broken gamegear

themadhacker · Post by **themadhacker** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:22 pm

I bought a broken gamegear on ebay, and it arrived today. I would like to fix, so here's the problems.:

1 when turned on, there are lines on screen, and picture is bad. When brightness dial is turned, different lines appear. Sometimes, however, when the dial is at maximum bright, the screen works.

2 only sometimes turns on. I flip the gamegear on, and sometimes the red LED turns on, then a second later, turns off.

3 no sound from speaker. Not ever crackling. There is sound with headphones, so obviously the speaker is dead.

All these problems. The one I am not concerned with is the bad speaker, but the other ones I am. What I am asking is what could cause the screen and the ON/OFF problems?

The only visible culprit I can find is a LOT of corrosion in the battery terminals. Perhaps some corrosion leaked into the system.

In any case, fixing this is not on the top of my list on things to do, in fact, if this costs more to fix than I paid for the unit, I will frankencase it, and use the mobo for testing mods (overclocking limit, ect.) before I do them on my working game gear.

EDIT: I turned it on again, but this time I cant get picture at all. There is a black screen with some very blurred colors at the bottom, and of course, white lines.

palmertech · Post by **palmertech** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:40 pm

Open it up and see if you have any blown capacitors, it is easy to do.

themadhacker · Post by **themadhacker** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:42 pm

I'll do that tommorrow. I was thinking it would be the brightness dial, as white lines disappeared and reappeared when I turned it.

palmertech · Post by **palmertech** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:43 pm

I am actually interested in the result, I have a gamegear with lines on the screen, same as yours, that I am too lazy to fix.

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 2:40 am

there's a lot of connections with cables that are not soldered in the gamegear, maybe one of them got sorta loose...

bytebandit73 · Post by **bytebandit73** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 3:02 am

Hope that helps.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/ ... epair.html

Greetings

themadhacker · Post by **themadhacker** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:19 pm

That helped . A LOT. Thanks, Those are all of the symptoms of my game gear. On a side note, upon taking apart my game gear, I discovered why it uses up batteries so fast. It has a floresent light for the backlight. If one could LED mod it, the battery life would be much more effecient.

palmertech · Post by **palmertech** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:22 pm

Doing right now, I am using another DS Lite backlight I have, it is the perfect size.

robm · Post by **robm** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:21 pm

Yes, the Game Gears are horrible for having bad SMT capacitors. I've fixed about five Game Gears just by replacing the capacitors thus far, with amazing results - if they've got lines/ghosting in the screen, bad/no audio, poor contrast, or poor viewing angle problems, the problem's gone completely after replacement.

Palmertech, let me know how that goes! I wonder if the screen would be easier to see with decent LEDs?

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Thu Jan 01, 2009 5:56 pm

mhm, sounds like something you could make a business out of...

robm · Post by **robm** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:15 pm

Eh, I've thought about fabbing up a few PCBs and selling replacement audio boards, but I don't know what kind of demand there would be for that, even if I sold em for 3 to 5 bucks.

Most people who would feel comfortable popping open the thing and replacing the board would probably be just as likely to have the required capacitors just laying around the house for free. I know I did.

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 4:26 pm

i actually meant getting broken Gamegears for cheap and selling them for more

robm · Post by **robm** » Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:11 pm

Yep, did that for the last two.

Problem being, they aren't worth that much to begin with. Around here, they sell for fifteen bucks at the used game stores in good working condition. The one game store I picked my free one up typically just throws the broken ones in the trash; if they actually got any kind of real volume of broken units, then I'd be in business on that end.

Unfortunately, such is not the case. There is a supplier on eBay that blows em out for 3 bucks a piece broken, but he only pops on every once in a great while with 6 of them or so. I've thought about contacting him directly, see if he would be willing to work out a deal.

gameboy fixer 77 · Post by **gameboy fixer 77** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 6:11 pm

usually all you need to do if the aa batteries are not working for you is just to get a 9V 1.33A Power Adaptor.
I recently purchased a Broken game gear and after i plugged it into this adaptor then it booted up fine.
it is most likely a problem with the battery wiring.

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