Repair Services

We repair electronic devices. Our focus is on electronics manufactured before the year 2000, but we are open to considering anything with the exception of phones. If it has a circuit board and it’s broken, we’re probably willing to take a look at it.

Vintage electronics repair workbench with diagnostic equipment

What We Work On

Pre-2000 electronics cover a broad range of hardware. Here is a sample of the types of devices we commonly see:

  • Home computers — Commodore 64, VIC-20, 128, Plus/4; Amiga 500, 600, 1200, 2000, 4000; Apple II, IIe, IIGS, Macintosh; Tandy TRS-80, Color Computer; Atari 400, 800, ST; IBM PC, XT, AT, and compatibles
  • Game consoles — Nintendo NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy; Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar; Sega Master System, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast; Sony PlayStation; TurboGrafx-16; Neo Geo; ColecoVision; Intellivision
  • Handheld electronics — Game Boy variants, Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear, Tiger handhelds, electronic games
  • Peripherals — Monitors, CRTs, disk drives, printers, modems, joysticks, keyboards, mice
  • Radios and audio — AM/FM receivers, shortwave radios, CB radios, cassette decks, turntables, amplifiers
  • Electronic toys — Speak & Spell, Simon, electronic learning aids, robotic toys, RC cars with electronic controllers
  • Other — Test equipment, calculators, early PDAs, dedicated word processors, and anything else that runs on electrons and predates Y2K

This list is not exhaustive. If you have something that isn’t listed here, reach out and describe what you have. The only hard rule is no phones.

Before You Request a Repair: Understanding Costs

This is the most important section on this page. Please read it carefully.

Repairing vintage electronics is time-intensive work. Troubleshooting a fault can take hours. Replacement components may be out of production and difficult to source. Schematics may not be publicly available, which means we have to track down documentation or reverse-engineer portions of the circuit. Verifying a fix often requires extended testing under load to confirm the repair is stable and hasn’t introduced secondary issues. All of this takes time, and time is what drives the cost.

Our hourly rate includes access to our diagnostic equipment—oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, multimeters, programmers, desoldering stations, and other specialized tools. It also includes the research time required to locate schematics, service manuals, and technical references for the specific device. In some cases, no documentation exists and we have to make educated guesses based on experience, circuit analysis, and comparable designs. That research and diagnostic time is part of the repair.

When Repair May Not Be Worth It

Because of the labor involved, the cost of repairing a device can easily exceed its market value. A simple example: if you bring us a toy that is worth $5 and it takes two hours of diagnostic time to find the fault, the repair bill will be significantly more than the item is worth. The same principle applies to common, low-value electronics that are easy to find working replacements for. We will always be honest with you about this before we start work.

There is no way to predict the final cost of a repair before the device is on the bench. Some faults are obvious and quick to fix. Others require extensive troubleshooting. We do our best to provide estimates, but vintage electronics are unpredictable by nature—a failed capacitor may have taken out a downstream chip that isn’t apparent until the first problem is resolved.

In some cases, a device is simply not worth repairing at all. The damage may be too extensive, the failed components may be unobtainable, or the cost to fix it may far exceed any reasonable value. When that happens, the device can still serve a purpose as a parts donor. Working chips, connectors, sockets, passive components, and mechanical parts can be harvested and used to repair other machines of the same type. A dead board with a good SID chip or a working floppy drive mechanism is still valuable—just not as a complete system.

Alternatives to a Traditional Repair

We understand that not everyone can absorb an open-ended repair bill, and we have alternatives that may work in your favor.

Recycling and buyback. We accept non-working and untested electronics for recycling. In some cases, we will buy the item from you outright. This gives you something for a device that might otherwise sit in a closet, and it gives us inventory to work on at our own pace.

Repair and resale at cost. When we purchase or accept a device, we may attempt to repair or restore it on our own time. If the cost to do so is reasonable, we offer the repaired item back to the previous owner at our cost—parts plus our hourly rate for the labor involved. There is no obligation to buy it back. This is not a guarantee that we can fix it, or that the final cost will be affordable, but it is an option that keeps the owner from being hit with a large repair bill.

When repair costs are too high. If we acquire a device and the cost to repair or restore it turns out to be prohibitive, we absorb the loss. In many of those cases, we use the device in repair videos—documenting the troubleshooting process and the repair attempt—to recover some of the cost through video revenue. Either way, the previous owner is not on the hook for the expense.

What to Expect

Here is how a typical repair engagement works:

  1. Contact us with a description of the device and the problem. Include the make, model, and any symptoms or history you know about.
  2. We evaluate whether the repair is something we can take on and provide any initial guidance on likely costs or known issues with that model.
  3. You decide whether to proceed with the repair, sell or donate the device to us, or hold off entirely.
  4. If we proceed, we diagnose the fault, source parts, perform the repair, and test the result. We keep you informed throughout.
  5. You receive the repaired device along with documentation of the work performed.

We are straightforward about what we find, what it will cost, and whether we think the repair makes financial sense. If we don’t think a repair is worth pursuing, we’ll tell you.

Get in Touch

If you have a device that needs repair or you’re not sure whether it’s worth fixing, contact us. Describe what you have and what’s going on with it. We’ll take it from there.