I Paid £30 For an "UNTESTED" Grandstand FIREFOX F-7 | Can I FIX It?
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- I love "untested" things, for some reason they never seem to work. This one is a lovely Grandstand Firefox F7 Electronic Game that I bought for £30 off of eBay.
Surprisingly, it has no power.
Let's try and fix it!
Hope you enjoy!
Steve
PS. I'm not an expert in repairs at all. I do this for fun, and it may not be the best or safest way to go about repairing broken stuff. I'm pretty good at melting plastic though. Please don't copy me - I'm an idiot.
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I had one of these "consoles" when I was a kid. Before you even switched it on, I knew exactly what the sounds effects were going to be. The reminiscence is strong with this one!
I had firefox too. kept me amused for hours
Yeah I had a Firefox played it forever back in the day!!!
When I finished it, I thought I had broken it. That level end tune was repeated about 30 times. Da da dada da da diddle diddle daaaaaaaaaa.
me too
Me too!
Untested always seems to mean, it was tested and didn't work, and they're afraid to indicate as such for fear of devaluing the item. its annoying.
One could understand it if it had a 63 pin rhombus shaped power plug with 15 different voltages, but a few C cells, come on
@@bsdjunkie1805 Exactly, lmao! lol
Such a small lie is why we all get sick grow old and die Genesis 3:4 ►
I don't think he was surprised.
It's hilarious "Not tested as no game cartridge" then later in the listing "See my other listings for games for this system
I had this game as a boy on the 80’s. So cool to have such a powerful flashback seeing it working again. Well done Steve. Great.
Same!
Me too!
@@attentionaddicts ☝
Me too mate.
Wonderful to see this! Firefox was one of the only games I completed as a kid. Over and over again. My poor parents. 😆
I had it aged 3 or 4. I loved the music! Bits of Planet suite and stuff.
Thanks for the copper tape tip. My old DVD remote had a faulty on/off button but this has brought it back to life 👍
If you have no copper tape handy, just rub the button with a pencil. The graphite does the same job.
@Mark Mowadeeb there's a conductive paint that works VERY well if all of these attempts fail
That tape will loose its stickiness and fall off at some point.
I've used glued on aluminum foil for the same purpose to fix the worn out buttons on a remote
Usually RUclips "recommended" videos have little interest to me. However, they've come up trumps with this one. Absolutely loved that game as a youngster.Was beginning to think it was a figment of my imagination. Thank you so much for getting it wotking & bringing back great memories...👍
I love this channel so much. Your videos are so relaxing and entertaining at the same time. Easily one of my favorite channels of all time. Keep it up!
Hey, thanks let do! I really appreciate that, and I'm glad you like the channel! 👍😍
I am in awe of people like you who have the patience to fix these things , it looks great fun, I mean the fixing , not the game 👍👍
I loved this random video. I used to be an electronic technician until my industry died 20 years ago (board jockying, replace faulty parts with new instead of fixing) and seeing the tools and methods in use once more brought a tear to my eye.
Oh my god! The nostalgia factor 100% I remembered that game the second you showed it and the sound hit me as if I played it yesterday. I loved it although it's not a ps5
I really love your style, dry humour and no hype.
Thanks James, really appreciate that 👍
Nicely done Steve and Dave 👍
Thanks Vince! 😁
@@StezStixFix I bought one of these a couple of weeks ago to fix on my channel too! It also came with a Grandstand Puckmonster for £24. I haven't got round to looking at them yet as I've been busy mainly fixing Milwaukee Cordless tools.
@@StezStixFix I commented on your video and then I received a comment from a suspicious, almost you name.
Please check the reply to my comment as it looks dodgy and seems to be using your name as its name with a telegram at the end.
@@bobhopemaryjane2 I got it also. Not sure what they are trying to accomplish. They said I won a gaming device. They misspelled "divice".
You're a good man for keeping our nostalgia alive and well. I'll send you my two broken PS3 60GB. Fix 'em both and keep one of them and send me back the other.
