Restore and Modify an Original DMG Gameboy: Released in 1989, the DMG (Dot Matrix Gameboy) was the first Gameboy Nintendo ever released. It’s a lot of fun to mess with, so here’s a quick guide of my experiences taking apart, restoring, and modifying the DMG with an awesome new backlight. You can rub the tip with alcohol on the Contacts in order to clean them, that works very well. You should also go over the contacts with the dry side afterwards to completly dry it out (the rest should just steam away and become dry).
Dec 30, 2009 I went to clean the contacts on some of my Gameboy Advance cartridges with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol, and discovered that the Q-tip is a very tight fit through the opening to the contacts. I don't want to damage the cartridge if the Q-tip is too tight! Backlighting Your Gameboy DMG – The Right Way Backlight your DMG like a pro! While taking the extra steps to do it right will take more time, and you may encounter a learning curve at first, ultimately, desoldering the screen is the best way, in my opinion, for a few reasons. Jul 05, 2017 Servicing a Game boy DMG (Original) Discussion in 'Other Handhelds' started by Pokepicker, Jun 19. I would use rubbing alcohol on a cotton bud to clean the connectors on the PCB, or alternatively a pencil eraser. I had one gameboy I was unable to bring back to life and it had corrosion on the top pcb too. It was battery leakage creep.
In this Instructables, I will be showing you how to take apart your gameboy, and how to clean it! I would not recommend this project for the beginner, because you are using circuit boards, and for some of these you need a special screwdriver!
Teacher Notes
Teachers! Did you use this instructable in your classroom? Add a Teacher Note to share how you incorporated it into your lesson.
Step 1: Identify Your Gameboy
In this step, we will be identifying your GameBoy. Take a look on the back of your game boy, it should either have four phillips screws or four tri wing screws (excluding under the battery cover. For phillips screws you can just get right in, but if you have tri wing screws you have to either try to use a small flathead screwdriver or you can purchase Nintendo's security bit online for around 5 dollars. In my case I have a Phillips screw GameBoy. Once you have the proper tools, start by unscrewing all four screws in the back. Then after this under the battery cover there should be two other holes. Once you have all the screws undone we can head on to the next step.
Step 2: Take It Apart!
Once you have the screws undone, you want to take the house apart. While you're doing this, be careful because there's a screen cable connected to each side! you can remove the screen cable easily, just be careful or else it may rip. After this, taking it apart is pretty self-explanatory. All you have to do is remove all the screws that you can see inside the case. Once you have done this, you want to remove the circuit boards from each side. Move these to a safe area, but not carpet as this can make static electricity and fry your game boy!
Step 3: Clean It!
Now with each halve of your plastic, you are going to want to gather your supplies to clean it. These can include, but are not limited to.. nail polish remover, sponge pads, Q-tips, and hot water. Get some hot running water running, we will be using this later. While you have the water running, you may want to identify any blemishes on your case that include dirt and grime. You're going to want to clean this office and Q-tips and some sponge pads along with the nail polish remover. To remove these, take the nail polish remover and put some on your Q-tips and sponge pads. Rub pretty hard on the areas that have dirt and grime. It should get it out pretty easily, as nail polish remover is an alcohol, which removes inks dirt crimes and many other things very quickly. Now we will move back to our hot water. Throw all of the cases and the buttons to into the hot water. while in the water, you should rub on the whole case to remove any more dirt and grime that we had not gotten earlier. After rubbing for about five minutes, you should remove the cases from the water. You should be careful to not get the water to hot as you could melt your whole case!
Step 4: Your Done!
Now you can put together your GameBoy again! Hooray! You have successfully cleaned your GameBoy. If you're getting any lines on your screen, you should take a look at your screens motherboard. As you can see below the screen, there is a black rubber line. You should go over this line gently with a soldering iron, as the heat will melt the solder back onto the connections.
