gamegrid2084

A black screen usually means that the Game Gear cannot read or does not recognize any cartridge in the system. You should see the same result if you turn on the GG without any game in it. Troubleshooting this is made more difficult (or easy) depending on whether you have a unit with TMSS. TMSS (TradeMark Security System) presents itself to you in the form of a blue screen whenever you put a game in and start the system. The screen background is blue and there is white text that says "Produced by or under license from Sega Enterprises LTD" (or something like that). How does that help? Well, when the system is having trouble reading games, sometimes it can read some games easily and others not so much ... but, it usually will recognize that a game is in the system and you will see the blue TMSS screen (even if the game doesn't work after that). However, that is also not 100%, but it would help if you knew what you were expecting to see. If you don't have TMSS, then you won't see the blue screen and the game would just start up (or not, if the system can't recognize it). That makes things a bit harder. Some things to try: 1) Make sure you have more than just 1 game to test. Even if it works fine in another GG, the game may not be recognized easily by your newly recapped system. For me, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 seems to be easily readable even in Game Gears that you otherwise would have to insert -> take out -> insert-> take out -> insert ->... a cart until it sees the cart and plays the game. 2) Make sure that it's not some weird screen problem. If it recognizes the game, then you should hear game audio. Give the game you inserted enough time to play sound. 3) Check the voltage across the +/- of C1 (the 33uF 6.3+v cap). It should also be around 5v (and 4.88v is fine). That cap gives the cart the +5v it needs to run. The 5v line should hit 2 pins in the cart slot. 4) Make sure the brightness wheel does something. Moving it from minimum brightness to max brightness should still change how "black" the black screen is. 5) If want to get really serious, then you'd want to rule out cold solder joints in the cart slot. I have encountered this in only one out of 100 GG systems, so it's unlikely. 6) If all else fails and a visual inspection doesn't show any damaged traces, components, etc.. Then you'd have to work from your 1ASIC or 2ASIC chip(s) and start tracing from there... 7) One last thing to try is to completely disconnect your sound board and see if the rest of the system works. Don't ask why, it's just come up as a solution more times than I have expected. If you have any questions, I'm happy to try to help.

My FIFA '96 also does not have any sound until the options screen. I guess they thought that it might "bother" the player to hear sound/music as the game title sequence plays. There's nothing worse than trying to keep the player engaged from the beginning of the game to the end...

Actually if I said that, I was wrong. If no game is in the system, then you would not see the blue screen, you would only see a blank screen (white, black, depending on the brightness setting). What I meant was that you potentially can see a blue screen even if a game is bad. That would indicate some pins connecting/working and some not. So, using an unreadable game as an example, you might boot up to see the blue screen, but then a blank or solid color screen after that ( = bad game/pins/etc...). Actually, this is great advice. I had a SegaCD Model 1 doing some crazy wacky things. It turned out to be a cold solder joint somewhere on the power board (50+ components, mostly small SMD caps and resistors). After reflowing every component on the board, everything worked fine. Cold solder joints can look perfectly fine from the outside, but still be bad on the inside (those are the worst).

Thanks for the pics! Note #1 - Don't mix VA0/VA1 boards with VA4/VA5 boards. In fact, you cannot connect VA4/5 main boards to VA0/1 power or sound boards unless you break or modify the connector/port. The same goes the other direction, you cannot connect VA0/1 main boards to VA4/5 power or sound boards. The connectors & ports have plastic rails that are different (and they are different for a reason). C39 negative does go to ground, you are correct. A question: 1) You say that you have to "put the cartridge in a specific position" for the game to work. I'm not sure what you mean. The cartridge can only go in one position. Can you explain exactly what you mean? If you mean that sometimes the cart works and sometimes it does not, then that is pretty normal for a GG system that has trouble reading carts. Many GG users know that you sometimes have to put a cart in and take it out a few times for it to work. This is not normal (usually dirty pins on the cart or dirty cart slot on the GG), but it's common. Regarding the power board, no GG has a 33uf 35v in that position. So, you are correct that it is wrong. There are also many other components missing. Here is a working VA5 power board and the cap values: You are missing a few things: My first suggestion would be to get your VA5 power board working (or find a replacement VA4/5 power board). But, I see that you are missing some specific components that may make fixing it very difficult. If you're using a VA0/1 power board with a VA5 main board, then it would probably be too difficult to debug over the forums. Although the VA0/1 power board probably delivers the same power from the same pins, there are some differences (otherwise Sega would not have made the connectors/ports different). I have encountered some GGs that have started up fine and then the screen gets more and more white. In some cases, replacing the sound board worked out. In others, the issue was with bad power. Other cases were unique... Try disconnecting the sound board completely (see what happens and if that changes anything).

