Famikiller
Offline
Edinburgh, Scotland

Hey guys,

I've botched a few mods in my time, but right now I seem to be having trouble with GBC frontlighting.

I've used an official SP frontlight and an aftermarket chinese frontlight (which seems to have vanished from the market since I ordered one 2 weeks ago) and the same thing keeps happening.

Both accounts, after closing up the GB. The second instance, the contacts held up for a while and then suddenly the connection broke.
No amount of trying to resolder to the remaining microscopic connections has worked.

Where am I going wrong? Has anyone else had this problem?

Apeshit
Offline

.

Last edited by Apeshit (Jul 17, 2019 12:19 am)

Koji-Kendo
Offline

Either your soldering iron is too powerful or you're keeping the tip on the contact much too long.
All you need to do to make a good contact is to tin the tips of the wires, then use that solder on the tinned wire tips to make the connection onto the tiny contact pads. Just enough to melt the solder. Should be like no more than 2 seconds.

I made that mistake once before but never again after doing it this way.

Also, it seems to me that a good connection can still be had by soldering to those exposed metal points which are still present.
If that won't work, try scraping off some plastic from the nearby leads and soldering there.

If that's STILL a bust, the light panel is still good without that single led anyway. So you could use a single white, led (as found online or from toy junk) or a 4 led strip from a game boy backlight or the kitsch-bent gbc front-light (my personal fave to use since it's so bright and easy to use).

Oh, oh!
And another thing, liquid tape is a good material to use to reinforce small solder points like these.
Awesome stuff!

Last edited by Koji-Kendo (Apr 8, 2015 6:09 am)

friendofmegaman
Offline
CA

I hope you haven't thrown the panel away. It still can be saved. All you need to do is scrape the surface of the metal panel the ribbon cable was attached to. Scrape until you reach copper to solder to. Track which is + and which is -

Timbob
Offline
Apeshit wrote:

Do you know how to use Eagle?

I'd design a little circuit board that you can solder the ribbon cable to, and then add pads for the wires. OSH Park could make something like this for around ~$3 shipped worldwide, and you'd get three boards.  If someone measures the distance between the pads, I could put together something in about 2 minutes.


a whole world just opens before me...

Famikiller
Offline
Edinburgh, Scotland
Koji-Kendo wrote:

Either your soldering iron is too powerful or you're keeping the tip on the contact much too long.
All you need to do to make a good contact is to tin the tips of the wires, then use that solder on the tinned wire tips to make the connection onto the tiny contact pads. Just enough to melt the solder. Should be like no more than 2 seconds.

I thought that originally, but I did a small tinned connection second time (the one pictured) and it was all good. Closed the GB up and played with it fine for a while.

The connections snapped within the gameboy while it was closed. Perhaps the wire in using is too stiff and causing too much tension on the connections when being bent into place?


Unfortunately the panel is shot I think. No amount of scraping or salvaging will save it. It only cost a fiver off ebay so it's no big loss. I'll use any advice you guys can give me for the next SP i butcher. Frontlight kits are sold out everywhere.

friendofmegaman wrote:

I hope you haven't thrown the panel away. It still can be saved. All you need to do is scrape the surface of the metal panel the ribbon cable was attached to. Scrape until you reach copper to solder to. Track which is + and which is -

Any examples of that procedure I could look at?
The copper trails are fucking miniscule though so I doubt I could solder to them.

Last edited by Famikiller (Apr 8, 2015 10:52 am)

friendofmegaman
Offline
CA
Famikiller wrote:

Any examples of that procedure I could look at?
The copper trails are fucking miniscule though so I doubt I could solder to them.

I don't know of any illustrated tutorials for that. But I would disagree that they're miniscule, they're big enough. You could even solder them with enormous radioshack stock tip. Don't give up!

Last edited by friendofmegaman (Apr 8, 2015 8:09 pm)

bitjacker
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Alive and well in fucksville

use flux

Famikiller
Offline
Edinburgh, Scotland
friendofmegaman wrote:

I don't know of any illustrated tutorials for that. But I would disagree that they're miniscule, they're big enough. You could even solder them with enormous radioshack stock tip. Don't give up!

Worked out great, actually. Thanks man!

Here's a wee pair of pictures as far as scraping goes for future use.

A spot of solder and a ton of tape and everything's working just fine.

Koji-Kendo
Offline

Glad it worked man!
Thank you for posting the photos.
Never seen pics of this either.
I'm looking forward to trying this as well as the little ribbon cable is kind of awkward.
This new method should help keep the wiring out of sight on clear GBCs as well.

Last edited by Koji-Kendo (Apr 9, 2015 6:29 pm)

friendofmegaman
Offline
CA
Famikiller wrote:

Worked out great, actually. Thanks man!

Here's a wee pair of pictures as far as scraping goes for future use.


Awesome!