The start up sound and music are iconic. I remember them so well from my childhood. I inherited a few other machines like this from my much older brothers when I was a small child in the late 80s and early 90s. They've got to be kicking around somewhere in my childhood home.
startup sound is the Thunderbirds theme :)
the other one sounds like the Wilhelm Tell Ouverture
@@remko2Ride of The Valkyries and a little Jerusalem at the end.
@@Vamptonius
Ride of the Valkaries, spot on, AKA The Dambuster's theme tune.
This kind of content is so addictive. Really love having this playing on one of my screens while I work. Lovely
Great repair Dave, yes I know it's you that does all the work for no reward, Voice Over Steve told me.
🤣🤣 he actually contributed in this one! 😁
I have this Firefox F-7 game since my childhood and it´s still working. :) Now I´m 46 years old and this video made me play it again.
I had one of these as a kid and another called one Star Force. Spent hours on them as kids. Nice repair. Mine still worked but just took them apart to give a nice clean/service and all good!
Blasted me right back to the late 80's! Thanks!!
Give it time, continue releasing awesome content, and this channel will blow up. Thank you for taking the time to create this awesome material and sharing it with all of us. I don’t know if your familiar with “ASMR” but you have some great unintentional ASMR content which the unintentional ASMR is always the best!!!
Thanks Bultron, I love a bit of accidental ASMR! Thank you 👍
Did it blow up ? because I just saw this randomly !?
@@NerdGlassGamingPA 🤯
That’s so ancient that I didn’t even know that this thing existed 😂 thanks for sharing.
Never had this one, but I do remember having 'Grandstand Astro Wars'. I think my brother still has it in the original box.
That brings me back to games I had in my childhood.
Love these old machines amazing how things have changed
Yeah, things have definitely impoved in the technology department! 😁
@@StezStixFix Indeed. They certainly didn't have robotic cleaning cloth's back in the 80's like you use in this clip :)
I remember playing this light up game under the bed in the dark for the best effects back in the 80s lol.
✌️❤️🇳🇿
Same, my brother got this for Christmas one year and we were glued to it. I still remember Christmas Day playing it to death and getting the dreaded call from mum, your dinner is ready. We carried on playing till mum came and took it off us lol, having to eat Christmas dinner before we could play again was a pain I won't forget!
Your videos get better each time. I glad I found your channel.
Thanks EaziG! Much appreciated! 👍
Finally, a game that I had a a kid. Can still hear the 8-bit music in my head!!!
I remember this game, I found it in a charity shop as a little girl for something like 50p or £1 in the early 90s, had loads of fun with it 😁 I wonder where my one is…
Wow! Loads of memories flashing back watching this. Awesome sound effects.
for future reference Steve, for the carbon button pad, there's a trick to cleaning them to make better contact. you take a piece of paper and rub the carbon contact pad on the paper, you should see a small black streak where you rubbed it on the paper to know if you did it right. great video keep up the good work, I have been on a binge watch of your videos today trying to catch up, been too busy this semester with all my classes and my senior project class so I have not been watching, almost done though, one more final project then I am done and off to graduation.
You can then use a graphite pencil and put the graphite from the pencil onto the underside of the contact.
Had this as a kid and just hearing the startup music brought back so many memories, thanks.
I used to have one of these when I was a kid (and a Mario's cement factory tabletop)! Absolutely loved Firefox, the amount of colour and sound in it made it feel like something special compared to all the monochrome Game and Watch stuff.
Hello again. As a non-electronics or soldering person, can you please explain what tekno-sorcery is happening at 05:23, where a bit of what looks like KY Jelly and a soldering iron suddenly gets those manky old contacts looking like new again? Ta.
@@MrThunderwing The KY Jelly is soldering flux, which takes many forms but they all mainly prevent oxidation (ie corrosion) when hot metal is exposed to air, so instead of horrid burnt-looking solder joints you get those lovely shiny ones, with the solder obediently flowing where it's supposed to. And honestly, even though I've been using it for decades it does still sort of feel like a magic substance every time.
