I Restored and Upgraded This $2 Junk Original Gameboy - Console Restoration & Repair

I've been wanting to modify the original Nintendo Gameboy so I decided to restore and repair one and do the modifications while I'm at it. The original Gameboy aka DMG-01 was released in North America 31th July 1989, few days shy of 31 years! HTe modification I will add to this console is a backlight and a bivert chip. Bivert chip inverts the colors. For some reason that gives better contrast for the screen, I'll also invert the colors again to get normal colors instead of inverted colors.

The Gameboy got power but there was no image or sound. This was not very promising. Usually no power is better because then the issue is most likely simple to solve beucause that is often caused by bad contact somewhere. This could mean the board or the screen is broken.

After disassembly the plastic parts were cleaned. And yellowed parts were de-yellowed in my solarium. Tutorial for the process can be found here:    • How to remove yellowing from old plas...  

I cleaned the board. I concentrated especially on the power switch and the battery contacts, which were the point I was hoping to have bad contact. I that was not the case I'd have to go systematically go through the whole board to find the damaged area. The battery terminals were removed and put into rust remover. After that they were nickel plated. The blue residue on the terminals is oxidized copper this tells me the nickel plating was already damaged. My tutorial for nickel plating can be found here:    • How to make simple DIY nickel plating...  

After the board was cleaned it worked so the issue was just a contact issue which is very typical for these. However the sound was not working. I tested the speaker and the volume wheel. They were both fine. This could again mean the board is somehow damaged causing the issue. Then I realized the headphone jack has a switch that turn the speakers off when the headphones are plugged in. And what do you know. The headphone jack was working. I used a screwdriver to scratch the oxidized metal between two pieces of metal in the switch to get them good contact again. And now also the audio was working.

Now that everything as fixed I wanted to install the mod kit. I peeled off the back polarizer from the screen. I cleaned any glue residues from the screen with isopropyl alcohol. Then I inserted the backlight panel behind the screen. Between the screen and the led panel. Some people like to desolder the whole screen for better access but as you can see the installation can be done without it if you are careful with the ribbon cables. To install the chip I needed to lift 2 legs from the screen connector. The chip is mounted on this PCB board which makes the installation much easier. The rest of the needed contacts (except ground) have holes over the corresponding contacts on the board to make soldering easy. Because the chip inverts the colors the polarizer must be turned 90 degrees I get this white/blue tone instead of the normal green/black. There are other colors also available but I like this one.

Thanks for watching my video!

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SOME TOOLS FROM THIS PROJECT:
SCREW DRIVER SET: https://amzn.to/2P0AmMp
REPLACEMENT GLASS: https://amzn.to/30M1Vh4
RUBBER PADS: https://amzn.to/32YNetV
BACKLIGHT KIT: https://amzn.to/32Y47Vj
RUST REMOVER: https://www.mc-51thebestrustremover.c...
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE: https://amzn.to/2K5OmTS
UV LED STRIP: https://amzn.to/2IqLmOA
99.9% ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL: https://amzn.to/34Po8dX
NICKEL ANODE: https://amzn.to/2ro0cAo
POWER SOURCE: https://amzn.to/35zDBzT
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