Here’s a closer look inside the Aiwa Mega-CD CSD-GM1 Game Unit, complete with a truly impressive number of capacitors and some damage near the rear of the board. It is not every day you get to see inside one of these.

Comparing my two Game Units, I estimated that one was roughly 10 to 20 weeks newer than the other. I labelled the older unit 01-01 and the newer unit 01-02 to keep track of them.

One interesting difference is that two capacitors that are black on the 01-01 mainboard are blue Rubycons on the 01-02 board. My first thought was that perhaps somebody had replaced them. Colour and brand differences alone do not prove that though. They could just as easily represent an ordinary production change between the two units.

Have a look at the photo gallery or the video and be the judge.

The complete capacitor list is also available on the file server.

The backup battery is a VL2020 with a three-terminal mounting arrangement. The VL2020 is a rechargeable 3 V vanadium-lithium cell with a nominal capacity of 20 mAh. That means an ordinary non-rechargeable CR2032 is not a direct electrical substitute. Any replacement needs to suit both the original charging circuit and the physical terminal arrangement.

I seem to be having trouble finding exactly what I want.

The search continues…

Sources