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Hi there. I do hope this is the right place for this, I've seen several GB related modding topics here so I assumed so...
I've been attempting to frontlight my GBC with a GBA SP frontlight I bought off ebay. This is my first electrical project, including my first time soldering, minus some practice on scrap wires and metal before hand. It's actually gone surprisingly well, and I even fitted a GBA speaker which came with the frontlight which works superbly. It all worked initially, the GBC started (and still works) and the frontlight came on. Then I started putting the case back together (tested it outside the case, you see), and the grounding wire on the power switch housing came off... Simple to fix though so I resoldered it... but held the wire a little too tightly and snapped off a metal peice of the GBA SP frontlight's power ribbon... Here's an image of my mistake:

You can see black marks where I desperately tried to resolder the wire to the nothingness where the metal was, but there's nothing to take it anymore.
Unless I'm wrong, it looks like this power ribbon is quite dead, so my question (finally) is if there is something to replace this ribbon section? It's my understanding (from the fact it came off earlier and had to be glued back onto the metal frame) that this ribbon is just an LED and built in resistor (?) and the LED shines light through screens in the metal frame, dispersing the light evenly through the transparent panel (so I read online), so I should just be able to replace that LED with a same size one?
But as I'm new to all this I'm not quite sure where to start on sourcing a new LED (or even original power ribbon?) that would be right for this project. I'd rather not get another SP frontlight, if it can be helped, seeing as this should be fairly easy to fix with a new LED unless I'm completely wrong.
I already have a 47ohm resistor soldered in, so I don't know how that would effect a new LED. As I said, I'm quite new to electronics in general (though I'm enjoying it!), so please go easy on me!

Goodness that ended up being long, but thanks in advance for any help.

Last edited by SolarSquar3 (Jun 6, 2014 1:12 am)

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Alive and well in fucksville

What kind of wire did you try to solder to it? did you use flux? I burned some of the ribbon cable away also. Kynar wire(20 awg), flux, and very small amounts of solder are the keys. follow the traces of the ribbon cable up a ways it looks like you still have enough to work with. melt away yellow film a little bit (2mm). you will have several tries. after painting exposed metal from ribbion cable (use a toothpick) and the wire in flux paste, hold the wire and ribbon together how you want them before you solder. have a fine tipped (grind it down and sand it smooth so it is about a 35 degree angle) solder iron tinned (this means to melt solder on to the tip). with a drop of solder the size of a pinhead stuck to the iron, touch it to the things covered in flux. the flux will sizzle. DO NOT HOLD IT ON FOR MOE THAN A SECOND! do things step by step.

Last edited by bitjacker (Jun 6, 2014 1:28 am)

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Don't worry the mod is not killed by this mistake. This ribbon cable is extremely fragile and easy to break. What you need to do is to look at the metal panel where the ribbon cable is attached to. Now there you can notice two obvious traces. These are '+' and '-' of the front-light (you can trace from the ribbon cable which is which). What you need to do is take a knife or a blade and scrub these traces until you reach metal surface (the top layer is pretty thin so you'll get there in not time). Then just solder your wires there. Thus you don't have to worry about crappy ribbon plastic shite and your mod is gonna be fine.

Last edited by friendofmegaman (Jun 6, 2014 1:35 am)

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I have done the same when modding a CGB, then compounded the error by lifting the LED from the frontlight optics while attempting to solder to it. Ultimately replaced the LED using a 3mm high brightness white LED, sanded the diffuser of the LED flat to mate with the optics and hot glued in place. I'd follow the advice above first if I were you, but all is not lost. The optics are the main thing. 47 ohms seems sane, if a bit low.

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Thanks for the quick replies. I've scrapped through to the metal, which looks like copper, but the solder wont take to it. I'm using lead-free solder with a flux core, so I'm not manually applying flux, and my wire is copper solid core, but I'm afraid I really don't know any other specifics... Why is it I can't solder the wire to that panel? Is it something to do with the solder or wire I'm using?

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SolarSquar3 wrote:

Thanks for the quick replies. I've scrapped through to the metal, which looks like copper, but the solder wont take to it. I'm using lead-free solder with a flux core, so I'm not manually applying flux, and my wire is copper solid core, but I'm afraid I really don't know any other specifics... Why is it I can't solder the wire to that panel? Is it something to do with the solder or wire I'm using?

That's weird the first time I did this thing I used lead free solder as well... Do you have flux? A bit of flux could help

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I'm afraid not. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to buy some flux along with everything else...

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SolarSquar3 wrote:

I'm afraid not. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to buy some flux along with everything else...

It's a good idea. A bit of flux will make it easier to solder. Just don't be hasty smile

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Alright then, I'll go grab some. Thanks for all the help smile

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Alive and well in fucksville

be careful not to breathe the smoke from the flux. that crap is really bad for you.