So, the first task was to clean up the bodge wires on the bottom of the board, which was a mod to allow the use of normal EEPROMs rather than the original mask ROMs. After that it was off with the modulator! (This is part of a cunning plan... to be continued...)
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The TMS2RGB board sits on the underneath of the TMS99xx VDP socket. Unfortunately, whoever fitted the socket at Memotech wanted the pins to be as flush with the PCB as possible and had cut them down, meaning fitting the new board would be tricky...
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To connect the TMS2RGB board to the rest of the world it needs a ribbon cable soldered onto the board and taken elsewhere where a plug needs to be fitted so that an external cable can be hooked up. I got this micro-8 way DIN socket and cable. All I needed to do after soldering the board on is fit to the ribbon cable and fix the socket in an appropriate place.
Of course, with the TMS2RGB being on the bottom of the motherboard, routing the cable might be a problem.
Anyway. After refreshing the socket pin solder, sucking up the excess so that the pins stood proud of the PCB at least a little bit I managed to get the board on. (That was a bit of a struggle.)
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At this point I hooked up the machine to power and video and turned on... no smoke... Blue screen with "Ready" and a flashing cursor. The machine still worked!
Back to the fabrication. Solder the wires onto the socket and then route them around to the board and solder them on. Then attach the socket to the top of the board with superglue and solder. (I would have preferred just solder but it wasn't strong enough.)
