Vince's Repair Thread - (Console Repairs & Mods)

Vince

Vince

Vince

Man of Honour
Joined
30 Oct 2003
Posts
13,737
Location
Essex
Before I started I didn't know this was going to turn into a random repair thread so you will see plenty of attempted repairs in here some that work and some that don't... To keep track on spend and possible item profit a spreadsheet has been created of the repairs in this thread:

Google Sheet

When I was a lot younger I always wanted one of these so last week when I happened across a lot of 3 broken handhelds on ebay I decided to grab it. This is it in the listing...



And as soon as I got it I stripped it down and got to work, required tools...





Cheap soldering iron and a ton of flux on everything! First up I grabbed an mlcc cap kit and got to work... some pics below:

First up I recapped the power board:





Then the audio board:





hmm nice!


This one was a bit of a pain...



That will do, hey nobody said you were going to see decent soldering here!

20211019-215617.jpg


Before you know it we are good!



Does it work? I think so... and at this point in the build I still dont have any games and some new toys turn up!



I'm already invested in the usable game gear dream so what does any sane person do at this point?


They remove all the old stuff before they can test a game that's what!


Quick check on voltages after removing about 20 components...


Now for the fun stuff... more soldering....






And a quick test... at first i thought all was well...


But sonic you dont look good at all! Turns out I bridged pin 59 and 60.. Dont do this...


And there we have it... mod complete....


New shell is on its way, new buttons are here already and i think a usb-c conversion is in order... Very hapy with my cheap game gear so far :D
 
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Raymond Lin said:
Whoa nice work.
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Thanks dude the finished article should be pretty awesome... Monday the final parts should arrive :D

goldy6660 said:
Yeah...this is awesome. What do you have in mind for the usbc just charging or a way to drop ROMs on?
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I'm going to mount two phone 3300mah batteries in each side where the batteries go and either buy a RetroSix CleanJuice pcb or grab separate USB charge board and buck and wire it all in - I will share all the progress as we go :)

Rroff said:
The look and style of some of the components on that PCB take me back.
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Not a single BGA chip in sight :D

McBain said:
Very cool, hope you have a huge supply of batteries :p
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Where I am up to with it so far means a set of 6AA's should get me 10 or so hours rather than the 2 hours you would get with the OG LCD. The plan though is USB-C charging of internal batteries like a switch :D

azazl187 said:
Great work!
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Cheers dude - I will probably do a thread on fixing the PSP and DSXL once I am finished with this one!
 
Quickly stuck it back together while I wait for the remaining parts to arrive :)



Ill update once its fixed, currently 3d printing a little stand for it!
 
Small update - Went into town found this sitting on a second hand CEX like shop shelf... was expensive online but paid £20 :) Quite happy with that! Although it is a jap only title so ill never be able to understand what is going on - The music is good though :cry:



goldy6660 said:
Amazing, kinda wanting to make me want to update my neogeo pocket
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Got one of those on the list :) will buy a broken one and try and fix it! Will likely do a screen upgrade etc as its good fun if you like that sort of thing.
 
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Parts came early :D





Restoration complete, albeit somewhat done as a throwback to the limited edition white model they did in limited supply! Will do a battery mod but am on probably 4 hours or so on this first set so far!

I think ill make a start on another handheld so let me know if you want to see more :D
 
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Was going to question now you shoehorned batteries in. I never had one, but my neighbour did. I didn't realise it would last so little time. Wonder if you be able to mod some sort or C or D batteries in for massive capacity (or even some sort of li-ion version).
 
theone8181 said:
Was going to question now you shoehorned batteries in. I never had one, but my neighbour did. I didn't realise it would last so little time. Wonder if you be able to mod some sort or C or D batteries in for massive capacity (or even some sort of li-ion version).
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Right now with the mods etc its about 10 hours ish on the batteries. 2 li-iron phone batteries is the way forward - Ill post up once I have done it, can't seem to find stock on the parts I need. I re-capped my mates one tonight but his has a dodgy power board so I need to work that out first, i can make it power but it doesn't power a second time, but does work with my power board. I think the regulator chip might be shot. His also has the stock screen which is broken for the top 5% ish as its cracked where he dropped it as a kid, either way it will get the same treatment as my one :) And ill probably swap my power board into his one next week as well as my usb-c converted board will be going in.
 
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Emlyn_Dewar said:
This is a great thread. Always loved the Game Gear but it was a bit ahead of the time, in regards to battery tech... :D
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I've just been googling as I went down the gameboy route. It was definitely the better console (outside of battery life:p), suspect it cost a fortune though.

Edit, 100 quid in the 90s which seems expensive, but the game was 70 at the same point so not massively more. Probably about the same cost as a switch lite now.
 
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