Be the First to Share
Recommendations
How to Grow Broccoli Sprouts in a Jar in Gardening
Upcycled Kid's First Knife - With Custom Oak Handle in Kids
56 11K
Spring Cleaning Challenge
Trash to Treasure Contest
Rubber Band Speed Challenge
UPDATE a surprising amount of people keeps mailing me about this. I just wanted to save everybody trouble by pointing out that ALL GAMEBOYS IN THIS POST HAVE ALREADY BEEN SOLD. I DO NOT HAVE ANY MORE. I DO NOT PLAN TO MAKE MORE. I AM NOT GOING TO REPAIR YOUR GAMEBOY. IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU PAY ME. So do not mail me about it. Instead, I’d suggest to Google around and look for GameBoy enthusiast forums.
Some weeks ago, I decided to build the perfect GameBoy. You see, when you order a used classic GameBoy on eBay or so, the quality of the devices you get varies a lot. The term “used but in good condition” is extremely subjective. To add insult to injury, most sellers don’t even bother testing the devices or putting in high-rez images. So the first GameBoy I ordered this way was in a disheartening condition. The case was yellowish from the sun, the buttons felt flabby and didn’t connect properly.
So I decided to take the case in my own hands. I noticed that every now and then, there would be an entire collection of damaged GameBoys on eBay for sale. The sellers usually didn’t bother testing them. Or they would just simply put the batteries in, the GameBoy wouldn’t turn on and they would leave it at that. I bought a few of those collections and ended up with 11 devices, 10 damaged ones and the one I bought previously. And thus started a lengthy process of refurbishing the GameBoys by salvaging the best parts.
Here is what happened:
The reason why the GameBoy classics are relatively repair-friendly is that their innards consist of two separate pieces: front and back. The front part contains the LCD screen, the speaker and the button contacts. The back part contains the batteries and the CPU. If one of the parts is damaged, you can still use the second part for spare parts. This was my initial plan.
The insides of a GameBoy classic are pleasantly repair-friendly. But note the gunk on the inside of the case. Eeew!
But of course the first step was to clean the cases. They were in a terrible condition. There was gunk and grime in every corner. There were Pokémon stickers on some devices. After simply getting all the electronics out and washing them, they started too look less aged already.
Especially the slits over the speaker are good places for gunk to get stuck. I found that a toothbrush is a actually a good tool to take care of such problems.
Exploring the Venn Diagram of gaming and dental hygiene.
I put all the electronics aside with a short note on what was presumably broken. About half of the devices didn’t even turn on.
Avert you eyes! So many GameBoys, they are all NAKED!
After the cases were dry, I removed any glue residue with alcohol. Almost every GameBoy had it’s screen lens missing. If the screen lens was still attached it was scratched well beyond repair. That’s not a big deal since you can still buy replacement screen lenses nowadays. The old screen lenses are usually glued to the case with a thick layer of adhesive. Before attaching a new screen lens, it makes sense to remove the adhesive so the new screens sit more flush.
Remving old adhesive. Um… so how did YOU spent your Weekend?
GameBoys are resilient has hell. I noticed that the most common damage is when the batteries spill. The residue usually cakes the contacts of the batteries. This is a relative trivial repair and it’s a shame to discard the entire device because of it. I bought some Battery Cleaner spray for car batteries. It was somewhat effective. But nothing beats simply using sandpaper to clean up the contacts.
Battery residue on contacts – surprisingly the most common cause for defunct GameBoys.
Sometimes the battery acid gets onto the electronics. This will usually kill the GameBoy. In one case, the spill wasn’t too severe. One capacitor (??) fell off due to corroded contacts. It was a good opportunity to whip out the soldering iron and to attempt an emergency operation. I used the resistor from a broken model. It was my first successful soldering job and even though it’s not perfect, I’m pleased to report that it worked!
I don’t care if it’s a capacitor or a resistor. I fix’d it ok?
A common, tricky defect is a damaged rubber pad below the buttons. Especially the d-pad is likely to wear out. The rubber pad below sometimes tears and causes that direction of the d-pad to feel flabby. This is what happened in the first GameBoy I got. It’s a tricky defect since it’s subtle and not really apparent at first sight, even if you disassemble the device. I collected all of the pads from all of the GameBoys and made sure to always use the undamaged ones.
