My First mod-need help

[Mason P.]

I have decided i wanted to start on the long path of modding consoles. Now I know it isn't something you pick up over night. It takes alot of practice and good guides to be able to do it well. Now i wanted to start small. I want to add a LED to my Sega Genesis 3. I figured it wouldn't be too difficult. I have looked online for guides and such, but can't seem to come across info in how to do this. Do you guys think that it it too advanced? Should I do somthing easier? Any help/ info will be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[izarate]

Just solder the LED directly to the 7805 voltage regulator with a 33Ohms resistor.

[Mason P.]

Just solder the LED directly to the 7805 voltage regulator with a 33Ohms resistor.

um, I don't know where the 7805 voltage regulator is. I am just starting out. I have very little soldering experience, as well as circuit experience. Do you have a pic highlighting what it is and where it is found?

I did replace the LED in my NES last night. It was fairly easy. I saw where the LED connected to the board and just took my time. I now have a green LED in there. The problem i will have is if it isn't so apparent where to connect them.

thanks

[theChad]

If you don't have a lot of soldering experience, I wouldn't practice on your consoles - tear open some old toy or get a cheap electronics kit and figure your way around that first. Soldering isn't hard, but you don't want to burn something up or bridge the wrong solder joints. I don't know how sensitive the voltage regulator is to heat, or if it's close to other parts where either of these would be serious problems, but it's better not to take the risk.

Oh, and here's what it looks like:
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2144/7805.gif

[Mason P.]

Thanks for the help. I will be practicing on some old computer videeo cards that i had lying around the house. I want to get pretty handy with the iron before i star messing with the consoles too much. The NES was easy though. the spot i had to solder was away from everything else and wasn't complicated. I will be desoldering all the parts on the card and resoldering them all back. I figure that whould give me some great practice dealing with parts.


What part of the 7805 do i attach to? the output??

[jb143]

Solder a wire to the regulators output. Solder the other end of the wire to the anode of the LED (usually the longer leg if it's new). Solder the cathode of the LED to the resisitor and the resistor to the ground of the regulator or any other connected ground point.

An easy way to tell which end of the LED is positive or negative is to look inside. The bigger piece is ground. The negative is also the "flat side" of the LED. Get it backwards it might explode.

Check here for a good picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LED_label.jpg

[Mason P.]

Thanks guys for all the help. I finally did it last night. Was allitle scared soldering to a chip, but got it to work. I used this LED. It is alittle big, but i wanted it large. Oh and the color is orange. I couldn't find a blue one in this type of casing.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062562