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Unpopular take: I stopped using rosin flux on old Sega boards
Last month in Portland I fixed a Genesis model 1 that had bad caps. Everyone swears by rosin flux for vintage stuff but I used that cheap water-soluble flux from Amazon instead. Cleaned it up with distilled water and a toothbrush, no residue at all. Anyone else tried skipping the fancy flux on retro consoles?
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the_piper2mo ago
Gotta wonder if the sticky residue people love actually traps more dust over time in those old vented cases. I've seen some gnarly rosin gunk that just turned into a dirt magnet.
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pat_murray1627d ago
The sticky residue thing that the_jennifer brought up is a real issue. I actually read a repair blog a while back where a guy tested different fluxes on old Sega boards after leaving them sit for six months. The rosin flux boards had all this weird crusty buildup and dust stuck to it, while the water-soluble ones were still clean. I tried that cheap Amazon flux on a Saturn last year and it worked fine, just made sure to rinse it real good with distilled water. The vintage purists can keep their sticky mess honestly.
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Rosin flux has its place but so does a clean board that doesn't look like a mess. Water-soluble stuff works fine if you actually wash it off properly. Guess the vintage crowd just likes their solder joints sticky.
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