This gameboy was gifted to me from a Family member who found it one day in their Attic. I’ve tried fixing it a year ago, but since some parts never got delivered, it kinda slipped out of my mind until now.
The main thing I’ve replaced where the crusty green battery Contacts, but it did not seem to help with the original issue.
Upon turning it on, a bunch of stripes appear and then quickly disappear. Sometimes the whole screen is stripes, sometimes only 1-3. With disappearing I mean that they oddly seem to disintegrate in a very unnatural way. Its less pixels turning off, more like a liquid esc thing if I had to describe it.
How fast they stay and start disintegrating is dependent on how high the contrast is set, with it all the way up causing them to go almost instantly. With the contrast all the way down, on very rare occasions, I can see a corrupted Nintendo Logo like in the picture like its trying its best to start.
I only got 1 Game to test it all. The Motherboard inside looks a bit rough with the big metal thing in the middle looking a bit rusty. The screen board looks pretty good tho. I could not locate any leaking Capacitors, but some hard brown goo could be found sometimes. With all of that said, I can’t pinpoint if this is a Motherboard or screen issue, so I’m not sure which to try and replace, do any of you folks have any suggestions? Thanks
This looks like an issue with the cart or the connector between the cart and the mainboard. Clean those thoroughly, use a bit of vinegar if there is any corrosion on the connectors. After using vinegar be sure to clean thoroughly to prevent the vinegar from doing damage after the corrosion is cleaned off.
Something similar happened with the one I repaired for my mother-in-law. I had to scrub the cartridge loader contacts in the game boy pretty vigorously with a toothbrush and 99% isopropyl alcohol before it would reliably load appropriately. I would suggest doing the same scrub in the cartridge, as well.
IIRC, Game Boy games do a handshake with the system before anything can load, and that is shown on the screen. When the handshake is successful, you get the normal Nintendo logo. When something in the handshake is wrong, you get the corrupted logo screen.
If that gets you past the logo screen, but you’re still having lines on the screen, that’s probably a bad ribbon cable connection. You can reheat the connection points to get a proper connection again, but it’s definitely an exercise in patience. There are a bunch of guides on this one on the Internet.
I just tooth brushed the living hell out of all the connectors and the screen does seem to work now… after a bunch of reinserting the cartrage we get a fully working nintendo Logo as well… but that’s where it stops…
No sound (the speaker may be busted), and it gets stuck on the Nintendo Logo…