1. Opening it up: After carefully pushing in all the snap on hooks and squeezing the plastic case, then removing a few screws I was able to open it. Uses a Samsung S1A0426C02 AM/FM Chip which has all the functions of a complete AM/FM radio plus tuning meter. A few external parts are needed as shown. The wires were thin, short and prone to breakage, I already knew along the course of work I will be breaking afew wires and probably ruin the copper etch on the circuit board.

2. FYI: I looked up the Datasheet for the radio chip and here is what's inside and how you can make it into a functional radio:

REPAIR MODIFICATION TIME LINE (2 weeks)

3A. When I bend the circuit board the radio would jump from AM to FM and back. If I wiggle some capacitors it would do the same. First I cleaned the flimsy DPDT band select switch but that did not work. Interesting that switch was over kill. They only needed a SPST. All the other pins were tied to the necessary pins. There goes the quick fix.

3B. I tried to remove and replace electrolytics. At first it worked but when I put the radio back together the problem came back.

3C, Then I looked for lack of solder or over solder. With today's methods this shouldn't be a problem. But I noticed a lot of solder beading or a dull finish so I carefully tried to clean and reheat the joints. When you think you fixed it the problem came back.

3D. By now wires stated breaking and some of the etch was peeling. This is when I wanted to toss it. Somehow I didn't want to give up.

3E. In the course of finding the problem I damaged the plastic dial pointer so I had to make a new one. Took a piece of 24 AWG wire painted it black, poped a small hole and epoxy it in and it worked. Then other wires broke. I put the wire in the wrong spot and wiped out the LED on light. Luckily I had some spare ones and got that fixed. I decided to get rid of most of the fragile wires and put better ones in.

3F. Finally I got a breakthrough. By now I kept telling my wife that I had enough then when I tapped the chip's band select pin it stated to switch back and forth between AM and FM, I suspected a solder break. Unfortunately the etch ran under the chip. I took the wire off and connected it directly to the chips band select pin. When I turned it on only the AM worked and there was no way to get FM. At least now the problem was isolated.

3G. I looked at the way the radio was chip was connected and Samsung's application circuit and they were similar, but it didn't work. Time to tinker around. I found that the band chip's band select was connected the common point on the switch, I always got AM. When removed I got FM. The select is signal sensitive and the AM level is higher, I remembered that the band select had pins that were tied together. So I separated it reconnect the band select wire to the unused pin on the AM select part as shown in the picture below. Works every time now. ALL finished!!!!

4. Compare the before after pictures below to see if you can find the changes.

5. Summing it up. For some reason probably because it look cute, I kept going on it and now it works better than ever before. Not going to the junk heap anymore