Offline
United Kingdom

Hey yesterday my backlight kits that i ordered from http://nonelectronics.com arrived. I had the idea then to design my own tutorial based on nonfinites for the completly new beginner. I apologise for the bad photoshots as it was only me doing this throughout the whole process.

If the pictures seem unclear to you click on the image and a larger version will be shown.

This tutorial is a bit long winded but hopefully it will do its mission by aiding you to backlight your gameboy.

[size=200]WARINING I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR EQUIPMENT/GAMEBOY THROUGHOUT THIS TUTORIAL DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK![/size]


Before I began to Mod my gameboy I thought I would make a tutorial for the Chip Coalition newbies/members but I also think it may be good for Chipmusi.org as well.

[size=200]HERE IS THE EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED:[/size]


As you can see there are:
-Tri wing screw driver (can buy from various places on the net)
-Flat end screw driver
-Phillips headed screw driver (a small one will be needed)
-30watt Soldering iron
-Stanley Knife
-Backlighting kit (that you can buy exclusively from nonfinites site)
-A pair of clippers
-Somewhere to store your screws (I used an old gameboy cartridge protective case)
- A Gameboy Handheld Console

(Safety equipment is recommended for your safety such as protective glocves, eye protection and a fume mask)


1.

Turn Your gameboy so its battery compartment is facing you and unscrew the screws with the Tri Wing screwdriver make sure you unscrew all 6 screws.


2.

Open your gameboy as it should be in two pieces, be careful not to pull it open too far though otherwise you may damage the white ribbon cable which is attaching both sides of the gameboy together.

3.

Be careful and move your gameboy so you can carefully hold the ribbon cable between your thumb and index finger. Then apply pressure downwards be cautious yet don't be too scared of pulling the cable (its stronger than you think)  wink .


4.

Right now you have a gameboy in two pieces use the side of with the ribbon cable attached to it and unscrew the screws with the phillips screw driver. Down below i have marked out in red the areas of where the need to be unscrewed.

5.

Once all is unscrewed you should be able to pull the pcb out of its protective gameboy case.

6.

On the PCB you will see two screws on it , you will need to unscrew these with the philips screw driver but be very careful not to damage this cable other wise you may kill some pixels on your screen. Here is a picture with the screws marked out once again:

7.

Ok now you will need to use the Flat headed screw driver to put into the gap on top of the screen (should be able to see a little gap), once the screwdriver is in put some leverage force into it so that the screen will pop out.

8.

You will see some white foam pads underneath the screen, just remove them and dispose of them. Now its time to grab you stanley knife ready for the next stage.

[size=200]THIS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT PART OF THE MOD, BE VERY CAREFUL AND TAKE YOUR TIME! [/size]

9. Get your stanley knife and slide it just under the silver coloured foil but make sure you dont end up scraping the glass. Once the knife is under slide it so a bit of the foil is easily grabable by your thumb and index finger.

10.

Now carefully and I mean carefully ! ! ! Slowly begin to pull off the foil, this part maybe time consuming but just use the force of your strength to pull it off as it is the easiest and best way of removing it without screwing up the screen. Once done you screen should look good and clear.

Done:

11.

Now grab your soldering iron and remove the LED (the power up LED) on your gameboy PCB.

12.

Lift your screen up and use your snips to cut the plastic border at the red line points that i have done for you in this image:

Here is the done result should look like:

13.

Now slide in your backlighting kit  (I am using version 2.0 backlight kit), make sure the red and black wires are clearly out of the inside of your screen.

14.

Now at the top left corner of your PCB there will be 3 points of where your gunna have to use you soldering iron to remove these resistors.

15.

Once the resistors have been removed put in your resistor that came with your backlight kit through the nearest hole to the screen (if your looking at your Dmg PCB frontwards it would be the far right hole that you have just made from removing the resistors). Once the resistor has been soldered appropiatly you can snip off the legs off it that are poking out.

16.

Once done solder your RED wire of the backlight Kit to the resistor and solder you BLACK wire to the LED  hole (the hole that is closes to the contrast dial).

17.

