Was this solder blob supposed to be on my AES 3-5?

[theafterparty]

I just did a recap on my AES 3-5 and as I was removing a cap near the headphone jack, I realized there was a blob of solder joining at least two pins, maybe three together (see pics). To my eyes, my motherboard appears to be pretty stock as the factory glue was still there on what appeared to be original caps, and was in full working condition except for a few visual glitches here and there which after some research, I determined to be signs of old caps needing replacement.

Anyway I removed the blob of solder because I figured that was the safest move, and now my AES boots to a blue screen after a brief black screen but has audio and appears to be running the game. My thought on the blue screen is that it's actually just my projector not detecting proper signal and it's my projector's blue screen and not necessarily the Neo's if that makes sense.

Was this blob of solder the culprit and just needs replacing, or did I most likely botch some part of the display capacitor area? I made pretty neat work of it all, but I know those traces are pretty small.

My money would be on the solder blob except that it's on the audio side of the board, however I only know just enough about signal flow and traces to hopefully be asking the right questions. Thanks for any info.

(Solder blob is represented by black lines in pics. Area is right below the headphone jack. Second picture is a close up of the first.)

 

[Xian Xi]

Nope.

 

[Xian Xi]

Blue means it’s passing the hardware check. Don’t forget to clean the slot and your carts.

 

[theafterparty]

Ok thanks for the confirmation. Let me explain the blue screen a bit more though. You know how old tvs used to have black and white scramble but then they switched to blue when no signal is present? That's what blue screen I think I'm seeing because if my AES is off, my projector displays that standard blue screen meaning no input is detected yet. When I switch on the console, the screen comes up black for about 1-2 seconds then goes blue. If I let it ride for another few seconds, the Neo Geo splash screen jingle plays which means the game is definitely running, just with no display. My projector's probably just not seeing proper input and defaulting back to its stock waiting screen which just happens to be blue. Same thing happens with multiple games, so if you're saying the solder blob isn't supposed to be there, I guess its time to start looking a little closer at the traces. Thanks for the initial answer though, that knocks one thing off the list.

 

[DaisyAge]

How are you hooking this up to your projector? And what video source are you using? (Composite, RGB, Etc)

 

[theafterparty]

I have one of those Micomsoft XNEO-1 units that I've been using for S Video into the projector. XNEO out of the AES, S Video cable from that into the projector. I may be wrong but I think the signal pulled out of the AES in this situation is actually RGB, and that's converted in the XNEO to S Video. If I can find the stock cable tonight I'll test for composite.

It was working fine before, minus the occasional graphical glitches that I mentioned, and it also did exhibit sound dropouts maybe less than 5 times in the past month, so I figured that was a recipe for a recap. My soldering stuff is at my work so I'm gonna check it back out tomorrow.

 

[theafterparty]

I just thought of something... Booted up the AES without a cartridge and it displays a kind of downward scrolling of what's pictured for about 1 second, goes black for a couple, then repeats. Hopefully helpful knowledge.

 

[Xian Xi]

It kinda looks like your projector thinks it's PAL due to the weird refresh rate.