Man it’s been a while since I came across one of this guy’s videos. Had no idea he was going through the medical stuff, but glad to see he’s still making videos!
I would make sure to clean the cart and the slot. A quick way for the slot is to load up the cart contacts with ipa and insert it a few times. For the game itself, I’m a fan of using a white pencil easer, followed by ipa.
For the lines, it could be the contrast wheel is dirty. Adding a few drops of ipa and working the wheel could help, though long term deoxit would be better.
Beyond that, more pictures of the board would help.
Just got done with thoothbrushing all connectors and a bit of the slider, and the screen itself seems to be working perfectly now… after reinserting the cartrage a bunch, I get a full Nintendo logo as well… but thats it. No sound (the speaker may be broken) and the screen gets stuck on the Nintendo logo…
More pictures are always useful. Assuming the pins in the connector aren’t bent out of shape, your issue sounds more like a problem with the game. A common issue is that some pins need to be reflowed on the rom and ram chips. Here is an example video of what I’m referring to youtu.be/Hg21VeFM-_Y
This looks like an issue with the cart or the connector between the cart and the mainboard. Clean those thoroughly, use a bit of vinegar if there is any corrosion on the connectors. After using vinegar be sure to clean thoroughly to prevent the vinegar from doing damage after the corrosion is cleaned off.
Something similar happened with the one I repaired for my mother-in-law. I had to scrub the cartridge loader contacts in the game boy pretty vigorously with a toothbrush and 99% isopropyl alcohol before it would reliably load appropriately. I would suggest doing the same scrub in the cartridge, as well.
IIRC, Game Boy games do a handshake with the system before anything can load, and that is shown on the screen. When the handshake is successful, you get the normal Nintendo logo. When something in the handshake is wrong, you get the corrupted logo screen.
If that gets you past the logo screen, but you’re still having lines on the screen, that’s probably a bad ribbon cable connection. You can reheat the connection points to get a proper connection again, but it’s definitely an exercise in patience. There are a bunch of guides on this one on the Internet.
I just tooth brushed the living hell out of all the connectors and the screen does seem to work now… after a bunch of reinserting the cartrage we get a fully working nintendo Logo as well… but that’s where it stops…
Progress! Yeah, I think I scrubbed at the game boy for about a half an hour before I could get a reliable connection. My guess is that the handshake still isn’t quite completing correctly, and maybe more scrubbing would work? It would be really helpful if you had a known-working cartridge with which to test. Beyond that, though, I would have to do subs Google sleuthing to find anything else.
I will say, though, that your screen seems fine, so it’s probably not that.
Cleaned it all off with Isotope alc since thats the best I got around for tech and after a few tries of reinserting the card, the screen seems to work perfectly now… but thats also where it stops… No start up sound (which may or may not be the speaker being busted), and it just gets stuck on this screen… https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/9d5f4c56-84b2-4596-8a43-985f6ee88869.jpeg
Then it would be a lot harder to fix. You can thoroughly clean everything and look carefully for damage to the components and traces on the PCB. You could try to replace something like the caps with a chance it would improve things, but I doubt it. The caps aren’t under much stress in the Gameboy and are of good quality produced before the plague happened.
After that you really needs things like a scope to figure out where the issue could be. If I were to fix this I would try the following things:
Try a different cart, if the cart is bad it invalidates anything you try on the Gameboy. So rule that out ASAP, it’s also the most easy step.
Check out the connection between the cart and the mainboard, this is the weakest point with a high probability of breaking
Check out the RAM, if the cart is good but the RAM is bad you get random crashes or games not starting at all.
You can pretty much rule out the screen, if you get to this point the screen is just fine. If the screen were to have issues, it would be all dark or all light or have random lines over the screen. If the Nintendo logo sweeps from top to the middle, the screen and the connection to the screen is fine.
In most cases fixing a Gameboy mainboard isn’t worth the effort as they sold very well and thus are easy to get. If you want to you can put in a dozen hours trying to figure out what’s wrong and fixing it.
That reminds me, I have one of those hanging on a peg over my desk still that needs a battery replacement. One of these days I’ll get around to it. These days aside from the novelty factor it’s so much easier to just throw a pair of AA’s into one of the Batarang OG GBA’s or bung a game into the Gameboy Player.
Don’t get me started on the damn shoulder buttons. The DS Lites were also notorious for breaking those via cracking the switches clean off the board just with normal use. I forget how many of those I had to painstakingly resolder. Which, in retrospect, I did with sub-optimal tools back when I was broke.
I always start by cleaning the contact patches on the board and the rubber domes below the buttons. They’re prone to getting corroded and/or packed full of crud if the Gameboy (or controller, or whatever) has been stored carelessly for a long time.
The no continuity is expected. You would only get a beep if the button is pressed (the press happens when both sides are connected by a conductor, which in the case here is the carbon on the button membranes). It could be the contacts are just dirty and cleaning them with a q-tip and ipa is good enough. I would also lightly clean the membranes as well to make sure there is no dust or residue on them (the carbon on the button will always come off on the qtip, so just lightly clean that part).
I have already cleaned the contacts and the membranes. How would I go about tracing where the problem lies? I know there’s no continuity when the button isn’t pressed, but nothing happens when I bridge any of the buttons, either with the membrane or otherwise, with the exception of the start button, which then seems to trigger all the buttons continuously (judging by the leds).
I picked this up a while ago, sold as parts so it wasn’t too expensive. I reshelled it then but after reassembly I realized the shoulder buttons were marginal. Finally got around to replacing those, then this happened. Figured I might as well swap out the pink plastic while it was apart again.
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