Once done slide in your polarising film between your screen and backlight kit, attach the ribbon cable to the other part of your gameboy and flick the power switch on and here should be your result:

[size=200]Polarising Film What you can do with it:[/size]

As you can see withinin your kit you have a single piece of polarising film. I will not go into detail of how it works although there are two options you can choose in order to make your LCD screen display either one of the two types. In order to make your gameboy inverted or non-inverted all you have to do is 90 degree turn the polarising film when you have placed it inbetween the kit and screen. Here are the benefits of non-inverted and inverted:

A Non-Inverted screen benefits are:
-Make the gameboy display visible without light (if you have modded it with a switch to turn backlight on and off p.s. the switch technique is not included in this tutorial).
-Appearntly blue looks great inverted although I have a pink inverted and I say it looks great.
-When the gameboy is turned off the screen looks green.

Inverted Screens benefits:
-They look great
-All the colours become the opposite such as black becomes lighter and lighter colours become dark (trust me try it yourself an see how nice it looks).
-I also have no problem watching whats on the screen even if external light is in the way.
-When the gameboy is turned off the screen will be coloured blue.

Overview:
Choose whichever suites you best, some people find inverted better well as other people say non-inverted is better; at the end of the day its your choice. I would have provided pictures but i cannot get any clear ones as the screens are too bright. Down below I have designed a rough picture of what it looks like though on MS paint:

This is what a non-inverted (normal) screen would look like.

The image above is what an inverted screen would look like.

As you can see the pictures are the opposite colours of eachother (this is what basically inverted and non-inverted screens look like when displaying text).

These pictures are just to give you a rough idea of what inverted and non-inverted screens would look like. Just try it out yourself it only takes a few seconds to do and in real life the whole thing looks alot more better due to the colour of your kit wink


TA DA !! Your backlight kit is working big_smile Congratulations but there is one more thing to do.

18.

Now all you gotta do is screw your gameboy back together and your done! Here is an image of my final product:

Switched off

Switched On

If this tutorial helped you please leave a responce on this thread. I would like to thank Nonfinite for his tutorial http://nonelectronics.com/tutorialsmt.php which helped me grately. The aim of this tutorial is for someone who has no experience what so ever from opening a gameboy to modding one. Hope you have enjoyed reading this tutorial many thanks.

SAMWAVE [myspace.com/SAMWAVE]

Last edited by SAMWAVE (Mar 21, 2010 3:21 pm)

Offline
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

Nice tutorial. some of the pictures could be a bit clearer, but this should help peeps a lot w/ their installations!

DIY 4 LIFE!

Offline
United Kingdom
low-gain wrote:

Nice tutorial. some of the pictures could be a bit clearer, but this should help peeps a lot w/ their installations!

DIY 4 LIFE!

Thank you Low-Gain much appreciated with your feedback smile


When I get hold of a more decent camera I will gladly take some clearer shots.

Offline
Madison, WI

Thanks for this, SAMWAVE.  Glad to see so many people lighting up their DMGs and pockets with these things. ^^

Offline
Melbourne, Australia

The thing you are calling a cathode is actually called a resistor, you might want to edit that.
Also you left the legs on the resistor should have been cut a bit shorter and cover with shrink tube or tape.
Other than the, very nice tutorial, very clear on every step smile

Offline
United Kingdom
TmTgr wrote:

The thing you are calling a cathode is actually called a resistor, you might want to edit that.
Also you left the legs on the resistor should have been cut a bit shorter and cover with shrink tube or tape.
Other than the, very nice tutorial, very clear on every step smile

hehe thought i made a mistake with the 'cathode,much appreciated TmTgr will change it now.

nonfinite wrote:

Thanks for this, SAMWAVE.  Glad to see so many people lighting up their DMGs and pockets with these things. ^^

Nonfinite never knew you was on this site. No probs anyways about this tut was fun to make and I hope it helps some people out.

Cheers for the feedback so far guys smile

Offline
Middlesbrough, England, UK

thanks man, will be trying this shortly using your guide

Offline
Plano, TX

Just wanted to chime in to say I followed this tutorial to install my screen and while it was successful, I think a few things could be clarified or at least written better. There's definitely some (a lot of) room for grammar/spelling correction as well.

