Gameboy Advance

Here’s what the listing stated:

Gameboy advance console, complete with battery cover, all buttons works and powers on but no sound, has marks on screen and a few marks on shell and scuffs/indentations.

Photos of exact item you will recieve, FAULTY Uk buyers only. Has cover missing that the power light shines through on

EBay

I’ve purchased this as another addition to my collection of handheld retro gaming consoles. As usual it dosen’t work, and that sometimes keeps the cost down a little. This one has cost me £24:00GBP and I’m happy that that is a fair price for one of these units. Here’s a little about the GBA:

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advance. Compared to the Game Boy Color it succeeded, the console offered a significantly more powerful ARM7 processor and improved graphics, while retaining backward compatibility with games initially developed for its predecessor.

The GBA is part of the sixth generation of video game consoles, competing against Nokia’s N-Gageand Bandai’s Japan-only WonderSwan. The original model was followed in 2003 by the Game Boy Advance SP, a redesigned model with a frontlitscreen and clamshell form factor. A newer revisionof the SP with a backlit screen was released in 2005. A miniaturized redesign, the Game Boy Micro, was released in September 2005.

By June 2010, the Game Boy Advance series including revisions, had sold 81.51 million units worldwide, massively outselling its competitors. Its successor, the Nintendo DS, launched in November 2004, was backward compatible with GBA games. GBA sales ended by 2010 after over nine years.

In 2008, the GBA was still Nintendo’s predominant handheld console in terms of market presence and global installed base. It was only in late October 2008 that Nintendo announced that the Nintendo DS had officially surpassed the GBA worldwide in sales. This milestone consolidated the definitive global leadership transition between generations,^[13]although in specific markets, such as the United States, the GBA was only surpassed by the Nintendo DS in sales in late 2009.

Wikipedia

Now just to reiterate. These units are now 25 years old, there were in excess of 81 Million of these units produced and they still command a good price today. Just consider how many of those units have been sent back into landfill, the figure is probably immense. But then again we produce many items en masse, and we have been just chucking stuff away for years. The figures must be mad.

Except for this one. It will be repaired, cherished and reused. And displayed for all to see.

This one has been advertised as having no sound. Just from viewing the sellers photos you can see there is an awful lot of staining around the speaker grill area, maybe some liquid has been spilled here and the speaker is damaged, or maybe the audio capacitor inside has blown. These are usually the two main culprits, but you never know it could be for some other totally different reason. Let’s not make assumptions, let’s see what turns up.

Assessment:

The unit has arrived all in one piece. The battery cover is in place, a little loose at the clip but I might be able to strengthen by heating and gently manipulating it.

Battery contacts show no sign of corrosion but are a little grubby. There are signs of good use but nothing really bad to be honest, all connectors and buttons appear to be doing what they should. The unit is in good need of a thorough clean, as it does look a little worn in that aspect. Screen has very minor scratches, nothing that will cause any issues. The little acrylic lens by the power light is missing and there is as stated, no sound even though we do have a picture and are able to play the games. In all aspects the unit is functioning, just with no audio.

This is a fair unit, it will clean up and if we can get the audio working we have a potentially very good unit.

It is dirty though, and a good clean will make an immense difference.

Repair:

The printer is on and warmed up so before we get repairing, let’s print a suitable display stand for this unit.

Now let’s open up the unit and see what we have inside.

First there are seven tri wing screws securing the shell. Remove these and the rear of the unit just lifts off.

Next there should be three screws to remove the mainboard but there is only one. Someone has previously been in this unit and has left two screws out. Next we remove the ribbon cable that secures the screen to the mainboard.

We now have free access to both sides of the board and can put everything else to one side to start our fault finding process.

First things first, let’s check the speaker. With the multimeter it’s showing 8 Ohms so I’m happy that the speaker is ok. A quick check for shorts and not one capacitor shows a short, I plug in a set of headphones and I can hear sound, but as soon as they are unplugged there is no sound again. My attention is now at the earphone socket.

On close examination other is a considerable amount of battery acid contamination in the earphone module. This is strange as there is none evident in the battery contact area. A close look around shows some spots of contamination, however these are easily cleaned with some IPA. I have a feeling this may have been a previous issue and the person in here prior to me, has cleaned up, but given up on the repair.

I remove the earphone module, and clean the surrounding area.

A simple check here is to see if there is any continuity between the two tabs that occupied positions 4 & 5 as marked on the mainboard. This check is carried out on the actual module. If you have continuity between these two pins, then in theory the circuit is good, and the speaker should be working. My results here were negative as there was no continuity on this module between those points.

The way the earphone works is thus. Plug the earphone jack in, it opens up the contacts and by passes the external speaker. Remove the earphone jack and the contacts close, opening up the main speaker. If there are contaminants on the contacts, this can prevent continuity and hence there is no sound on the main speaker.

You can double check that this is the issue by soldering a small wire between points 4 & 5 on the mainboard in theory by passing the earphone circuit leaving the speaker circuit open and accessible.

And my suspicions were correct, this small video below was the result of bypassing this part of the circuit.

Looking inside the earphone socket it was easy to see this piece had a solid lump of contamination exactly where I was expecting to see it. I have no spares of these and to obtain one off of the auction sites is an absolute ripoff. I can order one from our friends in China but I’m looking at a four week turnaround here, and I’m inpatient and not willing to wait that long. I’m going to try and repair it.

I’ve gathered everything up that needs cleaning, buttons, connectors, screws, pads and the suspect connector, and dropped the lot into a small dish of white vinegar. White vinegar is great for removing contaminants and you can actually watch it fizzing away and working. I left these items bathing for about 30 minutes before giving them all a good scrub clean. On the earphone jack I “borrowed” a small bottle cleaner from the wife, it fits right through one side and out the other allowing you to get a really good scrub inside.

I also cleaned the outside thoroughly removing all signs of contamination, the tabs were gleaming when I finished. I then put everything I’d just cleaned in between two sheets of kitchen roll and put them in a cooling oven to dry off.

When dry I took the bottle cleaner again, inserted it back into the earphone jack, sprayed quite a bit of electrical contact cleaner back onto it and vigorously scrubbed again for the next few minutes. When dry, I took the multimeter and again checked for continuity across points 4 & 5 and a tone was heard. Continuity had been restored and the earphone contacts were now working. Plugging in a jack and then removing it confirmed that all was working as it should. It’s now time to put this jack back on the board.

Final touch is to put a tiny pice of clear silicon in place of the missing power light lens on the front of the case. Job done.

Time to reassemble this unit.

Result:

And here we are. The original unit has been thoroughly cleaned, it’s come up ok but is probably a good candidate for a case upgrade and a Capacitor change at some point. That’s just cosmetic though, what really matters is that this unit is now working perfectly, and it sounds just fine.

This unit actually came from a guy who restores these units, I guess he was just having an off day as to be honest, it wasn’t the most difficult issue to diagnose and repair. It honestly took longer to clean this unit than it did to repair it. I’m pleased that I’ve used all the original parts and just been able to do a proper restoration as such.

81 million of these units were produced, so this is just one in that 81 million, that has been saved again from landfill to be enjoyed for many more years to come.

Thanks for passing by. Always most appreciated.