@@davidf2281 Nice one, good to know, cheers!
You remind me of my dad when we were kids in the 80s, very handy with a soldering iron! We kids were always breaking these games (Frogger, Astrowars etc) and he'd have to take them apart and re-solder joysticks & buttons and glue bits back together.
Similar thing with TV remotes - the carbon pad for the "standby" button is always the one that wears out.
Trouble is, of course, that the entire keypad is molded from one lump of rubber.
If all else fails, I find that a tiny bit of kitkat wrapper superglued to the pad will restore function.
Kitkat wrappers seem to work especially well because they're super-thin tinfoil.
I know there used to be kits where you could get electrically conductive paint to redo the backs of buttons that wore out.
That battery cover throw was some ancient ninja skills!
😁😁
Good fix Steve. I didn't know you could get replacement traces, but they seem more fiddly then just using the enamelled wire.
Thanks Ned! Yeah, definitely fiddly-er! I just wanted to try one out, but I think they'd be better served on a ripped pad on a HDMI port or similar! 👍
Oh the memories of playing this as a child!!..this and Bigtrak were my faves.
for the carbon-rubber buttons you can use silver conductive paint, it works wonders, a bit tricky to apply tho
I have also heard graphite powder mixed with acetone and superglue. Im about to try this on my remove in the next couple days. The acetone helps with working time.
I specialize in "security technology applications". I am very interested in your "clandestine, battery insertion techniques". They appear to be "magical" in some respect and that knowledge would certainly benefit my industry...
Love the vids man! Keep them coming!
Noticed the cat touching store at the end ? 😅 by the way great repair as always 😎
Thanks KoSlow! Yeah, the scratchy-bitey cat made a cameo appearance! I forgot to close the door 😁
The auditory memories this evokes. Spent a lot of time playing this as a child.
I once bought a lot of two 'untested' oscilloscopes for around £11 plus P&P from ebay and one actually did work, and lasted for years before it went!
That was years ago on 'the old' ebay though, you know the one whare normal people used it to get rid of their old junk for a few quide!
Who else still remembers that ebay!?
😁 I remember it well, Garry! It used to be a fun place to buy and sell!
wow i had one of these. must of been around '83 ? all those sounds are flooding back into my brain ! thanks for the trip down memory lane dude !
I had this game as a kid (mid 80's). The music tracks were a mix of Thunderbirds and Star Wars amongst others. Standard Eveready batteries only lasted about 10 or 20 games so I ended up with the AC transformer.
I bought this game on eBay about 15 years ago for nostalgia. Also bought the Astro Wars predecessor which I first saw at a school camp in '84.
Happy memories!
thanks for the confirmation, the startup was so short i wasn't 100% it was Thunderbirds
And Holst's Jupiter from The Planets, a suite everyone should hear at least once in their lives 🤘
It’s the theme from the A team isn’t it?
Holy Moly , I had one of these as a kid.. Nostalgia overload!
Hey Steve! I've been watching a lot of your videos since I found you on YT last week. Pretty cool indeed. It would be very satisfying if you start giving proper bubble baths to all your retro equipment after you fix it to remove all that dust and grime. Keep up the good work! Cheers froms Dominican Republic
I had the Scramble version of this as a boy. Good memories, thank you.
It's so funny the difference between "untested" when I order something from the US versus Japan. When I order stuff from Japan untested, half the time it works fine.
I like to pronounce it multimeter myself.
😁 yeah, most Japanese things are sold as "junk" without necessarily being tested.
True, in most of the world "untested" means not working but i won't say, I have a lot of stuff labeled "junk" from japan that worked perfectly, in one shop they even tested the "junk" labeled item in front of me, of course it worked.
@@StezStixFix In Japan auctions 'Junk' basically just means old!
When you turned it on memories started flooding back 😁
For those pads you can rub on some powdered lead from a pencil. Has saved me many tv remote controls 👍
Thanks for the tip! Someone else mentioned this too, so I'm definitely gonna give it a try on my next one! 👍
I had one similar to this as a kid and completely forgot about it until I watched this video. Thanks!
