battleman13

Old topic I know, but I've made a bit of progress. I thought that at least the one "working" lynx 2 had a bad flex circuit. After tinkering some more I got it working perfectly. I ended up cutting about 1/8th of an inch off of the top of the flex circuit ribbon as most of that "material" was scratched off. Well now the buttons all work wonderfully, the LED is bright and strong and the lynx 2 plays great! The other unit has a good flex circuit, good screen, but an apparently dead motherboard. I had a few USB cables that were bought to power a cell phone charger, the ends were super cheap so I cut them off and soldered the positive and negative wires directly to the solder blobs for the power solder pads by the battery holder. Makes the lynx 2 a little less portable, but I don't care... It's a fairly long cord and I don't plan to play these "on the go". So anyway, one unit that I got off eBay is working great and the other appears to be a dead board. I soldered its own usb wire directly to the solder pads for power and soldered a jumper wire from battery minus to head phone middle pin. Nothing on the screen, no sound. I did swap the other motherboard into this housing to confirm the screen was working and it is. Anyone have any idea about what could be causing the "dead" board to be lifeless? SirLynxAlot suggested bad caps, any ideas or should I just replace them all? Are there "commonly bad caps"? Pumped to have at least one "working" unit! I'm quite happy having the hard wired direct 5V supply. I used a little extension cord so that I can unplug to change games easily. Quite happy to be enjoying some of these classics I remember playing so many many years ago as a very young boy. Just a bit sad I couldn't get any life out of the original lynx 1.... motherboard seems dead. Probably from over volting. Maybe I can find a cheap parts unit with a good board.

Hello, I have two Lynx 2 systems for sale. Neither are in perfect working order. 1st one Good motherboard, assumed possibly bad flex circuit. I assume that since when the unit is fully assembled the down or left buttons do not work. At first it was just down... then down worked and left wouldn't... after taking it apart, reseating / checking a third time... now down and left do not work. Screen works. Headphone ground is jumped to battery minus. Battery holder is desoldered from the power pads on the board but is included if you wanted to put it back on. I did this so I could power the lynx directly with 5V from a USB wall charger. 2nd one Dead motherboard. Can't comment on status of flex cable. Screen worked in the lynx above. Screen covering is scratched. Rubber grips and battery cover is missing. So basically, for sure, your getting one good motherboard and two working screens. Two housings that can be used for "parts". The dead lynx board, at least, should have a working cartridge slot and other parts that can be used as a donor board for other components I'm sure. Maybe up to two working flex cables... maybe I'm just not putting it back together right or maybe they are faulty. I'm not sure. I paid $50 plus shipping for these, and since I wasn't able (maybe just my lack of experience with these things) to get one running perfectly I'd just like to offload them. I'd like to get the $50 plus shipping for these items. Thanks

@sirlynxalot Yeah, I might look into that. I was interested in building a raspberry pie retro / htpc "machine". I dunno that I want to put it into a lynx but you never know! @Karri I was for sure thinking about offering up any "salvage" to the users here first. So If I do decide to get rid of anything, I'll be sure to PM you with the information! I might tinker with them a bit more tonight just to confirm the one is "dead". I might just wire a connection between headphone ground and battery minus on the working lynx, and hook a USB cable directly up to the solder pads for the battery. This will allow me to plug it in and play it. It would could still even be portable if I found a battery bank that put out 5V 1 A. I'm fine being plugged in either way. It will just be cool to start enjoying the old games again

Hey sirlynxalot Thank you for your input. I have tried the headphone jump trick... the interesting thing is that if I short to ground on the headphone jack, it doesn't "power up" but if I short to the middle pin below (again supplying exactly 5V) the screen lights up but nothing happens... no sound and no video. I bought two "broken" Lynx 2 units on eBay. One has signs of life, pumping 5V into the battery terminals and doing the headphone jump has both video and sound playing... although the power LED seemed to be flashing? The other doesn't seem to be working at all.... same test (with multiple games, and even no game) shows just a plain black screen with the backlight. I'm curious to try pumping 5V directly into the power cap but I don't think that will help. I think it's a dead board. The LCD in this unit was supposedly known to be faulty BUT there should still be sound. The negative wire to the speaker was broken off, but I put in a pair of earbuds and still didn't hear anything. I may swap motherboards and see if it makes any difference since I know I have a functioning pair of motherboard / LCD. Not sure what to do with the dead Lynx 1 or 2 systems.

Anyone? I'd really like to get this Lynx 1 working. I did buy two of the Lynx 2 units off of eBay. I got the pair for $50 shipped, hopefully I can get at least one of them running. I know one has a bad LCD but if they both have functioning motherboards I can attempt a McWill LCD in the one with the known bad LCD and maybe keep the other stock. Would be sweet to be playing Lynx on the real deal hardware again all these years later, and i know my grandfather would love to see his old Lynx running again!

Hello! My name is Brandon, and although I've done a bit of lurking on the forums this is my first time posting! So the Atari Lynx, what a thing of beauty. My grandfather owned two of them, bought them I suspect very near the time they came out. Myself being born in 86, I did enjoy them but probably by the time I really new what was going on, they were on the way out in the retail world. Still that didn't bother me or my brother and my grandfather from having a blast with these things! He had a Lynx 1 and 2 and about 20 or so random games. Well these Lynx's are a little worse for the wear, the years haven't been good to them. I think the DC jacks on both were damaged from the cord getting yanked on. They really weren't even thought about for the past 10 years. However, I have recently started having another interest in not only playing, but also fixing these things. Sadly, he took the Lynx 2 apart and "lost some things" and threw it away, so he told me. The Lynx 1 survives, but doesn't work all that well. He tried batteries in it, I'm afraid as I've read that's a no no on an old system like this. Basically some bits in the power circuitry could have failed and let 9V flow through all the lovely 5V parts. So I hacked the end off of a USB cable, plugged it into an old iphone charger (5V 1A) and using alligator clips I fed that directly into C39 (the power cap on the Lnyx 1). Screen lights up, but I see nothing on the screen. Tried a variety of games, and tried cleaning the games up a bit. Still no love on the screen. I made sure to be careful not to short the legs of the cap together, and that I measured the wires from the USB cable to be sure I had the ones for 5V and to verify the 5V (it was actually 5.05V) After feeding 5V directly into the legs of power cap, is there any chance this lynx is still fixable? I've seen some people mention the ribbon could be not making good contact? I'm not sure how to disconnect and reconnect this LCD ribbon. The brightness dial also has no effect. Would be pretty sweet to be able to fix this one, lots of memories with this unit in particular. Just wondering if there are any things to check to be confident one way or another if this lynx can be saved. Thanks in advance!