Nah, I'd definitely like to get this thing up and running. If I can get past the CRT and get the analog board out, then I can probably dive into fixing it. My dad can solder better than I can, I could leave the job to him, but until I can get it apart I have no way knowing if it's cracked solder joints, bad capacitors or both. Could be both, the capacitors aren't surface mount on the analog board right?

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For soldering the only thing you have to do is get it open. All the soldering points are easy to get to without removing anything besides cover sheets. You won't even have to disconnect anything!

As for caps, I don't think they are the issue, but yes one should not rule then out yet. Only because the booting is too random. Usually a component failure causes a more consistent issue. Also it seemed like once it warmed up a bit, it ran. Caps get funky once they warm up, not when cold so much. However cracked solder joints do work better when warmed up from thermal expansion.

I really would not have that thing plugged in until you get a closer look.

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I'm not going to plug it in anymore, I'm not sure where to start. Should I start off with tuning up the cracked soldering points if they're any? I'm going to assume there will be. If not, then I should check the capacitors? No matter how much I try I cannot get the thing to go into any reboot loops anymore, it's been like that for days. It's weird, it may even start happening again soon. Who knows.

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