icer22x Posted March 9, 2021 Share Posted March 9, 2021 Morning all, I pulled my old childhood GameGear from my crawl space a year ago and decided to do the cap replacement since it wasn't working properly. Well, here we are, after doing the main board and the soundboard - still no luck. NOTE: I have not done the power board yet - those caps are on the way. The first time I put batteries in it and powered it on, I saw random small colored rectangles on the screen for about 2 seconds, then it faded to white. Now all I get is a white screen with no sound. I am testing this with multiple games. Turning the volume knob is only met with crackling sounds from the speaker and the brightness knob works, but does not change the screen from anything other than white. I have double and triple checked my caps and their polarity. All solder joints are strong. All polarity is good. A user on another forum mentioned the bubbly ends on my backlight tube... but like I said, the brightness knob works, so I think my tube is fine. I have looked (with amateur's eyes) at the other components on the board and everything looks okay. Could this be because I have yet to do the power board caps? All my caps looked fine with no leakage, but I'm sure that doesn't mean they are still working fine. I am hoping that the power board is the culprit. But in the meantime, anything I should be looking at? [Ignore the red cap in this picture. I know it's bent over the grounding area, but I fixed this before I powered it on as you can't close the case with it like that anyway.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrylaffer Posted March 9, 2021 Share Posted March 9, 2021 I have recapped a bunch of those... Not an expert nor a pro, just the casual dude who likes to spend some time with his soldering iron and breathing a healthy amount of fumes... I do not know why you get a white screen, but I suppose a faulty power board might well be the reason. From my experience about 60-70% of these game gears survive after recap, why not sure. The bubbles is a concern because underneath that piece of rubber there is a thermal fuse, but if that was blown you wouldn't have backlight. Also the caps might look ok (I guess they didn't smell ok) but it is almost guaranteed they were bad. Sega clearly chose the absolutely worst quality capacitors for the GG. Even worse than the ones Commodore choose for their Amigas... My suggestion is either just wait for the power board caps to arrive (safest) or look at the schematics and see what kind of voltages the power board provides to the motherboard. Then carefully use a good power supply to provide those voltages yourself and see if your GG is happier. I assume you do install a cartridge when you power on, because if I am not mistaken you would get a white screen without a game... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icer22x Posted March 12, 2021 Author Share Posted March 12, 2021 On 3/9/2021 at 2:49 PM, larrylaffer said: I have recapped a bunch of those... Not an expert nor a pro, just the casual dude who likes to spend some time with his soldering iron and breathing a healthy amount of fumes... I do not know why you get a white screen, but I suppose a faulty power board might well be the reason. From my experience about 60-70% of these game gears survive after recap, why not sure. The bubbles is a concern because underneath that piece of rubber there is a thermal fuse, but if that was blown you wouldn't have backlight. Also the caps might look ok (I guess they didn't smell ok) but it is almost guaranteed they were bad. Sega clearly chose the absolutely worst quality capacitors for the GG. Even worse than the ones Commodore choose for their Amigas... My suggestion is either just wait for the power board caps to arrive (safest) or look at the schematics and see what kind of voltages the power board provides to the motherboard. Then carefully use a good power supply to provide those voltages yourself and see if your GG is happier. I assume you do install a cartridge when you power on, because if I am not mistaken you would get a white screen without a game... Well, replaced power caps, still white screen. Tried 5 games, getting static from the speaker, but no visuals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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