If you don’t need the drive, just snap off the white wire coming from it to the PCB. The tape drive head is connected to the sound output and it picks up all sorts of noise for your enjoyment. Constant noise in the audio output? This is not even a problem per se, but a feature of the +2 design.The tiny wires bringing the signal in might suffer at that point. Still no RF output? The RF modulator seems to crack off the PCB by time.The markings on the PCB are upside down: install the transistor the other way around for a bit better image quality. Distorted composite output? If you can get some dark output from TEA2000 pin 6, things are looking up! Most likely TR4 has failed and needs to be changed.According to some account, it might do some good to change TR8, too.RGB works, the rest don’t? Most likely TR9 has failed.RGB is the least fragile of these, so if RF and composite fail, you might at least see something and confirm that the machine is otherwise sane.

There are three ways to get video out: RF, composite and RGB (SCART).Note that they are not all the same: if you intend to use expansions such as divIDE, get one with a high throughput (~2A). Power LED doesn’t light up? Time to change the regulator that is attached to the big heat sink.Still no voltage? Check the power connector on the PCB.Personally I’ve used two +2s with a generic 12V transformer. Nominally the voltage should be 9V DC, but you can also feed it a bit higher voltage, because a regulator will turn it into 5V anyway. Power supply busted? They’re still available on eBay and elsewhere too, but any sturdy enough (2A) PSU will probably do.

Here’s for those who struggle with their Speccy: Most often the problems are caused by failing transistors, with other probable failures on top. After some real trouble with three Spectrum +2s I’ve at least learnt a thing or two (not only about the build quality of those dogs).

Speccy power supply 12v