RF shield in white PCE - soldered?

[tzakiel]

I recently did a jailbar fix to my white PCE and in the process noticed the rf shield was in the way and actually soldered to the board by metal tabs. I simply melted this solder and pulled off the shield. When I reassembled the console I just laid the shielding back in place including the tabs but didn't resolder the tabs. Is that going to cause any potential problem? Does it serve any kind of grounding or other purpose or is the solder just to hold it on there? I don't want to cause any short or something with the tabs.

[NightWolve]

The RF shield metal needs to soldered to ground (-) so it works at blocking/reducing interference but I suppose the tabs being twisted tight will be good enough. You should solder at least one contact again and be done with it since you went to the trouble of putting it back in place.

[tzakiel]

Nightwolve,

Thanks. Any harm in just taking it out?

[NightWolve]

The debate rages on about that. You'll find varying opinions depending on who you ask...

Years ago I might've told you who cares, toss it so you can easily open it up, do recaps, mods, etc. whenever you feel like it without having it in the way.

Nowadays I've learned a bit more on the importance of electronic devices being shielded as much as possible (as our FCC mandates). More so for old timer products like these.

Even for like a RGB mod, I'd tell you go the distance, use coaxial shielded wire instead of plain copper for each line and ground all 3, etc. So instead of simple copper, get the thinnest coaxial style with aluminum braid over it to send those video signals to your amp or YPbPr encoder and to the output port. Just like a RCA cable! It'd be harder but might be worth it.

So yeah, if it's not too much trouble I say leave it back in place and solder at least one contact to the (-) ground of the PCB. If it's not conducting (100% contact) to any (-) ground point, it provides no anti interference benefits.

[Keith Courage]

It depends on the version of the pce. There were some that required the grounding shield to be on there and some that did not. Basically if you have the one that only has two grounding spots to solder to then you can leave it off if you want. However, some would argue that if it's just two solder points then why not just do the extra work to put it back on. It's the other version that has like 5-6 grounding solder points that needs to be on there otherwise things don't work right.

[xcrement5x]

Man, I remember looking at the shield on the Super CD ROMROM, what a pain in the butt.