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

[Vince]

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!

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

 

[Vince]

Whoa nice work.

Thanks dude the finished article should be pretty awesome... Monday the final parts should arrive

Yeah...this is awesome. What do you have in mind for the usbc just charging or a way to drop ROMs on?

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

The look and style of some of the components on that PCB take me back.

Not a single BGA chip in sight

Very cool, hope you have a huge supply of batteries

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

Great work!

Cheers dude - I will probably do a thread on fixing the PSP and DSXL once I am finished with this one!

 

[Vince]

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!

 

[Vince]

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

Amazing, kinda wanting to make me want to update my neogeo pocket

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.

 

[Vince]

Love it! The Game Gear was my most prized possesion as a kid and this is giving off some strong nostalgia vibes. Top work!

You were that kid I was jealous of as all I had at the time was a game boy

 

[Vince]

Parts came early





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

 

[Vince]

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).

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.

 

[Vince]

Stonking work

That's very kind of you sir

 

[Vince]

I loved my GG when I was a kid but I lent it to a friend and he broke the screen somehow.

Sounds a bit like my mates one I have here... IF you drop them there is a single glass layer that is about half a cm bigger than the screen both ends (ill grab some pics later), the idea is the cathode tube sends light into that glass layer to illuminate the screen.. its fragile and will break on a drop, wherever it cracks it will take the screen out in that location. The problem is the old screens solder directly to the board and are glued in place holding about 70 pins to the board so a drop in replacement on these just isn't possible, it's best to just remove the high voltage rail entirely but of course it is always risky removing 20 odd components from the main board, you really don't want to get it wrong and some of the parts are very small.

 

[Vince]

I'd say my original Gameboy was probably my most played console. It was a great birthday when I got it.
No idea what ever happened to it though. Guessing it was thrown out by parents in a house clean.

I also had the game boy, then the bameboy colour, then an advanced.. I think I stopped there but im going to pick up some broken gameboys to play with

 

[Vince]

I've never done much in the way of handheld fixes, other than re-shelling a DS and replacing my PSP's analog stick.
I feel like I've watched hundreds of videos of people fixing things though. Might be fun thing to learn, as the used app here has loads of old stuff on it.

Feel like I'd be rubbish at soldering though, would probably break things worse than before I'd been let loose.

Soldering is easy the trick is use tons of flux. just slap it everywhere! clean your iron often and have some brad available to clean up any mistakes. some tweezers help when doing smd's.

 

[Vince]

Though my old Antex was an absolute trooper - even a mid-range temperature controlled iron can improve things as well.

I have a rework station, hot air / temp controlled iron but didn't get any of it out for this. I did use some hot tweezers to remove the transistors though as they are a pain to move with a standard iron but not impossible, I was just saving a little time

 

[Vince]

Inspired by this thread, I picked up a battered Game Boy Light for just over a tenner of the used app here. Will see if it is salvageable when it arrives.
The Game Gear can be had for about the same, but think that would be biting off more than I can chew going by Vince's work!

Interested to see how you get on I'll probably pick up some old gameboy consoles to have a play with at some point. I was expecting the psp to be broken so started work on that but turns out there is nothing wrong with it which to be honest is slightly disappointing so all I have at this point is a potentially broken DS XL but even that shows signs of life under the bench supply so suspect that may work as well once I put a charger to it.

Honestly there is so much info and parts available out there on the Game Gear that it's a good starting place for a project like this and a well restored upgraded Game Gear will also return more than the parts if you decide to sell. I worked out total spend as

£50 - Screen
£8 - Cap kit
£15 - Broken Game Gear
£20 - RetroSix Case
£5 - Buttons
£9 - 3 games

So not massively cheap but a console with all the upgrades etc mine now has goes for approx £150 to £200 so I'm likely not out of pocket if I wanted to sell.

 

[Vince]

For games, are you just going to be using official carts you can find, or are you considering one the carts that'll take a microSD card?

I quite like the idea of a Cart that takes SD cards so you can stick ROMs on it but there are also some games I would quite like to own. One I remember fondly is marble madness so I think a decent copy of that would be good. It's also an excuse to go have a look in the retro shops in town to see what they have as they get the odd game gear game etc and tend to only be a few quid. Good example is CEX online, good selection of games for as little as £1 - £5 - Same goes for the PSP I bought 3 PSP games for about £1.50 each which is nothing really.

 

[Vince]

Cheers gents - Some more updates.... What do you do when everything is fixed... Add more stuff that is what







I am calling it there though! At least for now! Added in this round

1) USB-C Power
2) New D-Pad and all new rubbers
3) Mikey Castle of Illusion...

Ill update if / when I buy the charge circuit as that will be a custom circuit as I couldn't find the pre done charging board that retrosix do and instead opted for CleanPower and ill add my own charge circuit and LIPO's.

 

[Vince]

in other good news the DS is in fact broken Next project right there! On the down side its only the charge port that is broken

So probably quite an easy repair there.

 

[Vince]

Convert to none Proprietary? .

Thats an idea, there is a little clip connecter right next to it so no hot air Tonight though I did my mates Game Gear, Mlcc Recap, McWill, USB-C same as mine:



Mines got the flashing light and is running out of battery... 5 hours ish full brightness, 10 hours in my dreams Bringing retro back to life one device at a time!

 

[Vince]

Still have my original GG with my games and carry case that I had from new as a kid . Did recap it as mine had the dim screen and quiet audio but haven't attempted to change the LCD. Wouldn't mind attempting it but I'd hate to break something as soldering is not one of my skills.

The GG was way ahead of its time though and we never had something really close until the PSP 14yrs later and it took Nintendo far to long to rival those two handheld designs with the switch 27yrs after the GG, don't count the DS as it looks nothing like it.

That tube backlight really did suck those batteries dry fast, did have the external battery pack once that was pretty decent but that's longer gone.

Think my GG was used more often plugged into the mains than its was on batteries

Change the LCD - For the love of god man change the LCD! If you cant do it you know a man that can - Id happily take on another one as a freebie! I would swap electrolytic for mlcc as well just because...

 

[Vince]

That's awesome. I loved my Game Gear as a kid, it was the envy of all the Gameboy friends in school. It really did shine next to the Gameboy, made it look ancient.

I remember mine suddenly just dying a year or two after owning it. My dad flushed it and re-soldiered and checked for dry joints but never could get it working again, replacement parts and schematics were very hard to get back then in the non internet age.

I found out that a faulty one can destroy power boards. Well at least the regulator chip on the power boards, internally on the main board they are basically tanks. My mates one was already broken so getting it to turn on was a nightmare, I tested it with my OG board, big mistake as it powered on once and then took that power board out as well. I only tested it again after removing all the 35v circuitry and after that it was all good so that suggests that there was an issue with the tube or something around that area which was pulling the 35v circuit down, the regulator appears not to like this and dies so when you fire it up again and test voltages on the output of the power board you get 1.28v and 9v just fine but 5v and 35v disappear (possibly not 5v as the 5v rail requires a load to pull it up). When I was removing the fuses around the screen they basically fell apart while putting only a tiny bit of pressure so they were basically shot but I do wonder exactly what it was causing the issue.

 

[Vince]

Go oled or bigger screen.

I'm not sure there is an oled option The only options you have on GG basically all require plenty of soldering and component removal. No such thing as plug in replacements on these bad boys.