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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