Absolute nightmare. Not just leaking batteries but several components had to be replaced on the front. Ridiculous amounts of contact cleaner in the card slot. Copper plate ground so corroded I could peel it off like wet toilet paper. Removed it and soldered all the contacts together. Bought for 5 bucks, only took about an hour to fix.
bout 3 months and 200 bucks worth of soldering equipment. Loving repairing consoles so far
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not too hard really, practicing on smaller and smaller is the key. i started with your standard amazon capacitor resistor kit and some perfboard, then moved to ICs, then to SMDs (surface mount device). The hardest i had to do was a picoboot, which is still pretty challenging. honestly it’s pretty easy with flux and a good soldering iron. Buy a cheap amazon one and try it out!