Replacing the Nomad screen

[jonjandran]

Tired of that pathetic Nomad screen? Wish you had a nice new Lcd in there? Well now you can.

First things first. Get rid of the old Lcd.
Open up the Nomad. You will need a security bit for the bottom/middle screw. After you open the Nomad , pull the circuit board up and you will see the Lcd. Pull it of and then pull of the lcd cable attached to the main board.



Now you just ruined your Nomad. Just kidding

Here is the new Lcd we will be using :
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20415
It is $50 shipped.



When we take it apart it will look like this :


Now what you want to do is get out your hot glue gun and glue the new Lcd into place. Make sure you get it centered. be aware the Lcd hole on the Nomad is slightly slanted so the Lcd will be slightly slanted when mounted.



Now it's time to solder the wires necessary to power the screen and get video to it.
You will be soldering 4 wires. 2 grounds, power, and video. the 2 ground wires go to the same spot on the Lcd's board.



Here is where the wires will be soldered to the Nomad's board :



And some closeups :





After it is wired you will want to mount the Lcd's board on top of the Lcd. I put a small piece of paper between them to protect against shorts. You can then hot glue the 4 corners to hold it in place. :



Now put the Nomad back together. Make sure the wires are crimped anywhere, or in the way of the buttons.

[jonjandran]

Plug it in and see the new Lcd in all it's glory.

[jb143]

Pretty cool, I was thinking of doing something similar myself. I was thinking of tapping RGB but this looks much easier.

Questions...It looks like your tapping the video signal off the video out port. How does this affect hooking it to a tv? Does the brightness knob do anything at this point? Do you disable the CCL high voltage? or is that on the Nomads LCD?...I can't remember. And the main thing...how does it affect battery life? I'd imagine it would increase it drastically if the new screen uses LED backlighting.

[ooXxXoo]

Great screen replacement...I've been looking for a good size matching one for months....Questions though, how bad is the new LCD screen lag with the Genesis/Nomad low resolution (if most likely there any)?....
....Excellent clean job indeed..
...

[jonjandran]

It doesn't affect hooking it up to a tv. Just like using a splitter and running 2 tv's off one rca. Same thing.

Nope brightness nob now does nothing. Doesn't need to because this screen is plenty bright as-is.

The high voltage is on the Lcd so it comes off.

Battery life is now terrific with a total of 230mA being drawn now.

And there is no noticeable lag whatsoever anymore

[jonjandran]

Just wanted to post a pic of what the screen normally looks like with the regular Nomad screen:

[Oldskool]

Bump for an awesome (necessary) mod for the Nomad. I am not normally into modding, but this one is for an excellent cause.

[remowilliams]

Has anyone who has tried this had any display issues?

For the most part it seems fantastic , but on Test Drive II the intro, car selection, course selection, and 'intermission' station screens and round scoring all exhibit severe graphics shearing off to the right hand side. Is this something that is a known issue?

[Leo_A]

Has anyone who has tried this had any display issues?

For the most part it seems fantastic , but on Test Drive II the intro, car selection, course selection, and 'intermission' station screens and round scoring all exhibit severe graphics shearing off to the right hand side. Is this something that is a known issue?

Sounds like the LCD screen you used doesn't care for the resolution that game is putting out. Doubt it's a Nomad issue.

[remowilliams]

Sounds like the LCD screen you used doesn't care for the resolution that game is putting out. Doubt it's a Nomad issue.

It's the screen shown in this thread. I figured it's probably a resolution issue, but wanted to see if anyone else has noticed the same thing.

Also I haven't exactly run through the entire Genesis library during testing and was wondering if other games that could have similar output might be affected...

[Leo_A]

It's the screen shown in this thread. I figured it's probably a resolution issue, but wanted to see if anyone else has noticed the same thing.

Also I haven't exactly run through the entire Genesis library during testing and was wondering if other games that could have similar output might be affected...

An easy way to confirm that it indeed is a resolution issue with the LCD screen would be to output the game to a tv. If the problem doesn't happen when using tv/out, then you can be certain it isn't some oddity with the Nomad hardware that causes it not to play the game correctly.

[Sinizar]

Thank you for the images on how to do this. I just spent the morning modding and the afternoon playing. It turned out great! Playing Pier Solar on it. I don't know how people play games on the old screen. It is so bad, this one is beautiful!

The only addition I will add is keep a red sharpie on stand by. When it comes to aligning the screen, leave the protector plastic on the screen so you can draw margins on it with the sharpie where the screen actually displays the game. It has a small bar all the way around it, and if you don't line it up perfectly before the hot glue you are going to end up doing it over until you get it aligned.

[gcl1984]

awsome mod, just ordered a screen

[Polygon]

Had I thought about this or seen this thread three weeks ago, I would still have my Nomad.

Great work!

[jonjandran]

Thank you for the images on how to do this. I just spent the morning modding and the afternoon playing. It turned out great! Playing Pier Solar on it. I don't know how people play games on the old screen. It is so bad, this one is beautiful!

The only addition I will add is keep a red sharpie on stand by. When it comes to aligning the screen, leave the protector plastic on the screen so you can draw margins on it with the sharpie where the screen actually displays the game. It has a small bar all the way around it, and if you don't line it up perfectly before the hot glue you are going to end up doing it over until you get it aligned.

Actually I do it a bit differently. I hook everything up. Then I put hot glue on two corners of the screen. Quickly before the glue dries I turn on the system and line the screen up. Glue dries and I glue the other two corners. Perfect screen every time.

[raylydiard]

I got to get other nomad some day and just have this screen replaced i wonder about atari lynx screens?