Can anyone help me fix some Atari Lynx-II units?

SatNoob · August 25, 2007

Well I just barely got my first Lynx last weekend. I was at a fleamarket and bought a huge lot of tons of old consoles and 11 Atari Lynx units were included with various games. The only thing is *NONE* of the Lynx work! All the other style consoles I got work fine

I really want to play a Lynx and I'm extremely disappointed I can't get any of them function correctly and frankly don't know where to start when fixing one.

I have taken 3 of them apart so far just to check ribbon connections, and to see if anything is noticeably broke IE: blown caps, cold solder joints etc.. But so far no luck.

1) Lynx does this: Powers on with batteries and Wall adapter. The backlight turn on as does the Red power light. No sound, no picture. This is a with a game installed. I found that wire from headphone to negative battery trick, and this turns the unit on. But it's as described above, just the backlight and the red light no picture or sounds.

2) Next Lynx does this: Doesn't power on with batteries or wall adapter. I did the headphone wire to negative battery and the unit powers on I can see the game intro and sounds work. I didn't see any type of fix listed with this issue though? I'm assuming theres something I'd need to replace?

3) The last of the three Lynx I've opened does this: won't power on with batteries (believe the spring/contacts are mising infact the batteries seem very loose) powers on with AC adapter, but after a second or two it turns off. Or it will reset and start over. I believe the power adapter plug on the board is broken partially as it seems very wiggly.

Well that's the run down on the first three I opened. These seemed to be the most promising of the 11 so I listed these first so I could hopefully get one to play. Any suggestions/instructions/parts numbers?

Much appreciated. If not I understand it's probably a lot of questions to ask.

Edited August 25, 2007 by SatNoob

Atariman · August 28, 2007

Well I just barely got my first Lynx last weekend. I was at a fleamarket and bought a huge lot of tons of old consoles and 11 Atari Lynx units were included with various games. The only thing is *NONE* of the Lynx work! All the other style consoles I got work fine

I really want to play a Lynx and I'm extremely disappointed I can't get any of them function correctly and frankly don't know where to start when fixing one.

I have taken 3 of them apart so far just to check ribbon connections, and to see if anything is noticeably broke IE: blown caps, cold solder joints etc.. But so far no luck.

1) Lynx does this: Powers on with batteries and Wall adapter. The backlight turn on as does the Red power light. No sound, no picture. This is a with a game installed. I found that wire from headphone to negative battery trick, and this turns the unit on. But it's as described above, just the backlight and the red light no picture or sounds.

2) Next Lynx does this: Doesn't power on with batteries or wall adapter. I did the headphone wire to negative battery and the unit powers on I can see the game intro and sounds work. I didn't see any type of fix listed with this issue though? I'm assuming theres something I'd need to replace?

3) The last of the three Lynx I've opened does this: won't power on with batteries (believe the spring/contacts are mising infact the batteries seem very loose) powers on with AC adapter, but after a second or two it turns off. Or it will reset and start over. I believe the power adapter plug on the board is broken partially as it seems very wiggly.

Well that's the run down on the first three I opened. These seemed to be the most promising of the 11 so I listed these first so I could hopefully get one to play. Any suggestions/instructions/parts numbers?

Much appreciated. If not I understand it's probably a lot of questions to ask.

Your best bet is probably going to be with #2 or #3. The 3rd one you mentioned might just be a matter of a bad solder joint where the power jack connects to the board. If this is the case, you can just heat up the solder and fix the broken joint. If this works, then you can just solder new contacts onto it from another Lynx. #2 just sounds like it needs the Q12 (I think that's the one, anyway - I'm sure you know since you have already done the shorting trick) transistor replaced.

Either way, good luck.