Game Gear, is my screen done?

[Lancer-AM]

I just finished a full recap on a VA4 game gear. It went off without much of a hitch, I damaged one pad but repaired it and the Game gear is booting up nicely with great brightness and strong sound. Unfortunately there are large vertical lines running down my screen on one side. Is my screen done for? If it is and I need to replace it, I take it I am going to need to find one specifically for a VA4 since it is soldered in or do a McWill LCD.

 

[Osgeld]

well those contacts below the dead columns might have broken loose as they are glued in, and you can try fixing them, but as I found out in a hurry with a VA4, those things are not like solid metal leads its more like a thicker foil so you can really screw them up if your not focused to each individual lead (unlike a gameboy or early model game gear where the foil is on a kapton backer film)

[Lancer-AM]

Ahh I figured they were soldered on. I hadn't considered that they may be glued. I might try a continuity test between the pad and the lead to see if any aren't making contact.

[Tanooki]

They're not I had one just last year I sold off pretty recently. I had to tear it down a couple times for cleaning and tweaking and it's just a slotted in ribbon cable. It maybe damaged or loose. The cable could be gutted from another dead one, just find a really broken mess with a cracked screen for nothing and salvage spare parts if it appears to be that is the issue.

[Osgeld]

They're not I had one just last year I sold off pretty recently. I had to tear it down a couple times for cleaning and tweaking and it's just a slotted in ribbon cable. It maybe damaged or loose.

 

The 4 VA4's I have owned were not ribbon cables, but I have not seen every game gear version

 

but out of the ~20 or so game gears I have dealth with none had removeable ribbon cables on the screen

 

Ahh I figured they were soldered on. I hadn't considered that they may be glued. I might try a continuity test between the pad and the lead to see if any aren't making contact.

 

 

unlike the earlier versions you can solder from pad to pin, just keep in mind its basicly tinfoil thickness and they can ruin your day very quickly

 

if you have a temp controlled iron set it like 100-200c and see if just heat and pressure restores lines

 

if you ever fk one up and start peeling, it is in fact conductive glue, even with today's robots it would be challenging to place such thin foil leads onto pads over that distance, and reflow solder the board in a separate process without causing a significant fallout due to the plastic films on the screen

Edited February 2, 2017 by Osgeld

[Tanooki]

Maybe I'm not remembering right, perhaps the one I had (it was the blue one) the cable was soldered to the board instead of just slotted into the board with solder instead of a clip. I didn't have a need to mess with it, I worked around it to clean the insides and between the screen/lens area. Could be a cold solder point or a cracked one too causing it, hard to say, but something isn't sending the signal along those vertical points.

[Lancer-AM]

Yeah the VA4 does not have the ribbon cable. It is leads on pads. I checked and all connections looked good. I applied pressure across all of them and no change in performance. If you look in the picture, that stripe represents 1/3rd of the screen and I think whatever the chip is under that black blob has gone bad. At this point I am going to salvage all of my caps off of this board and this will become a good base for a raspberry pi zero project.

[thecrypticodor]

Every model 2110K has the VA4 board revision. They're never worth bothering with as they almost always have dead columns. Even if you re-solder all of those pins more often than not at least one of those five LCD driver IC's have failed. If you're buying a Game Gear always look at the model number on the back If it's a 2110K pass on it.

[Lancer-AM]

Great advice, thanks. I'll be sure to avoid them.