Picked up a fairly cheap sp that had lots of corrosion on metal parts (power switch, charge port, and volume slider). After cleaning it all up and replacing the volume slider and audio cap, it still had low volume.Turns out there was a broken trace between the volume pad and the U6 (There should be continuity from the via I solder to, over to the via right next to the s in SW11). Adding the bodge fix the issue.
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How do you go about debugging issues like this? Do you have a reference schematic and check the continuity on all the relevant connections? Visual inspection to look for the broken trace? You’re secretly a wizard and just know?
So in the case I looked at board scans from Natalie the Nerd to get a clear idea where each of the pads and traces went. After confirming continuity on those points and testing my reconnected traces, I knew the volume was still too low. I followed the traces via the board scan testing against my board with a multimeter on continuity mode, and eventually figured out there was a broken trace underneath the cartridge slot.
I actually just added a new charging port and it’s not charging (replaced a fuse, still nothing). I’ll probably have to do the process again to track this down.
Thanks for the response! This was what I expected the answer to be, but I’m very new to the hardware world coming from software. Would be interested to see your fix for this charging issue as well. It’s nice to see the process to better understand how to troubleshoot issues like this.
No problem, we all have to start somewhere (I’m also more of a software guy). A tip for trace repair, get a cheap D2 grinding/engraving pen off Alliexpress. It’s a lot easier to use one of these than using a knife to scratch off the solder mask.