Special Thanks: collaborators in our Super Smash Bros. Miiverse Project, Souce Gaming, GameFAQs (Luigifan305), GameXplain, ResetEra, SmashBoard (KMDP), SmashPedia and SmashWiki. SmashBros-Ultimate.com is a fansite and is in no way affiliated with Nintendo or any other mentioned companies. Nov 01, 2018 Ken & Incineroar join the roster for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Subscribe to GameSpot! Visit all of our c. Dec 15, 2018 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Do 40% Damage in a Single Attack With Incineroar Challenge Tutorial. Smash ultimate 40 dmg as incineror.
Hidden damage is hidden! Pay attention to this if you try this at home.
Another common defect are entire dead pixel columns on the LCD the screen. I noticed that this is usually how a GameBoy dies of old age. Especially the other columns are likely to fail. This is due to the adhesive that attatches the LCD screen to the contacts. It fails eventually. But if the failure is not severe, there is a way to keep the GameBoy going. You can add some padding on top of the contact. I my case I used strips of thick adhesive tape. When the GameBoy is screwed back together, the case will push the contacts down and can potentially fix some columns. This worked for two screens. But there were also two screens simply beyond repair.
How To Clean A Gameboy Dmg With Alcohol Bottle
One final step is to add the replacement screen lens. As I said, there are plenty of ways to get those. I bough an entire pack of 14 screens at once to save money on shipment. There is one tricky part to this: the colored “Play it Loud” GameBoys have a screen lens with a darker grey. You have to order those separately. Sadly, I noticed that in general, the replacement screen sometimes don’t fit so well anymore and I think they scratch easier.
Surprisingly difficult – do this without getting dust on the INSIDE of the screen.
Ad then there are some details such as replacements for missing battery covers and so on. But you get the idea. I was able to save 8 GameBoys this way. 3 didn’t make it. It worked out well since I had exactly 3 cases where there was some severe yellowing to exposure to sunlight. From the electronics I have left almost every individual piece is broken.
And so now I’m left with 8 GameBoys to sell of give away. Of course, I will keep two of them. I will keep a transparent one because it’s so cool. I will also keep a vanilla white one, just because of the nostalgia.
Oh hey! I found this cute GameBoy on my Workbench! Can I keep it?
British Steel pension scheme members last year suffered 'scandalous mistreatment' because of contingent charging when they were advised to switch out of their schemes into defined contribution schemes, according to Rt Hon Frank Field MP, chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee. The FCA yesterday outlined plans to ban the fees pocketed by advisers for transferring pension pots out of defined benefit schemesThe watchdog says it expects advisers to start from the position that a pension transfer is unlikely to be suitable. What is a dmg contribution fee. This gives you a lump sum when you retire, from which you take an income.FCA research found 69 per cent of savers who received financial advice about their salary-based pensions were told to abandon them, which it found 'deeply concerning and disappointing'.It estimates poor advice costs these future retirees an average £56,000, with future fees pushing it up to £77,000 on a £350,000 pension pot over their lifetime. But it found that over half of those seeking help were given unsuitable advice.The report also identified a link between the pot's value and whether or not a transfer was recommended — handing the adviser a hefty cut.It reads: 'This correlation between larger transfer values and the proportion of customers recommended to transfer suggests revenue incentives are an influence on advice.'
I probably overdid it a little. The entire project took a bit more work than I initially thought it would. And it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to get a mint condition GameBoy if I was ready to pay enough money. On the other hand, it was a fascinating experience. There is something about restoring an old artifact to it’s former glory. It’s what drives car enthusiast to restore oldtimers. It’s incredibly rewarding and you learn a lot about the the engineering and product design of the machine at hand. It certainly made me appreciate the GameBoy classic a lot more. It’s probably not the most efficient way to get a mint GameBoy classis. But it certainly is a scenic route to get there.
UPDATEI have put up the last 4 GameBoys from the Project on eBay right now.
The Oceanic 8! So… does anybody want a GameBoy classic?