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

I remember getting one when they came out from Menzies shop in Perth. Was quite someday as it was the first gaming machine I ever received. Played a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog and G-Loc. Blasted through so many batteries my dad soon bought rechargeables for me and I was never too far from a wall socket to go mains powered. Really enjoyed this thread :)
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
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?
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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 said:
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.
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The Everdrive GG x7 is really good. I think it has nearly 100% compatibility with roms, you can play homebrew, rom hacks and master system games. I'd recommend looking at getting one to compliment your GG. I saw one on eBay last week for a reasonable price.

Edit: Excellent work on the GG btw! I wish I had the soldering skills to do this.
 
Cheers gents - Some more updates.... What do you do when everything is fixed... Add more stuff that is what :D







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

So probably quite an easy repair there.
 
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theone8181 said:
Convert to none Proprietary? :p.
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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 :cry: Bringing retro back to life one device at a time!
 
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.
 
Still have my original GG with my games and carry case that I had from new as a kid :D. 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 :cry:
 
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Raiden85 said:
Still have my original GG with my games and carry case that I had from new as a kid :D. 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 :cry:
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Change the LCD - For the love of god man change the LCD! :D If you cant do it you know a man that can :D - Id happily take on another one as a freebie! I would swap electrolytic for mlcc as well just because...
 
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2StepSteve said:
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.
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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.
 
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 :D



There used to be a pad here:



It won't be pretty but it should work.
 
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... :D
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
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... :D
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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.
 
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