I would have epoxyed the PCB back together and then just used two small pieces of component lead (leftover trimmings from resistors/ capacitors/ diodes). I have fixed very large cracks with tens of traces like that and it gives a good result. I love the green enamel you added afterward I will have to order some of that.
Thanks Simon, I'll give that a go next time 👍
for contacts like that you might like to try conductive paint for restoring keyboard contacts, it's very effective and has less issues of it potentially falling off like the copper tape (it will eventually 'wear out' again but how much use are these things going to get now tbh xD )
Good shout, thanks Sparks, I'll try thst next time! 👍
+1 this. Was just about to comment the same thing. It’s really good stuff. I’ve repaired ancient TV remotes back to perfect working order with it.
True, but I bet the rubber plastic button is also getting perished. Sometimes you can't get the conductive paint to stick on when they are perished. Only way foward is to glue a tiny bit of alu foil.
Superglue should not be used in electronics as it will leave a white coating from fumes over the pcb and eventually corrode it, its like battery or capacitor leakage but white.
I used a "soft" pencil year ago, but that was also temporary
wow I completely forgot about my old Firefox game until this popped into my feed. thanks for the nostalgia ❤
Alu foil or copper tape is perfect for those worn out carbon pads. Ive done it many times with my C64 controllers.
there is no greater pride than having something last a long time because you took care of it, but you take it to another level.!!!
Did you win? Yes you did, can I fix it ? Yes you can, well I'm gone. Tip! to make the carbon pads conductive #awesome brother Steve! Pencil clean/white paper
Rub the pencil on the paper make a lot of thick dust, then rub the non working pad on that. Put it in the game/machine/console etc.. hey presto button works! 🤓👍🏻
😁 Ah-ha! Thanks brother Steve, an excellent tip! I'll definitely try that next time. Much appreciated, as always! 👍
You can buy carbon pencil sticks as well.
@@jekylthorn8969 True! good call.
wow just hearing the sounds of that thing instantly took me back to childhood!
I pity the parent that gave that game to their child on Christmas morning
Still have my one in box with all the instructions and leaflets, not played it for ages but loved this when I was younger.
Hehe, another great one!, but this game seemed better unrepaired:-)
😁 you're not wrong there, Willy! 🤣
I had that game when I was lil. Spent plenty time listening to that soundtrack... Thanx for the memories.
You can normally run a rubber over the rubber pad to bring it back to life. Thunderbirds and Star Wars tunes in the game how did they get away with that?
Ooh, I didn't think of that, I'll give that a go on the next one, thanks for the tip! 👍 I know, I think there are some other ripped off tunes in there too! 😳
Very satisfying video.. 👍 Absolutely magical era early 80s.... Played for hours on end on these classics.... 👍
Scramble.... Astro wars.... Space invaders 1000....Defender... Tomy Tronic 3d....the list goes on...
Totally agree. The 80's was great. I've pretty much repaired most of those games on your list..
instead of going thru all that trouble to repair the broken trace, it would have been easier and more effective to run a wire between the two solder joints that you were putting the meter on. I know it's less elegant!
Thanks Albert, yeah it would probably be more effective but I do like practicing the little trace repairs! 😬
Them pcb's boards are quite fragile and crumbly.
But then he couldn't use the traces he got from off of China 😆
Lovely to see your subscribers increasing! 10k here we come! ❤️❤️
Thanks Ian, hopefully soon! 👍
Hi, I’m new to your channel. Really enjoyed this whole process! What kind of flux are you using when cleaning the solder?
I asked the same question. No answer yet
NEVER POWER UP ANYTHING THAT RATTLES.
And I'd never power up anything like that till I popped it open anyway. Who knows what kind of gunk, corrosion and jury rigged crap you may find in it.
But that's just me ☺️
Yeah, that's definitely good advice. But if I don't try it, I get "you didn't try to power it up, it probably already worked" comments! 🤣
@@StezStixFix
Aaaa. Screw Those Clowns.
