Help on Virtual Boy

[jeffg]

Hey guys.
I have 2 Virtual Boy headsets that are going bad.

1 has a bad left eye and the other has bad right eye

Can I open these up and switch them out so I have 1 unit
with 2 good eyes and 1 with 2 bad eyes

If so is it very difficult??

Thanks
Jeff

[Slate]

This belongs in the Tehnical & Restoration Society forum..

[Jumpman Jr.]

I've had a few of my headsets go like that too. I tried opening it up and taking a look in it to see if it could be done. I, for sure, wouldn't be able to do anything about it. But if your rather adept with a soldering iron, you might be able to jimmy something together.

[InsaneDavid]

This belongs in the Tehnical & Restoration Society forum..

That it does.

Concerning the question, I don't know of anyone that repairs VB's. However I do know that the absoloute LAST thing you want in the headset is any dust as it would seriously screw up any distance perception and probably make you sick if you could see it when playing. Also you're messing with reflective display guns of red light (dunno how to better describe it) being shot around inside a small tabletop unit that you stick your eyes against. I don't know if I'd want to screw with those unless I knew 100% what I was doing.

[jajaja]

Do VB use custom headsets?

[Jumpman Jr.]

Do VB use custom headsets?

No, I don't think so.
Although I don't completely understand what your asking.

[jajaja]

Ok, i never tried VB. But reading the post again it seems that with headset he mean the VB itself.

[DogP]

Yeah, you can do that... this is a really common problem, and one that I've been trying to get a how-to made to put on my website. Since you have two of them, you can just open them up, undo the cables from the display to the motherboard, pop the speakers off the side, unscrew the two small screws that hold the LED bar PCB on the mirror assembly, then do the same for the other one and swap.

Biggest problem is getting the system open... you need the security bits like the SNES and stuff, but 4 of them are too deep for the typical driver, so you'll need to find some other way to get the system open (I've made a screwdriver that is a flathead with a notch in the middle wide enough to span the security head). I have a picture available on my website, but it's down at the moment :( .

To actually repair the others, it's usually a bad contact between the cable and the LED bar PCB itself, which can temporarily be fixed by just pushing the cable against the PCB (it's held by a glue that comes loose over time), but of course the glue will just come loose again. I've also had good luck wrapping it really tightly with electrical tape. Sometimes it's the connection between the motherboard and the LED bar cable, so just unhooking that cable and pushing it back in also fixes it, but that's not very common.

DogP

[Jive3D]

Hey DogP -

I had this problem a while back (I still have the problem, just been sitting on it) with my virtual boy - it's the same common problem mentioned above - - -

Since you seem to be the know all of VB stuff would you consider repairing a VB unit if the owner of the VB took care of all reasonable costs? This would probably be seen as a godsend by DPers...

[DogP]

I could probably do that... I went to Nintendo's website a few weeks ago and I noticed that they don't do repairs for the VB anymore :( . The only problem I see is that I've only done a few of them, and they've all been my own, so they worked immediately after fixing, but I typically only play one of my systems, so I'm not totally sure about the long term reliability (and of course I can't guarantee that it's fixable if it's not the same problem that I've fixed on my own in the past).

Also, sometimes my time is limited (usually because of classes), so when I've done other things like this, my turn around time is sometimes a week or more (it does take a little while to pull these apart and make sure they're functioning correctly), and then getting them back to the post office.

But, if a few of you want to send them to me, I'd be glad to see how it goes, and then I'll have a fresh machine to create a howto for my website. Most of the time shipping just a VB headset is $10 or less (I've got all the hookups and games to test with).

DogP