Just Bought a Lynx. Help Please!

[BoOchan!]

Just bought a lynx from a flea market (Only $1AU About USD 56c) and asking a few questions. Do you have to have a cartridge in for the system to turn on as my system came with no cartridge. Or does the backlight come on by itself?

[eric_ruck]

Generally you do need a cart in to make the Lynx do anything. Sometimes you can kind of make out "Insert Game" on the screen. Not sure if the light comes on without a cart or not.

 

Eric

[Ze_ro]

There are a few things you can try without a cartridge:

 

1) If you have an AC adaptor that works with the system, watch the power light as you plug in the cord... you should see the light flash briefly. It's kind of hard to see, but it happens every time for me. Not sure if this works with batteries or not.

 

2) As long as the Lynx has power, you can try this: Press the on button. Although without a game, not much will happen... however, you should see the power light flash again, and you may hear a click from the speaker. You can repeat this over and over by hitting the Off button, and then the On button again.

 

Note that these are by no means definitive tests for whether your Lynx works or not... the only such test would require getting a cartridge... however, if you can at least make the light flash, then you know that power is getting to the system

 

(Note: I can confirm that all this works for a Lynx II... I don't know if the same things happen for a Lynx I)

 

--Zero

[SwedenLynxer]

Sometimes you can kind of make out "Insert Game" on the screen.

 

Does anyone know how this works. When is this message shown? Why do you just see this sometimes?

[glitch]

The "Insert Game" message appears when there is a cartidge in the slot but it cannot read it properly (dirty contacts, not all the way in, etc). I've heard of a few lynxs that have displayed the message w/o a cartridge but it turned out that they were very dirty and something was making contact w/ a couple of the pins. I'm not sure which pins need to be connected to make the Lynx think there is a cart in it.