Cafeman, on Wed Jan 4, 2012 2:07 PM, said:
I have a related question to append to 0078's thread ... I recently took my controller apart to clean the contacts. After a few tries I got it all back together again and everything works well - except the PAUSE button. I took it apart again and pressed the PAUSE contact with a metal screw driver and it simply doesn't register any more. Reset and start and everything else work fine. What did I do and can I fix it? Any ideas?
It sounds like you may have broken a trace on the flex circuit... something that's all too easy to do. (It's super important to remove the top bezel before disassembling the controller to avoid bending those Start/Pause/Reset circuits.) If cleaning the contacts on the flex circuit and/or replacing the carbon dot with either a glued aluminum foil dot or the Best gold dots doesn't work, you almost certainly have a broken flex circuit, which is really difficult to fix. You'll probably need to buy a new one at that point unless you can manage to solder over the broken trace in a way that won't rebreak (very difficult.) I've got a number of 5200 controllers that need new flex circuits for this reason... haven't got around to buying them yet.
Edited by sdamon, Wed Jan 4, 2012 2:17 PM.