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Thread: GBA SP light flickering from red to green?

  1. #41
    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    The Hori Digital Pad, eh? Seems to be hella expensive, unfortunately.
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

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    celerystalker is a poindexter celerystalker's Avatar
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    Hadn't priced it out in awhile... didn't realize it was getting costly. I had the same complaint, and when that Hori pad came out, I grabbed one right away. That, and that Saturn PS2 pad. The Hori GC controller feels like a Super Nintendo controller other than the silly Gamecube button layout, so it was pretty great for the Metroids and Castlevanias.

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    Great Puma (Level 12) Niku-Sama's Avatar
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    http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hori-Game-Cu...item4d3ff95e9d

    I cant imagine that controller is going to go up a whole lot considering it didn't show up when I was searching hori and gamecube.
    but you never know
    you have to space out "game cube" like so and not many people seem to do that

  4. #44
    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    Nicely done – but yes, with three days to go, there is much that may yet happen.

    I take it that it's completely useless for games that require the analog stick?
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

  5. #45
    celerystalker is a poindexter celerystalker's Avatar
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    Yes, it's useless for analog games. For GBA, though, it's tremendous.

  6. #46
    Red (Level 21) Jorpho's Avatar
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    You just know there's dozens of these things collecting dust at one Goodwill or another, and no one has the slightest idea what they're worth. Seems there's a "Pelican GC Retro Pad" that's fairly similar.

    Did no one release any kind of adapter that would let you plug in a PSX pad or SNES pad, or pretty much anything else? Aside from the GC-to-GBA cable, of course.
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

  7. #47
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    My, my. Has it only been two years since I was last poking in this thread?

    I finally decided to do something about my GBA SP. It seems there's some questonable information about this problem out there. I found this video which advocates sticking sandpaper between the switch cover and the main body of the switch – but the cover is nonconductive and the lever beneath it is just plastic, so all that's going to do is put extra pressure on the lever. It's practically impossible to jam sandpaper (or even ordinary paper) into that space anyway.

    It seems the only way to fix this thing properly is to desolder the switch cover and get in there with some isopropyl alcohol. Fortunately, there's a video for that now too.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G946mQCkIQc

    This guy did it a lot more gracefully than I did; I was fumbling around for a while with a desoldering pump. It doesn't help that the pads holding down the GBA SP switch cover are a whole lot smaller than the ones for the original GBA, as seen in the video.
    Click image for larger version. 

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    But here we see the contact pads in the switch of my unit, before and after a little rubbing with a cotton swab and 99% isopropyl alcohol. It's amazing those pads got so dirty; this seems like a big engineering oversight on the part of Nintendo.
    Click image for larger version. 

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    This picture illustrates what you should NOT do: I bent open the cover, but was unable to bend it back sufficiently afterwards, so it didn't fit quite as tightly as it did originally. It is probably best to desolder both sides of the cover instead.

    Once I replaced the switch cover and reassembled everything, I was still getting a flickering power light, so I opened the GBA SP up again and managed to slide a small piece of sandpaper under the considerably looser switch cover. This, I presume, exerts the necessary pressure on the switch lever to ensure a good contact with the cleaned pads beneath. Everything seems to be fine now – the power light is a solid green, and no amount of squeezing or tapping can make it flick to red. As it should be!

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Another useful piece of advice: you might be tempted to swab the underside of the switch lever, but the contacts there are VERY fragile and I managed to bend them completely out of place with my cotton swab. Don't do that. Fortunately it was just as easy to bend them back into place afterwards.

    ...By the way, are there any bold new initiatives for connecting something like the SNES Mini controller (or any other controller) to the Gamecube? Hori digital pads haven't come down in price at all.
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

  8. #48
    Alex (Level 15) Custom rank graphic
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jorpho View Post
    But here we see the contact pads in the switch of my unit, before and after a little rubbing with a cotton swab and 99% isopropyl alcohol. It's amazing those pads got so dirty; this seems like a big engineering oversight on the part of Nintendo.
    Nintendo does have some engineering problems from time to time with their portables. I dislike how the ribbon cables on their original Gameboys are just glued in place instead of being soldered as that's what always seems to fail with them now.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jorpho View Post
    Everything seems to be fine now – the power light is a solid green, and no amount of squeezing or tapping can make it flick to red. As it should be!
    Let's see what happens when the battery gets low, if it now stays green permanently and just goes dead.

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    This was an interesting topic to read through. I'll have to keep it in mind for possible use down the road. I got my backlit SP brand-new when they were still sold in stores, and I've used the heck out of the thing since. The battery still works well and holds a fairly lengthy charge, plus it'll retain a charge even after months of sitting unused. But sometime within the last few years, my power switch has gotten finicky. Sometimes it'll switch to red and then back to green, even when it was just fully charged. Other times, I'll turn it on, and it'll be red immediately, even though it's fully charged. And then sometimes I'll flip the switch, and it won't turn on at all. I'll just have to move it back down and try again. I once in a great while will get random resets/shut downs, but those generally come within seconds of powering the system on. If I can get to the point where I've already loaded up my file or what have you, then I'm good to go and can play for hours. So all things considered, it's been pretty easy for me to just ignore this issue thus far, but it does bother me that it's not working 100% anymore and I worry about this issue growing more problematic.

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