Re: cleaning the cart slot. I use some special foam swabs that I put DeoxIt on and then slide the swabs into the cart slot (they are large and flat swabs from Amazon). If you think it's corrosion (and not just a loose cart slot), you might be able to use a credit card or something, wrap it in some very fine cloth (or paper towel) and use that like a cart slot cleaner (with DeoxIt or maybe alcohol). If you use a paper towel, though, some fibers may get caught in the cart slot and that wouldn't be good. On the other hand, it may be a loose cart slot. I have a GG with perfect pins in the cart slot, but it takes a few times for some games to be recognized because the pins don't always make good contact with them. Putting in and taking out a cart is noticeably "easier" on this particular GG than on most others where I feel a lot more resistance putting in/taking out a cart. I don't know any easy way to make the cart slot "tighter." I'm guessing that you've already cleaned the games...

Sure, I'm happy to try to help. Post whatever info you can (anyone).

LOL and that's great! I was just about to send the response below. But when you said something about the sound board, I remembered why it was an issue that I raised before. I had an entire system fail because of 1 SMD cap on the sound board. For me it was C4 (which looks fine on yours), but it messed my whole system up. This is good to know because this is now the 2nd time that the sound board has caused some serious problems on a GG. In fact, I have one GG that I'm working on now that has some "strange" problems. I might just reflow the whole sound board and see what happens... ---- nothing to see here, move along ---- Thanks for the pics. Everything seems OK. On the right side of the main board, I do see something that I haven't seen before - EM1 & 2 are blue, the rest are black, and EM4 seems to have a chunk bitten out of it. I have never seen a mix of the EM chips (like blue & black), but who knows... However, those are only related to the GG to GG com link and shouldn't really affect anything else (but they might because the link is I/O). The serial number tells me that it's a TMSS system. That means that a blue screen saying something like "licensed by Sega..." should pop up at the boot of any game. This is important because this blue screen would be the first thing to show up even if the GG can't read the game correctly. That is, you could put a game in and see the blue license screen, but it still may not work. So, if you don't see the TMSS screen, then it's really not reading games at all. This points to a more serious problem like the actual main chip on the board or one of many small components and circuits that you'd have to check individually. But, it could also just be some cold solder joints on the cart slot (however unlikely). This is less fun to check out, but it might help to check those out. You'd have to unscrew the 4 screws on the backlight reflector and carefully fold the screen over so you can see the cart pins on the screen side. I would reflow each of them just to be sure. Sometimes cold solder joints don't look so bad on the outside. (Again, this is highly unlikely the cause). Having said all that, I have never come across a GG that was "dead" because of cold solder joints, so I don't want to give some false hope here. If you've recapped the boards, there doesn't seem to be any corrosion due to previous bad caps, and the main board looks OK, I think the problem may be beyond the general fixes...

If #1 above produced the brightness levels as I mentioned, then #2 above is telling me that you don't have a white screen. From #2, it appears that you are only seeing white with the brightness way up. What I mean is that if you took a working game gear, put a game in, then set the brightness to a good level ... then powered off the GG, took the game out, and powered back on (with no game), you should see a black-ish screen. So the problem is not "I have a white screen when I power on for all games," it's really "I have a black or blank screen when I power on for all games." Why the difference? Well, if you had a truly white (pink, green, etc...) screen with the brightness level not maxed out, then that indicates that the GG is trying to read the game but can't fully get the info it needs to boot the game (usually a bad connection to the cart's pins). If you have no white (or solid color) screen, then the GG isn't even recognizing that there is a cartridge in the slot. That's different from worn down GGs where their pins don't always connect to the cart and you'd get a white or solid color screen at normal brightness levels. My guess is that the GG doesn't even see the game as being inserted. This could be many things... I saw you opened a thread about this before and have a picture of the unit. However, I can't really see the detail up close that well (it's out of focus at that high resolution). Could you send more? I'd like up close and focused views of the main board. You could do the left side and right separately, if that helps. Also, you can send them directly to me or post them here, either way is fine. Other things to check and a question: - Double check that the cap C1 is the correct value (33uF 6.3v or higher [voltage]). - If you can, check that the voltage from C1 + terminal to ground is 5v (or thereabouts). C1 provides the 5V line to the cartridge slot and so to the cart itself. - What's the serial number on the back of this GG? I see it's a 1-ASIC system, but I want to know if it's also TMSS or not (that blue screen that comes up before games). The SN on the back is a good indicator.

