Page 1 of 1
Karaoke PSU blown
Posted: Fri May 09, 2025 6:08 pm
by Tyxy
Hi everyone! So yesterday I got my Dreamcast Karaoke (SegaKara), and as you can imagine, i was pretty excited. As I live in Europe, I had to get a converter from 220V to 100V, which is what the SegaKara uses.
Well, today I plugged the power on the SegaKara, only to realise (too late) that I connected the 220V regular cable... And the SegaKara exploded.
After opening it up, I can see that what looks like a capacitor (see image) has blown, and got everything messy with some kind of liquid. And judging by the photo that retrostuff.com uploaded some time ago (see image), I can safely confirm that (at least) the capacitor has exploded. As for the rest of the board, it looks fine, nothing is burnt and nothing seems to have broken, so maybe the capacitor took one for the team? Idk.
The thing is: does anybody know about this? Can it be saved? My plan is to just change the capacitor for another one with the same specs and pray.
Re: Karaoke PSU blown
Posted: Sat May 10, 2025 5:24 am
by xzer0PL
You can measure the other parts with multimeter. Check diodes, stabilisers and other. Do you see picture? It says 200V. You can replace it with same value 47uF but use 400V.
Re: Karaoke PSU blown
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 9:57 am
by Tyxy
xzer0PL wrote: ↑Sat May 10, 2025 5:24 am
You can measure the other parts with multimeter. Check diodes, stabilisers and other. Do you see picture? It says 200V. You can replace it with same value 47uF but use 400V.
Do you think it would hold the 220V well with a more powerful capacitor?
Re: Karaoke PSU blown
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 10:00 am
by Tyxy
Tyxy wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 6:08 pm
Hi everyone! So yesterday I got my Dreamcast Karaoke (SegaKara), and as you can imagine, i was pretty excited. As I live in Europe, I had to get a converter from 220V to 100V, which is what the SegaKara uses.
Well, today I plugged the power on the SegaKara, only to realise (too late) that I connected the 220V regular cable... And the SegaKara exploded.
After opening it up, I can see that what looks like a capacitor (see image) has blown, and got everything messy with some kind of liquid. And judging by the photo that retrostuff.com uploaded some time ago (see image), I can safely confirm that (at least) the capacitor has exploded. As for the rest of the board, it looks fine, nothing is burnt and nothing seems to have broken, so maybe the capacitor took one for the team? Idk.
The thing is: does anybody know about this? Can it be saved? My plan is to just change the capacitor for another one with the same specs and pray.
UPDATE: I took the karaoke to a specialised shop near me and now the karaoke at least turns on, but doesn't give image to the RCA cable, only sound. So my fear is that something else blew up. The people at the shop told me that after changing the capacitor, they tested with multimeters and such, and didn't get any weird readings, so the karaoke should work again, but clearly doesn't.
I'll take it to the shop again as soon as I can, but in the meanwhile, does anybody know of another component that could have been "overcharged" and be broken? I can't think of one
Re: Karaoke PSU blown
Posted: Thu May 15, 2025 4:50 pm
by Scrivani
Make a test with just the dreamcast with the av cable to make sure is ok.
check the pins on the av in/out of the karaoke and the pins on the mini cable that connect both devices.
Re: Karaoke PSU blown
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2025 5:26 pm
by Tyxy
Tyxy wrote: ↑Thu May 15, 2025 10:00 am
Tyxy wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 6:08 pm
Hi everyone! So yesterday I got my Dreamcast Karaoke (SegaKara), and as you can imagine, i was pretty excited. As I live in Europe, I had to get a converter from 220V to 100V, which is what the SegaKara uses.
Well, today I plugged the power on the SegaKara, only to realise (too late) that I connected the 220V regular cable... And the SegaKara exploded.
After opening it up, I can see that what looks like a capacitor (see image) has blown, and got everything messy with some kind of liquid. And judging by the photo that retrostuff.com uploaded some time ago (see image), I can safely confirm that (at least) the capacitor has exploded. As for the rest of the board, it looks fine, nothing is burnt and nothing seems to have broken, so maybe the capacitor took one for the team? Idk.
The thing is: does anybody know about this? Can it be saved? My plan is to just change the capacitor for another one with the same specs and pray.
UPDATE: I took the karaoke to a specialised shop near me and now the karaoke at least turns on, but doesn't give image to the RCA cable, only sound. So my fear is that something else blew up. The people at the shop told me that after changing the capacitor, they tested with multimeters and such, and didn't get any weird readings, so the karaoke should work again, but clearly doesn't.
I'll take it to the shop again as soon as I can, but in the meanwhile, does anybody know of another component that could have been "overcharged" and be broken? I can't think of one
UPDATE AGAIN: so apparently everything the karaoke needed was having the blown capacitor replaced, as the problem I had with the image signal was caused just by some debris in the output port of the karaoke. So yeah! I now have a functional Segakara!!!
And as a sidenote, the PAL Dreamcast can be powered by connecting the power cable from the karaoke itself (although it's only 110V), you don't need two power cables, one for the console and other for the karaoke.