screen to bright

[kickinwing]

I bought my Lynx about a year ago off Ebay and it didn't bother me at first, but I've just now got around to playing it alot and the screen is very bright. The contrast is turned to the lowest setting and it's still very bright. Is this a common thing amongst Lynx II systems? I was thinking about buying another system but not if it's going to be the same way.

[Mindfield]

Does the brightness dial have any effect whatsoever?

[kickinwing]

makes it brighter. It's turned completely down now and its bright, about a quarter of a turn and the screen is completely whited out by light.

[Mindfield]

makes it brighter.  It's turned completely down now and its bright, about a quarter of a turn and the screen is completely whited out by light.

 

My first action would be to open the unit up and completely swab down the brightness potentiometer and see if that made any difference, 'cos it sounds to me like pot strip has lost some of its resistence, and is allowing too much power through to the backlight. This could also be caused by the resistance strip wearing out.

[kickinwing]

that was what i was going to do but I thought about it and just wanted to make sure that the brightness was my Lynx or all Lynx units.

[kickinwing]

i couldn't find an edit button, sorry for the double post, but I was going to open it up, the pedo meter and pot strip, no clue what your talking about but I should be able to figure out what is causing the problem..Thanks.

[Mindfield]

Potentiometers are basically variable resistors; the further up the strip the contact goes the less resistance the electricity experiences and thus the more power gets to the desired component (in this case the backlight). If the strip is worn then there's less resistance overall and more electricity will get to the component. If there's conductive gunk on the strip then electricity, taking the path of least resistance as it does, will likely conduct through the gunk, making the reistance strip useless. (There are always exceptions depending on the type of wear or the amount/placement of gunk, but generally speaking it's a good rule of thumb)

 

I'd break out the Q-Tips and rubbing alcohol and have at it. Lord knows enough sweaty-palmed action can have a way of seeping through openings and whatnot. :-)

[elliott]

If cleaning doesn't help I might have a spare non working board you could canabalize one from.

[kickinwing]

after i had my Lynx and my GameGear side by side, i determined that there is nothing wrong with it but just the technology at the time. I shouldn't have compared the backlit of a Nintendo DS to a Lynx. Plus I also determined that the brightness varied from game to game, like Tournament Cyberball is really bright, but Gates of Zendecon looks fantastic.

[guitarmas]

I know what you're talking about. The screen on a Lynx IS very bright, in my opinion, and from my past experience you have to get it at the right angle with the right adjustment for it to be perfect. Then again that's just me.

[Mindfield]

That's the problem with those old DSTN screens; they have a very narrow viewing angle, so you have to hold them the right way to get a respectable degree of viewability, both for brightness and contrast.

[Gunstar]

Yes, this is all true in my opinion too. I always felt that the Lynx screen was to "washed out" colorwise, and that you had to turn the brightness down, dim or turn out the ambient lightning, and then hold the Lynx at the correct angle for maximum contrast to get a decently clear, colorful picture. I had a friend who had a Game Gear and it was the same way. Though this seemed true of the old gameboy and gameboy color as well, but I always felt they were worse becuase of a total lack of backlightning; I'll take the extra power consumtion for the backlighting anyday. I even have a Pentium 1 notebook PC with a screen that reacts the same. The Lynx screen was good overall for it's day. I havee heard of people doing white LED backlighting mods which apparently save power and helps with the screen contrast.

[guitarmas]

A mod for the Lynx?? Where at? You got my curiousity up. :-)

[Gunstar]

A mod for the Lynx??  Where at?  You got my curiousity up. :-)

 

Well, I don't have any links to mod instructions or anything like that. This was a mod a read a discussion about right here, around a year or two ago. Someone was talking about working on a mod to replace the standard Lynx backlighting with the newer white LEDs. I have no idea if it was successful or not, but IIRC, this was not the first person to try it, they had gotten the idea from someone else. Maybe if you do a "Lynx backlighting search or something you could turn up the old thread. It may have links or such too...