Attached is a zip of a couple I made a long time ago… there’s the US one w/ the red background and the weird vector design, along with the simpler two color JPN design.
That’s a cool idea… like Super Game Boy. It could easily be done to set a certain shade of red to one color (and even different colors depending on the BRT regs), but it’d definitely be tougher to set colors for specific sprites.
It depends on which pins lost contact, and probably what other pins around it are doing, and other random processes (since it’s a floating input when it’s disconnected).
The Roebic stuff came from Home Depot… I haven’t tried to buy any recently, but I assume they still have it. If you got some 100% lye from Ace, it’s likely the same stuff. But yes… it needs to be super concentrated and hot or it won’t work. By that, I mean, fill the bottom of a dish with the pellets, then drop a few drops of water on them, then heat them (I use my hot air tool to heat them, so a heat gun should work).
One other thing I’ve been thinking of is maybe peeling up the back of the display cable with a razor, then soldering. This way the solder flows under the cable and hopefully sticks to the exposed copper on both sides. Oddly enough, I don’t have any VBs laying around opened on my desk to try it on… but that may work.
I didn’t like just soldering directly to the cable without removing the coating because it didn’t flow under the cable, and really only stuck to the copper tips of the cable, which isn’t much copper. By removing the coating, you’re exposing copper for the solder to stick to, and bridge to the exposed copper on the PCB.
For the few that I repaired for others, I charged $25 each, plus return shipping. I dunno if more systems are just dying now, VB system prices have gone up, or if that’s just more than people are willing to spend (especially w/ shipping), but I only had 2 or 3 people actually send me VBs. I’ve definitely had many more people email me in the last year than before, but I don’t have time to do them anymore :/ .
Good luck though… I hate seeing all these VBs dying 🙁 .
LOL! You know that you can hit the “Print Screen” key and paste it into Paint or any other image software right? You don’t have to take a picture of the monitor w/ a camera 😛 .
Hmm… how have your repairs lasted in the long term? What I’ve found (and others have also reported) is that just reheating the adhesive doesn’t work well in the long term. It seems to kinda depend on the system though, as a couple of the systems I repaired w/ the oven method several years ago are still working, but many have failed (and I’ve subsequently fixed w/ the solder method). I assume if they failed once, they’ll likely fail again, since the adhesive is no better, and likely much worse than when it was first applied.
Also, about the heat gun method itself… I don’t know that it’s really any safer than the oven method… the display board is pretty small and has very little mass, so the whole board heats up quickly, and since the heat gun isn’t temperature controlled (unlike the oven), it’s easy to overheat the board or melt the cable (since the typical hardware store heat gun outputs at ~500-1000F). Of course like any method, with some practice you can get good at it and not make mistakes (and the first thing everyone learns when using a heat gun is to always keep moving).
You don’t have to worry about overheating the board at a couple hundred degrees F though (like in the oven, or from the heat gun when properly used)… they go through much higher temps in manufacturing. I had a really stubborn display though, and did kill it with a heat gun once, but I was intentionally pushing it to the limit. The lines kept coming back, and this was before I started soldering them, so I had some fun w/ the heat gun. I heated it up lightly, tried it, no good… tried a little more, still nothing… kept going, until finally I said screw it… I went back and forth over the cable at close range for a couple seconds, and then when I tried it, the display was solid red… doh!
Cool… good to hear you were able to get a method that worked for you. The biggest problem I had with soldering directly without removing the coating first is that the solder didn’t seem to stick to the copper well (which I think may be more because of the age of the copper, since even after manually removing the coating the solder doesn’t stick that great until I remove the tarnish w/ the fiberglass pencil), and of course if you apply too much heat, the FFC will break at the bend where it’s brittle. I thought it kinda made a mess too, but that’s just aesthetics. But yeah, you should definitely post some pics and maybe some step by step instructions so people can compare the various methods.
Been fixing them for years… where have you been? 😛 There’s always people asking me where to get them fixed and I just tell them to fix ’em themselves. So, as everyone here probably is (and should be) skeptical of a newbie claiming to be an expert VB repair person with no references and no prices listed… do you have references of people who you’ve fixed VBs for in the past, and what are your prices?
And you say you don’t use an oven, and don’t solder… care to share any details on how you do the repair (if I was paying someone to fix my system, I’d like to know what kind of service I’m paying for)? And where are you located (2 way shipping can easily kill a deal)?
LOL! Yeah, the US games came factory sealed, the JP games didn’t. But baseball is probably the easiest to find factory sealed. I’ve got what’s leftover from a box of 48 sealed right next to me… they’re probably not worth any more sealed than opened.
That’s not abnormal… I’ve never done it w/ the Flashboy, but I’ve connected the VB 5V rail directly to a regulated 5V for power and it works just fine, as well as powering the VB by USB (which is basically what you did). I assume there’s no isolation on the Flashboy between the USB 5V and the VB 5V, so that makes sense that it’d do that.
Of course you don’t have a power switch that way, and I wouldn’t recommend it, since the VB draws quite a bit of current (~350mA IIRC) at 5V, which is sorta less than the USB spec allows, depending whether the Flashboy negotiated for higher power (and before it actually drew more). I doubt you’d damage the USB port, but you can’t really guarantee that, and I’m not sure what the inrush current is when it powers up.
You could also possibly do harm by turning the VB on w/ an AC adapter/batteries and have the VB send power back the USB cable.
So anyway… you’re probably fine, and if everything seems to be working, I wouldn’t worry about it, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it again.
Sorry to bump such an old post, but I get PM’s all the time from people asking whether I can repair their VB, and I noticed that this post is the first result on google for Virtual Boy repair, so I figured I’d post here.
First of all, sorry… I don’t have time to repair VBs anymore. Although it’s not terribly difficult, it is time consuming, and between working full time, working on my Master’s Degree, and still trying to have time to do stuff I enjoy, I just don’t have time to do it anymore.
If you’re a DIY kinda person, I’ve got a page dedicated to repairing it: http://www.projectvb.com/displayfix.html , and there’s a sticky on this forum that discusses the various methods. The most difficult part is getting into the VB, but with the correct security bit, it can be done (the 4 deepest holes are too deep for a standard bit).
Once open, the oven method is the easiest, but least likely to permanently fix the VB. Soldering the cable is the most permanent, but requires some soldering skill, and possibly some chemicals (depending how you expose the copper).
Yeah, B&W would have been much harder on the eyes for sure. I don’t think it would have been received any better either. I’ve never really heard anyone complain that it was black/red rather than black/white, it’s usually more like “oh, it’s not color?” (even though it is color… just several shades of one 😉 ).
Glad to hear it’s working out for you. About melting/softening the rubber, do you mean the white silicone rubber stuff seen in this pic: http://www.projectvb.com/tech/displayfix/attached.jpg ? If so, yeah… that should definitely NOT melt or soften. What you’re trying to do is soften the adhesive between the display cable and PCB, which when softened will stick better when squeezed (with your fingers, and then reinforced with tape).
Thanks for the offer of games, but I really don’t need any. I’m glad you were able to get it taken care of, and hopefully it keeps working for you.