It is indeed connected to pin 40. The schematic (and a quick scrub on the board I'm currently working on) doesn't seem to show that it connects anywhere else. I also had this happen (loss of the T10 pad). I ended up soldering it directly to pin 40 and everything worked fine. It does not appear to affect any other circuit (at least when doing a McWill mod). You may have a little alternative if you only lost the T10 pad. You could carefully scrape off the green soldermask above the remaining trace from T10 to pin 40 and you might have an easier time soldering the wire to that exposed trace.

Sure, I'd be happy to help. Definitely do the power board recap before any other troubleshooting. Also make sure you're using a known good power supply (OEM Sega would be best) and that you've tested it on another system (if you can) ... or just use batteries. You'd be surprised what really weird things can happen in a system if the power board is not providing what the system expects.

I found a variant of the Sega Game Gear front shell that I've never seen before. There are factory molded "holes" or notches on the left side of the d-pad. At first I thought these were cracks or other wear, but after seeing a few other GGs that had the same thing and opening it up, it's clearly intentional. Out of about 100 GGs I've gone through, I've encountered about 8 of these. The d-pad is not different from any other GG and I have no idea why they would do this. Does anyone have one of these and does anyone have any idea why they would do this? It doesn't appear to affect the usage of the d-pad in any way (good or bad).. -gamegrid2084

Fixed Game Gear #1 - clicking sound. Works perfectly now. What it was and what I did: I went ahead and did a test that you already did - to confirm that it was the main board and not the recapped sound board. I put in a recently recapped sound board that I knew was working and there was no sound (very, very low sound), not even clicking. Then, poking around I found this: #1 should look like #2, that is, it should be a small hole with some metal around it. This hole connects this trace to the other side of the circuit board. It also happens to connect to ground for many components. Since it was damaged, the negative end of capacitor C42 and the rest of the circuit on this side was not connected to ground. So, I ran a wire from the negative end of C42 to another known ground point. That fixed it.

Ok. Again, I'd be happy to take a look at the Game Gear. I like tracing down problems and I'd be happy to tell you what's the issue if I find it, just message me if interested...

Ah. Well, with the mod and sound board that you know is not working, there are too many variables to accurately diagnose the problem. I can tell you that, on a proper LED backlight mod, you should not see the candle flame shimmering flicker that you are describing. However, since many things seem to point to the cart slot, the link in #13 is an OK thing to try. Not the entire link instructions, but just the reflowing of the solder joints on the cart slot pins.

Ok. There are several tests to try. Some will seem completely unrelated, but they will help. Also, the flickering is interesting. Can you describe it in more detail? Does it flicker on and off like if the backlight is going off completely, or are you talking about lines on the screen or something else? 1) Are you really seeing a white screen or are you just seeing white because the brightness is all the way up? When the brightness is all the way up, it will always look white (or very close). When the brightness is down, it should look black but with a little green tint. When the brightness is in the middle, it should look black (black for a Game Gear). I would try this: With no cartridge in the system, turn the brightness all the way up so the screen is white. Then, lower the brightness just until the screen begins to look black, but not at the very lowest brightness setting. What happens? If you have to turn the brightness all the way to 0, then you are seeing a true white screen from the system. If you can turn the brightness somewhere in the middle and see a black screen, then good, keep it there. 2) Once you've done #1 with the brightness turned down to a black screen but not all the way down to 0, try a bunch of games. Do you see black screens on each game or do you see a screen with color or white (pink, green, and white are all common)? 3) When you power on the system, turn the volume up to 100%. Do you hear a slight hissing from the speakers (try headphones, too). You should hear something both with a game inserted and with no game. All of these handheld systems have some sort of interference and you should hear some slight noise from the speaker or headphones. Let's start with these and we'll go from there.