brook2
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I watched way too many youtube videos of folk fixing the missing vertical lines on their screen with a soldering iron, and I had to give it a go on my broken DMG (everything about it works fine except those lines). I ended up not really making it any worse but not making it any better either (and I tried for at least an hour every day for a few days in a row, it's just not getting fixed like I expected).

So it looks like this (yeah I damaged the front plate of the screen a little while I was trying to fix the connections, unlucky!):

Anyone have any ideas for fun things I could do with this? Since fixing the LCD connection doesn't seem to be an option I'm trying to come up with other ideas but at a loss so far.

PianoGameboy
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hiding under your bed

I'll buy it from you. How much do you want?

brook2
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PianoGameboy wrote:

I'll buy it from you. How much do you want?

I don't want to let go of it, I'd like to find a use for it but I'm just lacking ideas at the moment.

but really I don't think you want this DMG, I tried (and failed) again to fix the lines and realized you can see the traces if you lift it up.. here's what I see:

So I don't think it's fixable without a replacement flexible pcb part or combined pcb + lcd (but maybe not needed since there's no missing horizontals) and of course neither of these can be bought anywhere..

Last edited by brook2 (Feb 2, 2014 11:25 pm)

katsumbhong
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Taichung, Taiwan

It looks like you were using the soldering iron in the wrong area...

It looks like you were getting super close to the screen.

brook2
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katsumbhong wrote:

It looks like you were using the soldering iron in the wrong area...

It looks like you were getting super close to the screen.

Yeah I wasn't sure of the right place to do it. I started out really carefully and had no effect, so the next days I tried in different places and with a hotter iron.

DogTag
Offline
Murcia, Spain

Empty it, put something behind the screen protector acting as a light difussor and a big LED inside. Power it up with USB. Ultra cool desk light for less than 5 bucks!

Last edited by DogTag (Feb 3, 2014 12:06 am)

Jazzmarazz
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Michigan

I'll take the back PCB and you can keep the rest. smile

12ianma
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You want to close to the screen.

katsumbhong
Offline
Taichung, Taiwan
12ianma wrote:

You want to close to the screen.

Not that close...

Bamboori
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Germany

what about making a new display with led matrices? always wanted to see something like that tongue

Alley Beach
Offline
clovis CA
DogTag wrote:

Empty it, put something behind the screen protector acting as a light difussor and a big LED inside. Power it up with USB. Ultra cool desk light for less than 5 bucks!

i might try that... i have lots of empty cases tongue

Alley Beach
Offline
clovis CA

if you have one of the later dmg-cpu (blobs) use it for recording. supposedly they have the best sound

brook2
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Bamboori wrote:

what about making a new display with led matrices? always wanted to see something like that tongue

I would absolutely love to make a new display to give it new life! I wonder how easy it would be do to? Probably a bit out of my depth since I've not done much hardware but it's fun to think about.

I counted 20 channels on the ribbon cable that connects the back PCB to the front, not sure what each channel is: my best guess (and this might be completely wrong) would be one channel for all the pixel data (rough calculation: 160x144 pixels with 2 bits per pixel depth being displayed at 59.7Hz would come out to 2,750,976 bits per second) and a couple channels for things like v-blank, h-blank as well as audio and the button inputs.

The flexible PCBs that the LCD is connected to the board through have a couple decoder chips (serial to parallel maybe?) for vertical and horizontal lines, maybe it'd be an option to desolder that and connect the matrix up to there instead of trying to decode through the ribbon cable.

DogTag
Offline
Murcia, Spain
Alley Beach wrote:
DogTag wrote:

Empty it, put something behind the screen protector acting as a light difussor and a big LED inside. Power it up with USB. Ultra cool desk light for less than 5 bucks!

i might try that... i have lots of empty cases tongue

I'm serious! If I had extra DMG cases I'd try it rightaway...

brook2
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I mentioned this to my friend and they showed me this:

  1. http://www.flashingleds.net/gameboyLCD/gameboyLCD.html

  2. http://www.flashingleds.net/nintendosco … scope.html

He's outputting the screen data to an oscilloscope using a microcontroller, it should be totally possible to LED matrix or some other kind of LCD display. I don't have a fast enough micro but maybe one day!

Last edited by brook2 (Feb 3, 2014 9:53 pm)

Bit wish
Offline
New Albany Indiana

Condom dispenser.
Make it into a bomb.