Oct 05, 2012 After picking up an original brick-style GameBoy DMG-01 recently to install a backlight, I found that the screen was plagued with missing pixels, forming vertical lines of missing pixels.
I just got my Gameboy modded with an RGB Backlight and it looks a lot better than stock. It is a very playable experience with our spoiled eyes in this Mobile HD era. But the backlit Gameboy DMG has it flaws the screen is not bright enough, ghosting on the screen is now much more noticeable almost distracting depending on how you tune your contrast. The screen on the DMG is known for the vertical line issue which is the solder joints breaking towards the bottom ribbon which can be fixed by reflowing the brown ribbon cable which also happens to be heat resistant but if you have a horizontal line your pretty much screwed you will need an adjustable solder iron to reflow the solder joints on the white ribbon cable within the screen which is prone to heat damage. Or what if you don't have an aging issue and fail to backlit mod your GameBoy DMG, Pocket by damaging the ribbon or the screen cracks somehow then what? Well, your out of luck you're going to have to buy another GameBoy and try again and like many people, you may pile up on broken GameBoys. I prefer to just pay a premium by using services or buying a premodded one?
So overall wouldn't it just be better like the other handheld consoles to replace the entire screen and give those broken Gameboys a new life, not like the Benn Venn screen which changes the outside look but it maintains the original size of the dot matrix screen so you can use the iconic screen covers. And i mean a plug-in replacement screen. Take the old board out and put in the new board with the new screen that has RGB palette changing capabilities, sharper pixels and removes the ghosting effect. I think something like this would be amazing with how many broken Gameboys are out there i would also like to see backlit screens for Bandai WonderSwan and the Neo Geo Pocket Colour but i think those are far less likely to have such mods.
This is a list of all the handheld that have replacement screens almost all Nintendo handhelds have replacement screens available
Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, PC Engine GT/Turbo Express, Sega Nomad which have lcd screen mods available such as the MCWILL screens
Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, PC Engine GT/Turbo Express, Sega Nomad which have lcd screen mods available such as the MCWILL screens
GBC and GBA/GBA SP 001, SP 101 all can be modded with an AGS 101 Screen even the Gameboy Micro has screen replacements readily available
PSP's, DS's' Vita, 3DS, Switch and even the Wii U have screen replacements available
Installing a dmg application from the command line. so why can't the original Gameboys?
Now i would also like to talk about the SNES. There are many yellowed units out there and unlike the other systems that just yellow. The SNES, on the other hand, breaks apart and that is what's happening to those earlier revision Super Nintendo's is that they are literally rotting away and Retrobriting will not fix it. Now wouldn't it be awesome to just have replacement shells available for the SNES that also have different colors like a clear one or a jungle green one. I remember buying a lot of non working SNES systems and i managed to get almost all of them working again but the shells were crumbling and breaking apart they looked awful and was difficult to sell and that's the main issue is we see these clones, FPGA's mini systems for the SNES but not replacement shells for the original consoles.
Glasgow, Scotland.
I know that the more experienced modders will probably be aware of this, but when you Google around, the established wisdom is that horizontal lines are 'almost impossible' to repair, so I thought I'd share my success story from tonight in repairing a dead horizontal line in a DMG.
I decided to put together an all white themed Game Boy with frosted clear white case using parts I'd scavenged from old manky DMGs. In this particular one, there was a bunch of vertical lines that I fixed before going in for the backlight. The screen was stuck down pretty well, and I must have done something to the cable while I struggled to get it off as there was a horizontal line dead once I had the backlight installed. Eugh.
I thought it might be pressure on the screws or screen, but nothing helped. Since I was going to have to confine the damn thing to the scrap heap anyway, I decided it wouldn't hurt to give the white ribbon cable the old soldering iron rub treatment and see if it did anything. I knew it apparently melted really easily, but I have a temperature controlled soldering iron that I invested in a while ago when my first shitty one died. I tried it on the lowest setting (around 160C), and rubbed it over the length of the white cable, but no joy. The line was still there. I decided to bung the temperature up a bit (to about 210-220c), and then rubbed it all over the cable - all along the length, up to where it connected to the screen, and back down - everywhere basically - holding for about 1 or 2 seconds tops. After a couple of goes at this, I slid the polarising filter back under and the damn line was gone!
I'm not sure if this would work for those screens with bigger horizontal problems, but since most of the time DMGs with these problems get chucked away, it's worth a bash!
TL;DR - to fix horizontal lines, before throwing the DMG away as a write off, try setting an adjustable soldering iron at 200ish Celcius and rub all over the horizontal white ribbon cable.
Fix Dmg Gameboy Horizontal Line X
Last edited by unexpectedbowtie (Sep 1, 2016 9:18 am)