I know this is Atariage, and this post isn't about Atari. Also, I'm at a mushy state of mind writing this.

Now, my original Game Gear cannot be fixed by me. I attempted to fix it. It still doesn't stay on. Now the attempted fix eliminated the possible solutions that could fix it. However, the problem is something else. Even with the capacitors aren't connecting properly, it should go on.

The start of the problem.

My girlfriend warned that the Sonic 2 Game Gear game was bad. I was thinking that the cartridge was dirty, and wasn't prepared for the consequence. So, I put it in my Game Gear to check it out. The Game Gear powers on and off. I tried it again, and it does the same thing. Then, I put Shining Force 2:Sword of Haija in there. I turn it on, then the game turns off. The batteries are fine. I kept turning on, and it kept turning off. Pro tip, don't use a game with a battery back up on broken Game Gear! I opened the Sonic 2 cartridge. There was 2 globs of goo on the ROMs and another chip. No professional company would use a glop of goop on a chip, which I concluded it was a pirated chip. I snapped it in halves right there, I was so pissed and couldn't resist snapping that demonic piece of crap in halves. Red Faction: Guerrilla War is getting there, I so wanted to smash building, yet the game doesn't want me to- opps off topic. I had to do what right to prevent this evil thing getting into more Game Gears and blowing out whatever small components that is nearly invisible to the naked eyes. Yeeeaa....

Soooooo...... that started the my journey attempt to restore this Game Gear. What could possibly go wrong?

http://members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/ggrgb/ggrepair.html

The first thing I should try is to replace all the capacitors to see replacing them would fixed the problem. So I made my first trip to Fry's Electronic Store in Downer Grove. It was a pretty long drive, about 1-2 hours to get there. I spent hours exploring the store, and eventually make it over to the component area. I brought my first soldering iron, it pretty cool and has an LED as a flashlight. Then went to the capacitors selection, which was a joke. There's about 35% of them stocked. I had that ggrepair website on my PSP(stored on memorystick and accessible via my html page[didn't have a working printer back then]). I showed the employee there and see if they can find the one I need. The guy attempted to enlarge the text by pinching out on the screen. I took the PSP away from him and set the text on large then gave it back. He couldn't find them.

Some point after that, I went to Radio Shack several different times. I realize that solder isn't from the tube paste I brought, and brought the spool one, then some LEDs and components from there. Brought wires and stuff for future stuff.

I brought the capacitors from digi-key. My experience from them was perfect. The website was a bit confusing and I didn't really know what kind or capacitors I needed. I really needed someone with knowledge to do the leg work. So I contact their store employee with their chat system. I gave the guy the ggrepair website, and helped me to find the capacitors that I needed and answered my question. Such question like, how do you tell if the capacitors are positive or negative. The strip on the side is negative. So I brought about 10 of each he found.

Let's get to work. You're suppose to break the glue that the capacitors are on, and then heat the feet of the surface mount capacitors to remove them. So I did that. I replaced them all, and the problem remains.

Found: http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=29063

---LEDMOD guide---> http://tibia-mod.dreamwidth.org/486.html

I decided to do the light mod, to eliminate the transformer issue. Maybe the light is wearing out(it is anyway). So I got the CFT light off with ease. It just fell off once that iron hits it. Really awesome! Then I took the light cage out. The tranformer was a pain to get off because I was being to gentle. It got taken off.

I bright ultra bright white LED back at Fry's Electronics, then decided it might be too much and prefer to follow the guide provided and brought the regular white LED.

I actually killed an Ultra Bright white LED with a 9 volt battery. I saw a 9-volt battery sitting on top of a dryer. Hey! I can test these LED with those without wiring up to a 2 AA batteries. Why don't I test it with the batteries. So I tested it with the 9-volt battery, and a ultra bright flash became a burnt bulb. I quickly learned that resister is necessary and very important with this LED mod because the Game Gear is powered at 9 volt.

Now testing the 2 led bulbs the real way. Taping good 2 batteries together(Don't solder them together, it's a waste of time). I rigged up a circuit on the kitchen table and connected them and they both work. Now I have to rig the LED on to that cage. I have to set up a parallel circuit, which was more difficult, to distribute the equal amount of voltage(3volts) to each of the LEDs. In series, the LED voltage are cut in half. So I quickly looked on-line to find out how to do so. Then got the cage rigged with the led bulbs in place with the black holders that used to hold the CFT. I installed it to the Game Gear. I flipped the Game Gear on, The light mod WORKS!!! I was happy! However, the power problem still a problem. When I got the thing powered up for like 10-20 seconds, I saw that the LED lights were bright enough to shine through the white board and I was able to see the title screen of Super Columns.

I recently took the LED mod off and added a piece of wire to skip the light feature entirely, yet it still doesn't power on.

I just brought a dimmed-screen Game Gear off Ebay. In this Game Gear, I will clip off the old capacitors instead of heating it off and leave the leg standing. Being it being "surface mount" and not the through the board kind capacitors, it really a bitch to tell if it connecting or not. If I solder the new capacitors to the leg, then I think it would have better connection and feedback then trying to guess where the metal plates are at. If you over heat too much that area, then the solder don't stay on anymore. It just slides around, no matter what.

I think I will have a better time getting the transformer off since I had a little more understanding of desoldering and how the desoldering bulb work.

Experience is everything, working on my old Game Gear was fun and a learning experience of me working on electronic. On this one, hopefully it'll be success. I want a working Game Gear with LED backlit screen. Having an LED backlit screen will extend the battery life.

There, I had to write this since it is in my head. Now I must go to bed!