Lynx Problem

[Mindfield]

Recently, I won a boxed Lynx with a couple of boxed games. Mainly, I bought it for the Lynx box and the two CIB games that I didn't have. The problem is the Lynx itself: whatever you do, the D-pad always goes right. It responds to left, up and down okay, but right acts like it's always pressed.

 

I disassembled it completely and took a look for myself. I removed the retaining ring around the rubber D-Pad disc but everything seems to be okay. The D-pad disc isn't deflated nor have the contacts dropped -- I rotated the disc just to be sure. The traces all seem to be fine -- no cracks in the plastic ribbon, no shorted traces that I could tell, though there seem to be some scuffs in a few areas; dunno if that matters. I cleaned the traces along the right side of the ribbon, from the center area where all traces join over to the D-Pad area. Still didn't help. About the only thing I didn't do was clean the edge connector where the control pad assembly's ribbon cable plugs in, but given that I inserted and removed it a few times I figured that ought to have rubbed off any sediment that might have been there.

 

Any ideas? I'd like to fix it, but I'm at a loss as to how at this point.

[+karri]

I have a similar unit. It used to have this "go right" syndrome when I played on batteries. On the mains adaptor this problem vanished.

 

So I re-soldered some joints connected to distributing the power and that fixed my unit.

 

Lately it has developed a garbled screen-sydrome that is helped by re-inserting the cart or wiggling the cart a little. I am still too lazy to go through all the cart-solder joints. But I would bet on it that the cure is close to the solder joints there too.

 

I assume that some solder joints are cracking up and you need to heat up and re-solder all big solder joints that take some mechanical stress.

 

The chips themselves are probably OK.

 

--

Cheers,

 

Karri

[Wilbur McCalmont]

Recently, I won a boxed Lynx with a couple of boxed games.  Mainly, I bought it for the Lynx box and the two CIB games that I didn't have.  The problem is the Lynx itself: whatever you do, the D-pad always goes right.  It responds to left, up and down okay, but right acts like it's always pressed.

 

That's what I call the annoying LYNX 2 button syndrome.

 

It's caused by the carbon rubbing off on to the flex circuit and causing the button to short closed. Here's the annoying part - when I say short I don't mean 10 ohms or even 10K ohms - it only needs to be as low as 200K ohms. That's right 200 freekin K ohms ! Now you know what you have to set you're DMM's resistance range to. The fun part in fixing this is trying to replace the LCD without getting dust on it when you put it back together. Measure the resistance between the contacts that correspond to the joypad right button and you'll see what I mean. To fix it, you'll need to wipe the flex circuit area where right button contacts with a 91%isopropyl soaked cotton swab and use a wooden toothpick between the conductors there until your DMM reads a VERY HIGH RESISTANCE

 

ALL of my LYNX 2's have had this problem[/b].

 

REMEMBER TO CHECK THE OTHER BUTTONS BECAUSE IN MY EXPERIENCE THIS WILL HAPPEN TO THE 'DOWN' and 'A' BUTTONS!

[koifish]

Not sure how relevant this is, but I have the opposite problem; my Left and both B buttons won't respond when pressed. Is this also a problem with the contacts, or perhaps the ribbon cable is loose or something? I did just finish taking it apart (mostly, I didn't disassemble the button or LCD assemblies) to clean out smoke smell that pervaded the unit.

[BadPricey]

It's definitely the flex circuit. Had the same problem, replaced it and now working fine 😉