Bench diary · 11 min read
Refurb bench diary · week 23.
Twenty-one consoles came through in seven days. Three of them fought us. One — a PAL Saturn that smelled, faintly but definitely, of cat — needed almost a full cap bank. Here are the field notes from a normal week on the refurb floor.
Monday — intake bench, eleven systems
Monday is when the week's intake hits the photo bench. This week it was eleven systems plus two pad-bay batches: four PS2 slims (a flat brown Hertfordshire seller, came together), one cherished-looking N64 from a Suffolk estate, two GameCubes from Bristol, a SNES (PAL, original Super Star Wars in the cart slot — sold to the seller, kept on the shelf), an Xbox 360 Elite that someone had clearly never opened, and the now-infamous Cat Saturn.
Eden takes the photos, I open the systems. By noon we'd binned one PS2 slim (warped chassis, water-damaged ribbon — we paid £15 for it specifically to scrap for the laser); the GameCubes were going to need a re-paste each but were otherwise spotless; the Elite already had the dust gates clear, suggesting a previous owner who'd cared, and ran burn-in for 14 hours that night without a single artefact.
The PSU bank on a 1996 PAL Saturn is, conservatively, the most dramatic component you'll meet on the refurb floor. When one cap goes, the others form an immediate club. — Marcus
Tuesday — the Cat Saturn
The Saturn came in via a regular seller in Newcastle who'd bought a house clearance lot and didn't have time to grade it. Smell aside, it powered on. It made a sound that the polite term for is concerning. Marcus opened it up — and the cap bank was, in the very technical phrase, weeping.
Six radial caps replaced — four 470 µF, two 100 µF, all from the Panasonic FR series. PSU mat scrubbed with isopropanol, board ultrasonic-bathed at 60 °C for nine minutes. Internal battery tray was rusted to the holder pegs and lifted clean off — we donated a replacement from a parts board we keep in the lockup precisely for this. Power-on, second attempt — Saturn boot screen, twin disc spin, audio clean. Burn-in 23 hours, no glitches. Goes on the shelf this Friday at £189, which is anchored against the last six weeks of comparable refurbs.
Wednesday — pad bay catches up
Theo's bay was backed up after a Monday intake of twelve DualShock 2 pads (Italian listing, came in as a job lot — the seller had assembled them as a 90s arcade-cabinet build). The grim part: seven of the twelve had stuck triangle buttons. Standard pad-bay drill — pop the housing, isopropanol-clean the contact mat, replace the silicone where it's torn, calibrate against the bench rig.
Five pads passed first time. Two needed new membrane mats (we keep a sleeve of spares from a wholesale order in 2024). Five failed terminal — two had cracked traces on the PCB, three had snapped trigger springs that aren't worth the labour to replace. The seven that passed go on the wall this Friday at £24 each. The five that didn't go into the donor box for parts.
Thursday — Refurb floor's silent day
Burn-in day. Every system we've reflowed during the week sits on the bench running a reference cart for 24 hours: Genesis runs Streets of Rage 2 on a level-select loop, N64 runs F-Zero X at maximum draw, Xbox 360 runs Forza Horizon 4's Goliath circuit on loop, PS2 runs the Wave Race demo with the rumble pack maxed. Anything that drops a frame, throws a colour glitch or fails an audio check after eight hours of burn-in goes back to the bench for a second pass.
This week's casualty: one of the GameCubes had a stuck pixel on the AV output that turned out to be a faulty MultiAV port. New port from a parts board, re-soldered, burn-in restarted Thursday night. Listing pushed to next Friday.
Friday — photo bay & the drop
Friday morning is photo bay. Every system that passed burn-in gets an eight-image walkaround — top, base, front controller port, rear ports, both controllers (where included), a 45° angle, and a "scale shot" with a 30 cm ruler in frame. Eden does the photos in two hours flat.
The drop went live at 18:00. Twenty-one systems pulled from the bench this week, sixteen made the shelf, three more push to next week, two went into the parts cupboard. The Cat Saturn sold inside seven minutes. The Newcastle seller asked for a photo of it on the shelf — we sent her two.
— Sofia Khan-Reilly, refurb bench 02 · Camden vault · Friday 11 May 2026