I bought an original Gameboy, and finally found a game to test on it. It is the yellow Pokemon game. Upon power-up, the screen had lines running through it. Does anyone know of a fix for this problem?
Tony
Gameboy screen lines
I bought an original Gameboy, and finally found a game to test on it. It is the yellow Pokemon game. Upon power-up, the screen had lines running through it. Does anyone know of a fix for this problem?
Tony
Re: Gameboy screen lines
Sounds to me like all it needs is a good cleaning. You need to look for the simplest answer to the problem...Originally Posted by godsey1
Try the game in another Gameboy or try a different cartridge in your Gameboy. If you have the same problem with another cartridge then the cartridge connectors in the Gameboy need to be cleaned.
If another game works fine then your Pokemon Yellow cartridge needs its connectors cleaned - try it in another Gameboy to make sure, if it has the same problems then clean the cart.
I'd be floored if this turned out to be a cleaning issue. I think it's natural wear of the display. Nothing short of a replacement will fix it.
The lines are vertical and yellow, correct?
Vertical lines on a classic Gameboy display indicate that the connection between the motherboard and the LCD is getting weak. I have heard stories of using heat to reseal the connection, or perhaps it's just some solder points that have to be retouched, I've never gone inside a GB personally.
I have tried the game in a Gameboy pocket, and it plays great. I'll try to clean the contacts on it and see what happens. The lines are vertical and yellow/green. If it's the connection that needs to be re-done, I'll just sell it to someone that works on gamming stuff. Thanks for the help,
Tony
I'd love to tinker with this, but the idea of buying a busted gameboy I may or may not get to working order proper doesn't seem like a winning proposition. Trade some 5200 or NES carts? Donate to the Church of Meat?
Same here, however before ripping ANYTHING open...
'Least you know your cart works fine.
Very true. I respect that philosophy.
f
I was actually REALLY surprised when I got an original GB at the flea market last year and it worked perfectly. Almost all original GBs have lines across the screen. I kinda remember mine being horizontal, but whatever.
I'd be interested in this heat method. Or even knowing the exact point of failure. Someone should make an FAQ on this.
AFAIK the problem has part to do with the LCD being a passive matrix (one transister controls whether each line is on or off). Active Matrixes, are common in all LCD computer and PDA screens now (every pixel has it's own transistor that controls it).
This tapping some GBs makes the lines briefly appear SOMETIMES, it leads me to believe that it is indeed a loose connection per line that is out and not dead components.
-Rob
The moral is, don't **** with Uncle Tim when he's been drinking!
maybe the euro gameboys were better? the only gameboy i've ever seen with a faulty screen was one that had been in the bottom of a swimming pool for a few days then in alot more water for th rest of the winter, the bottom half of the screen was useless.
Hey Bratwurst. If you pay the shipping($4.00 priority), I'll send it to you. Please let me know,
Tony
I seriously doubt it's a cleaning issue - reason being, the GB requires the specific Nintendo bitmap in the correct place in order to boot. If the cart is dirty enough to cause bits to be flipped, then it's more than likely that the Nintendo bitmap will also be corrupted and thus the game will not boot at all. My Link's Awakening non-DX cart does this from time to time, and a quick cleaning immediately fixes the problem.
IIRC, you can not get to the contacts between the screen and the lcd cable. You can try to reseat the cable on the board, it's in a zif socket, but to get at the connections on the screen would require more disassembly than I've done.
As for heat fixing the problem, it may work. The screen components are glued together. Heating may soften the glue and allow the connection to , well, connect again. This is just guessing though, and it would require a bit of luck.
Glue does not scare me. I have disassembled electronic equipment worth over 1k without damage and circumvented some rather creative security sealing measures over the years. I'll document what I find and post here when I get the gameboy.
Ok, I took one apart this morning to check my previous statements. Turns out my memory sucks.
There are three cables supplying the screen. The first is your typical laptop type flat ribbon cable. This connects to the "back" board in a standard socket, not in a zif socket like I previously thought though it is very easy to remove and reattach. This cable is soldered to the front of the "front" board. It is not physically attached to the screen, and so is probably not the issue. The other two cables are more troublesome.
The the other two cables connect to the back board via springs soldered to the back of the front board, which make contact with the back board when assembled. The cables make contact with the front board on its front. They are also soldered in place. The problem lies in how they connect to the screen.
The second cable joins the screen on its bottom edge. The screen itself is several layers laminated together. The second cable joins the screen in one of the layers. Unless you de-laminate the screen, there is nothing that can be done to repair the connections.
The third cable is located behind the screen. It appears to be attached to the front board in the same manner as the second. It is very short, so I couldn't get the screen far enough away from the board to make an observation about how it is connected to the screen, but it appears to be integral as well.
I did not see a way to remove the screen without de-soldering the last two cables - and they are those machine made, tiny solders -, or without permanently damaging the unit. Even though I have a ton of Game Boys, for some reason I hesitate to destroy one. :P
The heat solution may still work. I guess you could heat the screen enough to allow whichever connections are off to reseat. My thought though is that you'd either make the connections worse, or damage the screen itself.
To add another anecdote to the heat hypothesis. The summer after I had gotten my Gameboy, I took it on vacation with me. I was at a friend's house and they also had a Gameboy which had a vertical line or three running through it. At one point, I left my Gameboy next to theirs in the morning and left for the day. Upon coming back, my Gameboy had developed a line. I left it the same place they generally left theirs - on a table right by a window. Their house gets very hot during the day (no air conditioner) and at some points the sun is shining through the window directly onto the Gameboy. I know at one point I picked one up and the screen was quite warm to the touch. By the end of the month, their Gameboy had acquired two or three more lines.
I got godsey1's Gameboy in the mail this morning and had an opportunity to disassemble it during my lunch break (and a little while longer after that, but don't tell anyone tee hee).
Basically (at least with this unit) the LCD is a single piece and was not meant to be repaired -at all-. There are two flimsy ribbons running from the screen supplying an X and Y signal which determine 1 of 4 shades in a pixel. They're pretty much sealed to the edges of the screen assembly like neuropolitique has mentioned. Under magnification I could see where the cable ends and the LCD lines begin, and there weren't any breaks in the circuit that I could see. Normally with a foldable ribbon cable you'll get a break at the stressed, bent area but this wasn't the case.
<img src=http://www.angelfire.com/apes/madmeat/GameboyLCD.txt>
All of the lines in either ribbon go through an embedded chip as the picture shows. Can't tell if it's a resistor or a driver.
Having dug around on the internet some more I found a blurb that says the chips used to drive the LCD signal of the classic gameboy weaken over time. If this is the case (which I feel it is, I cleaned and resoldered the connections, checked the motherboard and daughterboard components, still no improvement) then simply buying a new gameboy is more effective.
I have 2 gameboys with this problem and the cause on both of them is the lower circuit peeling off the glass at the edges thus causing columns of pixels to not receive their signals
Reviving a thread after 4 months just to tell that you got the same problem! WOW!
I will get around to editing this thing again.
Kid, your post just before this one was a single 'Cool!' to a Genesis AC adaptor thread. Get out of my boat.Reviving a thread after 4 months just to tell that you got the same problem! WOW!
Tokimemofan, did you try reseating the connection on the LCD screen? With my unit I didn't see any peeling at the bridge between the screen and the ribbon film.
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