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

[Vince]

Took the DSi XL apart this evening and its worse than I thought. The charge port has pulled the pads off of the pcb, one seemed to have survived but is sort of hanging in place. So in prep for my new charge port ive run a few wires just to be sure. I'll wire those directly to the output pins on the new port and hope



There used to be a pad here:



It won't be pretty but it should work.

 

[Vince]

Hopefully you sort that out too. DS and PSP just don't seem as exciting as the older Game Gear, but good to get them back in top condition!

I got my Game Boy Light delivered but unfortunately it's pretty much toast. There is a lot of damage to the PCB. It explains why there was no internal pictures on the ad. :'(
I've tossed everything and kept the board, just in case I ever become a repair legend...

Agreed that they are a bit too new and not that interesting. The DS though is water damaged so has been interesting fault finding on it... Power gets to parts of the board but I cannot for the life of me work out where the issue is bar that something is stopping it, I have an idea but nothing to test it against... I've got a second less faulty dsi xl coming to compare it against so I shall have a play with that over the coming days when it gets here.

 

[Vince]

i loved playing echo the dolphin on the gg!

I do have Echo here Classic game!

 

[Vince]

I think I may have an addiction



That broken dsi got itself a new home.

 

[Vince]

Nice looking keyboard too.
You got pics of the finished article?

Not quite yet, its still in a state of many pieces, I did get it all back together then realised only one of the two camera modules I have works (the really water damaged one doesn't) and that I had fitted the wrong module. So I now have to tear it down again and getting the ribbon cable for the screen through the hinge is all kinds of nightmares so I put t to one side until I was more awake! I'll likely have it all back together today at some point so will do a before and after pic of the 3 consoles

Keyboard is a Ducky Year of the Dog, great keyboard

 

[Vince]

Nice looking keyboard too.
You got pics of the finished article?

Finally done...





These things are super fiddly! especially the top screen cables.

 

[Vince]

And there we have it... 3 for 3 on the repairs! Very happy with that

From:


To:

 

[Vince]

I re-shelled my sister's old DS Lite many years ago, after she broke the hinge. It was god awful!

Last week due to a bit of a knock, my 3DS broke. Taking it apart was a bad enough, but putting it back together... So fiddly. Clean and rebuild didn't fix either, and didn't know what part would need replacing.
With the cost of a working one, it's easier for me to get rid of my old and upgrade to either an XL or n3DS.

It's a cool collection right there. Many good titles on all those systems, and the PSP flexibility opens up so many platforms.

Weirdly I've been scouring ebay looking for more things to fix and on that list is a DMG gameboy and also a 3ds! Right now i'm building this Chinese led clock which has about 200 tiny little LED's to solder...

gif upload

I'm about 100 112 led's in and have a long way to go (I counted, 176 left) ... There are also no instructions and all you get are a bunch of parts. With no instructions and seemingly none online I've spent quite a lot of time probing about on the board trying to work it out. If I put my meter into diode and probe about im fairly sure ive got it right

Here is my work on it so far!









A few things of note, I bought a blue one but its clearly green. Next up there are a load of tiny resistors and caps that im not entirely sure whats what and what goes where so if it works when im finished it will be a minor miracle... ive also killed 2 led's in 100 as they got stuck to my iron or flew across the room when i was trying to pick it up with tweezers so i hope there are some spares

I've still got probably 160 of those tiny led's to solder.

 

[Vince]

Ace work! I've been thinking about this recently as I've still got my original childhood boxed GG and games.

I think the sound still works, the screen powers on but is broken. Was going to do the screen replace and see where that took it in terms of functionality. But if you fancy another project and come into London sometime...

The sound board will 100% be shot, one of those caps on there loves to leak and was bad on both of the ones I have done so far. I'd be happy to do another one If you buy me a screen and cap kit Id be more than happy to make it work for you, the smd cap kit is a bit more expensive but you get a better result at the end. The second game gear I did was not only cleaner but only took me about an hour and a half or so.

 

[Vince]

Rolling up that poxy ribbon cable to feed into the hinge. Ugh.

It's also really easy to catch a ribbon cable on the inner metal shall part which over time gets sharp as the console opens and closes... killed a screen that way... was going to repair the ribbon cable or use one from one of the two other smashed screens I have but instead bought another £10 screen might open up one of the spares and see if you can replace just the ribbon. The DS though in general is not fun to work on.

 

[Vince]

I re-shelled my sister's old DS Lite many years ago, after she broke the hinge. It was god awful!

Last week due to a bit of a knock, my 3DS broke. Taking it apart was a bad enough, but putting it back together... So fiddly. Clean and rebuild didn't fix either, and didn't know what part would need replacing.
With the cost of a working one, it's easier for me to get rid of my old and upgrade to either an XL or n3DS.