First thing I would suggest is to place great emphasis on careful handling of the LCD, making sure to inform people to treat the ribbon cable connecting the screen as carefully as possible. Too strong of a pinch to the ribbon cable will ruin your screen possibly beyond repair.

I would clarify the part on removing the adhesive foil screen, there are a few layers here that can and will pick up on their own, I halfway removed just the first layer before realizing there was still something that needed to be taken off.

Now at the top left corner of your PCB there will be 3 points of where your gunna have to use you soldering iron to remove these resistors.

Make the circles on your pictures easier to see, also for this one, try a picture of the reverse side showing the two resistors you will be removing.

Once the resistors have been removed put in your resistor that came with your backlight kit through the nearest hole to the screen (if your looking at your Dmg PCB frontwards it would be the far right hole that you have just made from removing the resistors). Once the resistor has been soldered appropiatly you can snip off the legs off it that are poking out.

Probably should be to snip the LEG, not LEGS as you'll want to make sure the person following the tutorial knows that the other end will still be used.

Once done solder your RED wire of the backlight Kit to the resistor and solder you BLACK wire to the LED  hole (the hole that is closes to the contrast dial).

Clarify that you are soldering the red wire to the REMAINING wire of the resistor.

ANYWAY, thanks for the write up, it was really useful.

Last edited by PixyJunket (Apr 19, 2010 2:58 pm)

Offline
Plano, TX

Also, I'd probably suggest removing the numerous steps/pictures outlining how to open the Game Boy. That part should be pretty self-explanatory to anybody even thinking about attempting this (or any) mod.

Offline
MA

Great tut... I agree with PixyJunket! Btw... can someone please tell me (dumb question) how and where the shrink tube should be applied? I know it goes on the resistor... but which side and where? Just curious about that.

Offline
Plano, TX

I did not use it but I would guess it should go over the resistor cable soldered to the red wire.

Is there a benefit to using it? I would assume a small patch of electrical tape would work too.

Offline
United Kingdom

I apologise for any errors or misleading that this tutorial may have caused to anyone. I made it during my free time and so whenever I do have free time I plan to pursue in improving this tutorial.

Thanks for the pointers when I can I shall make amendments to the tutorial as soon I can (like taking clearer photos and so on...).

Once again thank you, The feedback that I have received will be taken into account and consideration for future edits/changes.

Offline
MA

No no.. Thank you SAMWAVE!

(Did that today)

Offline
United Kingdom
Turtle413 wrote:

No no.. Thank you SAMWAVE!

(Did that today)


Why thank you Turtle413 by the looks of your gameboy it seems you have done a nice clean job smile updates to this tutorial shall be commencing within a months time (ordering new parts). Overall congrats and thank you so far to all of the people who have used my tutorial.

Offline
Plano, TX

Here is my second install.. can't really get the GB and the light clear due to shit camera.

One more thing, SAMWAVE.. and this is for Project Game Boy's kits (though I'll assume they are mostly the same), but I'd add a note to remove the protective film from both pieces.. top of the backlight only and top and bottom of the polarizing film.

Thanks for the tutorial though, it got me through this and the previous one!

Offline
Tampa, FL

This is my 2nd/3rd time backlighting my gameboys.
I succeeded the first time.
The second time seemed annoying. And now the third time
has just plain pissed me the F*** off.

I have done EVERYTHING correctly. I guess maybe it could be that I'm more
of a musician and not a circuits expert? But the flimsy little wires keep breaking
because of the crammed space. Even before the wires break, I can't get the
LEDs to light up completely. They are dim. Like... Barely-visible-in-complete-darkness dim.

Then I messed around with the wires a bit. and then the screen lit up!
Then I tried putting the case on it gently and the screen went dim again.
@*^(#^@#*)^&)@$&^@*$(^(@**

DO YOU KNOW HOW ANGRY I AM?! Very very very very angry. Am I using too much solder?
Not enough solder? Are my soldered joints really sh***y? The solder hardly sticks to the wires
and it always sticks to the tip. Then when I turn the heat down, the solder solidifies. Is it my soldering
gun? UGHHHHHHH...

>_<