Sunday, 13 August 2017

A Tale of Two Game Boys - A Restoration and Modding Project Log - Part #2




My goal was clear in my mind and I was totally focused on achieving it. I knew nothing else would distract me over the next few days and so my mission to restore a broken Game Boy to its former glory and all out mod another was ready to begin...



Turning my attention to the Game Boy that I wanted to restore, I decided that the most pressing issue was the faulty screen. I knew if I couldn’t fix this issue then the Game Boy might not be salvageable at all. A quick google search alleviated any fears I had and I soon found a wealth of articles and videos with solutions promising to permanently fix ‘dead lines’ on a Game Boy LCD. It seems to be a common problem with vertical lines being a relatively easy fix but horizontal lines being much more problematic. Thankfully my Game Boy was suffering with the former and so I immediately set about following a helpful guide. 



The first thing to do was to remove the six tri-wing screws that held the two halves of the Game Boy together. The Game Boy literally splits in two at this point however a delicate ribbon cable which connects the two halves must first be disconnected before any work can be done. Thankfully it’s just secured with friction and so can be carefully pulled out with a bit of gentle force. 



At this point I was able to set aside the back half of the Game Boy as everything I needed to work on was in the front PCB (Printed Circuit Board). To access the screen I then needed to remove the phillips screws that held the PCB to the housing. Once this was done the whole thing could easily be lifted out. As someone who doesn’t generally deal with electronics, I must admit that seeing the inner workings of something I’d enjoyed for so many years was pretty exciting for me. The board looked spotless and pristine and I guessed that the likelihood was that it hadn’t seen the light of day in well over two decades. The last hands that had touched it would have been a Japanese factory worker in the early nineties. I doubt they would have thought that someone would be trying to keep the little handheld alive in the far future of the year 2017. They probably thought we’d all be too busy flying around on hover-boards, or at least that’s what the 8 year old me thought everyone would be doing in 2017. 



Now that the screen was exposed I could access the area I needed to repair. Apparently the missing lines on the screen are caused by cracks in the solder which connects the bottom of the screen to the ribbon cable. To get the screen working properly again I would need to ‘reflow’ the broken solder by heating it to melting point. I turned on my soldering iron to get it up to temperature whilst I removed a rubber strip and then the left over adhesive which sits over the bottom of the screen. This is the spot where the defective solder is hidden below.



I plugged in the Game Boy and turned it on and set the contrast so that the screen was as dark as possible. Once the soldering iron was hot I melted a little solder over the tip and gently moved it over the solder below where the dead lines were showing. As soon as I did I could see the lines flickering back into life. Each pass would see some lines disappear and others reappear but each time more of the screen would be filled and before long everything was looking great. Who knew it would be so simple? I couldn’t help but wonder how many Game Boys have been thrown away over the years with this easy to fix problem. 

Encouraged I decided to move straight onto the next fault; the sound, or lack thereof. Another google search proved incredibly helpful though perhaps not as clear cut as before. Most solutions involved simply changing the speaker though I was hesitant to do so. It seemed to me that the issue could well be something else entirely, and besides I didn’t have a spare speaker lying around and so only wanted to replace it as a last resort. One guide suggested ruling out any issues with the sound chip by testing whether or not head phones would work when plugged in. I found a pair of head phones and thankfully heard the familiar ding of the Nintendo logo. I was almost ready to resign myself to having to replace the speaker when I stumbled across a guide with a promising solution. 

It explained that the problem could be caused by the system failing to recognise when the headphones were removed, thereby permanently disabling the speaker. The issue could occur by dirt or rust getting into a small switch located inside the headphone jack port. The switch is pushed open when the headphone jack is inserted and should snap shut when the jack is removed. 

 
I removed the two screws holding the port in place and took a small flat head screw driver, coated the tip in isopropyl alcohol and scraped the surface of the switch to hopefully dislodge any debris or rust. I checked that it was working properly by watching it as I inserted and removed the head phone jack and it seemed to be connecting and disconnecting okay. There wasn’t much else I could do and so I crossed my fingers and turned on the Game Boy hoping to hear that familiar ding… 

...

Sadly, it hadn’t worked, and so I was left with no alternative but to replace the speaker. My first port of call was to check eBay and to my surprise there were a number of sellers providing brand new, unofficial replacements. Amongst the various sellers I found a company I’d used in the past by the name of ZedLabz and promptly ordered the speaker. 




The speaker would take a few days to arrive but I was in no mood to stop now. I turned my attention to the Game Boy’s shell, and reasoned that now was as good a time as any to give it a good clean. I filled a bowl full of warm water and added a dash of washing up liquid and left the shell, buttons, and silicon pads bathing for a while. I also managed to find a spare battery compartment cover, and put that in too. Then with an old toothbrush I gently scrubbed the various nooks and crannies which had accumulated dirt and grime over the years on all of the pieces. After a quick rinse in clean water everything looked as good as new and I set it all aside to dry.


It was an agonising wait but within a few days my new speaker had arrived. The first task was to remove the old one and I was faced with the choice of either keeping the old speaker wires in place or replacing it with new wiring. I opted for the latter feeling it would be slightly less fiddly and ultimately more likely to succeed. 




I began by cutting off two pieces of wire to a similar length to the existing wire and then stripped the ends. I then soldered them onto the contact points on the new speaker trying to keep the orientation and positioning as close to the original as possible.  I then used some copper braid to remove the solder connecting the old speakers to board and pulled out the old speaker wires. Then it was just a simple case of poking the new wires through the small holes and soldering them to the board. Then, keeping everything crossed, I plugged the ribbon cable back in, turned on the power and…


*Ding*

Success! I'm not sure if it was the new speaker or just my elation that my dodgy soldering had worked but never had that little ding sounded so sweet.The Game Boy was fully operational once more and ready to be carefully reassembled and put back into its freshly cleaned shell.



I couldn’t help but feel a little proud to see how my work had paid off. The plucky Game Boy looked and sounded almost as good as new. I could have bought and installed a new screen lens which would have certainly looked even better, but I decided against in favour of keeping everything as original as possible. It wasn’t completely scratch free but for nigh on thirty years old it had held up pretty damn well. I settled down for a game of Tetris and let myself get misty eyed with nostalgia, staring at the warm green pixels and listening to the blips and beeps from the speaker. In that moment I was 8 years old again, and the Game Boy in my hands was brand new. But my work wasn’t done, I still had one more Game Boy in dire need of attention and so I switched off and started thinking about my upcoming modding project…

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