If they want to pay for it. Then they have a say 😏
Just take it apart off camera before you start. Just put a little piece of plastic back in when you're done.
People are pretty slow these days. They'll believe Anything. 😂🤣😂 😳 ✌️
@@StezStixFix
And don't worry.
I won't tell anyone I told you that 🙄😏 Enjoy ☺️
I got this for Christmas in the 80s as a kid. Major nostalgia here
I always assume "untested" is code for "does not work" .
I know NOTHING about electronics (I can barely change a plug) but I found this fascinating! Really enjoyed this thank you. 👍
I once owned one of these & had hours of entertainment. I remember there were 3 levels of play from easy, medium & hard. Managed to complete the whole stages on levels easy & medium many times but the hard only a few :)
My childhood revisited. Thanks for the memories
superb. Still got mine from 1985 in its box in the parents loft. Still works.
Was recommended this video few days ago by the algorhythm and have since watched dozens of your vids. Really loving them, and especially the more recent ones. Keep going Steve!
That sound as it boots up....
Happy, happy memories.
Probably not for my parents or grandparents tho.
I remember getting it on Christmas as a kid and few hours later being told to take it and go sit in the car to play it...
@StezStixFixtelegram love to, but wouldn't know how to.
Taking photos is such a simple tip so you don’t forget where things go thanks my man 👍
My god I haven’t heard that game sound in decades. Thank you!
Still have mine after nearly 40 years and it always seems to work perfectly once those large batteries have been replaced.....those noise effects bought back memories👍👍🙂
Wow I was 9 again watching this I had this one Christmas loved it by Boxing Day my dad shouting tun that down 😂great memories of times less difficult thank you for this xx
New to this channel, needless to say hooked. Interesting, informative, straight to the point, no in your face background music. I'm all in brother
Thanks Matt! Really appreciate that 👍
Spent a huge part of my childhood playing this game the memories.
Could even hear the sound effects in my head.
Those soldering money shots always seem to relax me...you are highly entertaining, too! Very well shot repair videos with the right amount of humor. I'm really enjoying your channel!
Thanks Septer! 🤩
Wow what a flashback to my childhood,on my bedroom floor,lights off,duvet over the top of me and being so disappointed going past 9999 to zero and nothing happened it just carried on playing,never played it again after that day
Interesting choice of music for someone fixing electric stuff indeed... :) And I liked the seemingly casual way of putting a cat in this vid (which made me click thrice on the like button tbh). Merci Monsieur :)
😁 merci beacoup Esseferio!
Amazing how much better the connections looked after the reflow.
Yeah, they looked better than factory! 😁
As soon as that was turned it made me smile, loved that when it came out but it was hungry on the batteries.
This video was randomly suggested to me. Old game consoles are always cool and I was not expecting a repair. What had me hooked for the entire video was the detail of your repair and generosity of your knowledge. Kudos to you and I have subscribed.
If you like this sort of thing. I've recently repaired quite a few of these types of games.
Still got mine from back when i was a kid, been in the original box in my closet for proberly 30 years or something, still works :)
As soon as I saw the thumbnail I was humming the music haha. Firefox was beyond the other similar machines back in the day.
At the end of the day you did "Just use a wire" Steve 😂. Been watching your vids since yesterday and already hooked! Thanks for the content.
I had one of these! the sounds brought back all the nostalgia!
Amazing, I used to have one of these. Hearing those sounds took me right back. Great job repairing it.
Thank you for sharing this video Steve great job in fixing? See you next time 😉
Oooooh woooow. I had one of these as a kid. What a trip down memory lane.
Great job Steve what a cheesy retro game back from the 80's Nice and loud and clunky controls lol i find your channel very satisfying when you repair something and it works!!!!
only watched that to listen to the firefox sound effects.. thanks for the nostalgia trip
I don't know how I found your channel but I'm glad I did!
I had one of these when I was a kid. Tons of fun. My cousin and I played the crap out of it.
I had this for Xmas 1982 great game still at my sisters house and still works
I use to have this when I was a kid. It was awesome.