherboard and everything looks intact so there is hope! The console did run when I received it so if I can get it to a workable order I think it'll be fine.

 

[Aurelio]

I'm even surprised that thing booted in the first place! Kudos to you for committing to rework it

 

[Goodie175]

I'm even surprised that thing booted in the first place! Kudos to you for committing to rework it

Yeah after opening it up I was blow away by the mess that still allowed it to boot

 

[Goodie175]

Well I said I wasn't going to work on it until tomorrow but I've found some free time tonight lol. Decided that I needed to clean up the PMS and PMS PD3. The wires that were on them were globbed together with solder pretty bad so I cleaned off the wires and old cold solder and applied good quality solder to them to give them a refresh.

I decided to look over the Wii motherboard as well and everything looks acceptable. There is some damage to one of the traces where it looks like a trace was ripped when a cap was removed but the rest of it should be salvageable.

Next up had a hard time removing the fan from the old shell. It was fit tight in there so I used a few old screws laying around the garage to lightly grab the holes in the fan and remove it.

Got it seated into the new shell and put the heatsinks in. The sticky contacting film on them was dirty being covered in flux, wire bits, and just dirt in general. Removed those and plan to use some aftermarket thermal pads from Amazon.

Slowly started to wire up the bottom shell as well. Going slow bit taking my time as I did with my first Ashida.

This is it for tonight, tomorrow the "restoration" will continue so stay tuned!

 

[Stitches]

FFS that thing was an abomination. What witch doctor did you buy it from?

Also, big nice on the restoration effort!

 

[Goodie175]

FFS that thing was an abomination. What witch doctor did you buy it from?

Also, big nice on the restoration effort!

Thank you, and yeah about as bad as I've seen. Some eBay seller was selling it for less than what most of the parts would cost so I decided to grab it up no matter the condition. I was not expecting this condition but ebay specials are rarely a goldmine.

 

[Stitches]

Thank you, and yeah about as bad as I've seen. Some eBay seller was selling it for less than what most of the parts would cost so I decided to grab it up no matter the condition. I was not expecting this condition but ebay specials are rarely a goldmine.

An understandable purchase, although I can't fathom why the builder would sell a defective product at a material cost loss. Almost anyone else would have just called this one a failure, shelled it, harvested and cleaned the non-fucked parts, and tried again.

 

[Goodie175]

An understandable purchase, although I can't fathom why the builder would sell a defective product at a material cost loss. Almost anyone else would have just called this one a failure, shelled it, harvested and cleaned the non-fucked parts, and tried again.

Yeah not sure either. It did look like a working unit besides the Z button was missing on one side. I figure they moved it at material price so if it did act up they could dispute a negative buyer. The thing was listed as is for parts if I recall correctly, but for the price I couldn't pass it up.

 

[Teatimetim]

Your latest restoration pics already look a million times better than the original disaster, nice work!

 

[thedrew]

It's looking better already. Acetone cuts right through super glue but just be careful with it around certain plastics and maybe resin prints as well as paint. It's a bit of a harsh chemical but fine for cleaning supe glue and PCB flux.

 

[Goodie175]

Update time!

Decided to start working on the bottom half. I needed to clean the old wiring from the wii motherboard so after digging thru some metallic spaghetti I think it turned out pretty good!

This is all of the horrid wiring I removed from the wii. I'd like to think the motherboard is feeling better now that it doesn't have all that cluttered junk attacked to it.

Got the power wires ready for the wii to be wired up. I did have more wiring to do before this but I was anxious to get the motherboard connected.

As it sits for now, I'll definitely work on it some more later today, but for now I need to uncross and readjust my eyeballs for a bit lol.

 

[Goodie175]

Okay so I got back to finishing this thing off. Wired up the wii as well as the top.

Booted it up and we have life! Sort of....

The ashida boots and fully turns on but I am having issues with video. I know it's running because if I press A Mario Kart starts playing but the screen is black. This is mainly due to what I think is a bad board trim. I have been following. Dubeisnhowers video on YouTube to wire it up as I did my first Ashida. Only issue is that the person that did this board cut eliminated my GND traces for Red and Green. Idk where they had it wired to before but it did work and display video. I checked my mode pin wiring as well and it's recieving the 3.3v required to activated VGA. My question is basically do the GND points for the video have to be certain or can any GND be used? In Dubesinhowers video he uses locations near C60 for Greens GND and above the text TP50 for Reds GND. If the ground isn't cmnecessary I'm having issues elsewhere. But I have included a picture for reference on these video connections

 

[Skibub28]

I'd hate to be the poor fellow who built this Ashida as their first portable if they've been reading this thread.

 

[Stitches]

My question is basically do the GND points for the video have to be certain or can any GND be used?

Any GND will do for video shielding

 

[Goodie175]

Thanks @Stitches, that's good to know for future reference!

Well I figured it out! H-Sync and V-Sync were soldered together... it didn't look like it but the continuity test said otherwise. After resoldering them I'd like to say I brought this thing to it's glory!

Finished internal wiring. I know it's no professional install but anything has to be better that what it was from the start.

And here it is at what I'll call 99% completed. I need to get some Z buttons for it as I currently only have crappy aftermarket ones that don't fit anything.

I think it turned out pretty good now I just need to give it some thermal testing and a few hours of gameplay.

 

[loopj]

Watching this repair was so satisfying, great job!!

Feel free to name and shame the offending eBay seller so we can warn future people away.

 

[Goodie175]

Watching this repair was so satisfying, great job!!

Feel free to name and shame the offending eBay seller so we can warn future people away.

Thank you!

They only had a few items listed including 1 Ashida so it's not like they are mass producing them so I'd rather not. Just be wary of what you buy on eBay lol. I could kinda tell from the pictured it was a hack job but I went for it anyway so I guess it's my own stupid curiosity that got me here lol.

 

[Stitches]

The seller goes by CrowdStrike/Mitman Makes, and has been responsible for a few duds now. This one was marked as for parts, but others have been sold as functional/with minor defects and ended up dead shortly after delivery with similarly poor internals. As seen in the early photos of this repair endeavour, the level of workmanship in his builds is consistently sorely lacking. Motherboard damage from trimming and poor solder work is a staple in his builds, as is extremely dodgy unorganised spaghet wiring with cold joints that break off, and extensive use of glue where screws should be.

We don't like gatekeeping, but we do expect a minimum standard of workmanship to go into units for sale, and so far I have yet to see a build from CrowdStrike that fits those standards. Goodie's repair job here is a solid "You must be this good to sell" benchmark. Overall good work, clean PCBs, pretty neat wiring, everything properly secured with screws, no wayward glue, and it looks like it would survive shipping just fine. If a system's internals and your soldering work are not at least this good, then the system should not be sold. Strip it, clean it, and try again. Being a beginner and selling some early builds is fine and dandy, we do like seeing people make something from their work, but I cannot and will not abide the professional disregard and personal disrespect to the customer inherent in selling builds of the quality that I have observed over the last few months. When bootleg Ashida clone sellers on Aliexpress look like a better option to your units, something is very wrong. I would like to see CrowdStrike improve and become a reputable and recommendable builder. But for the moment that is not the case, and I must advise against purchasing any units that do not include clear and detailed photos of that system's internals that match or exceed Goodie's work above.