It's a cool collection right there. Many good titles on all those systems, and the PSP flexibility opens up so many platforms.

FWIW the fuses on these are sort as ****, I blew fuses on mine seemingly by doing nothing. There is a fuse on the main board as the first component after the charge port, put a meter across that, then on the daughter/charge board there is a fuse on the input to that as well if either of them are gone it won't turn on. Also a smashed top screen can cause a flashing red light and the unit not turning on. What does your 3ds do just totally dead?

Right now mines got a bit or wire bridging the input on the daugher board I even blew all the spare fuses I had on this thing while testing so id say they are pretty fragile.

 

[Vince]

It was blue light with no other activity. Most videos said this was wifi card, but mine was not the same issue unfortunately.

So I finished the LED clock... looks like I got the polarity of every LED wrong so all of them need swapping around I swapped one column around and I recon it will be all good once done!

 

[Vince]

So with everything done, and you can't photograph the thing clock because of the LED poling rate of 32khz, so part of it always looks broken in a photo...



Anyway with no toys to play with I had a look and I found a new one tonight



Listing says no signs of life no power. Should be interesting.

 

[Vince]

@Maccy - I can't change thread titles anymore Can you change this to Vince's Ebay Console Repair Thread - (Bought a broken Game Gear on Ebay - Restoration and Mod Thread)

 

[Vince]

I'd be interested in getting the parts and then sending the lot to you to take a look. Seeing conflicting opinions on the cap type to get - you mention SMD but sounds like the sets you can get aren't really like for like. I'll find out what version GG mainboard I have anyway.

Oh, and well done on the clock LEDs

Search ebay for this: Game Gear Replacement Capacitors Repair Kit Sega All SMD Power Audio Screen - And get it from the seller rotrosix This is the cap kit to go for and works for both board types!

The screens I used, also from ebay and a seller called stem-gaming... SEGA Game Gear LCD Screen. HighLit Full Display, Adjustable Brightness. - Ive also worked out a bracket to 3d print that perfectly aligns the screen

 

[Vince]

@Vince sorted mate

Thank you sir, stand up service as always

 

[Vince]

Still waiting on the switch but have got a few of the most likely parts in ready for the repair. I'm thinking no life/no power it's going to be one of three things. Either the charge port itself has been brutalised or one/both of the BQ24193 (Battery charging IC) or M92T36 (USB-C charge control IC) has gone. All these parts are really cheap and it's pretty easy to diagnose which one has gone so hopefully we should be ready to rock when it gets here.

This is of course assuming the seller is genuine and the switch hasn't actually taken a bath or something.



I do have my original switch to test against and from a quick look around it appears the switch lite has all the same power circuitry as the standard switch bar a couple of little nuances. Looking forward to this and noticed I'm gradually getting more modern... need to go back retro after, thinking a neo geo pocket or a dmg gameboy.

Little video walk around of all three for anybody interested, and yes I made a schoolboy error and recorded it in portrait :

 

[Vince]

Here we go again, another entry in the Vinces ebay console repair saga, lets get straight into fixing that switch. It arrived in the post this morning at about half 11 ish and me being me I couldn't wait to get down to it and have a look. As soon as I opened it up I knew we were going to be in for a ride. I am just going to let the pics do most of the talking...

As promised it doesn't power up.


As I start taking it apart is fairly obvious it's taken a bath... Corrosion..


Water damage indicator


That looks a bit grim...


More corrosion


And more


Whipped out the daughter board and this rail should have a couple of caps on here


One here, instead of the caps we have burnt broken tracks both at the top and the bottom.


There used to be a pad here, rip pad...



Cleaned it up and scraped it back so you can see the breaks...




Little patch wire and the rest is in the video as I didn't take photos


But we did fix it


Little video:

 

[Vince]

Very nice work, wish I had the skills/patience for this

I'll be honest the one so far thats been the most fiddly is the DSi, I was expecting the switch to be a nightmare with all sorts of issues but really that was fairly simple to fix as the damage stuck out and was obvious. Turns out my nephew is already getting a switch for xmas so I guess I may as well sell this one on or keep it. I guess now I need something new to fix again

 

[Vince]

I used to reshell a lot of the Gameboy Advance SP console, do love a good clamshell console

I would quite like an advanced not the sp advanced but the normal one as I had a purple one when I was younger. Problem is faulty ones on ebay are more expensive than I can buy a working one for in town, saw one in town for £25 last week so I might pop back, buy that and perhaps put an ips in it and re-shell it or something.