oliver
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A simple way to drastically reduce the hum on a GBA:

After pointing them with some sandpaper first, just poke the capacitor's wires into the holes, no soldering required.
The capacitor has to be in this exact position, otherwise it won't fit into the case. Of course legs should not touch any other wires/parts, it may be a good idea to insulate them somehow. At least + should be shorter than shown here and not get so close to C36 on the board.

This is an early board version (AGB-CPU-03), on later revisions, the same mod is possible, but the layout is different.

yoyz2k
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france

Fucking genious smile

GLOOMS
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The Forest, WA

Oliver I love you so much right now . ♡

nordloef
Online
sweden

Cool!

pselodux
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Melbourne

Great! Now show us how to eliminate the whine on the micro tongue big_smile

tearauth
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UK

if you have a recording of this for comparison I'd love to hear it, I have a gba as part of my setup I'd be interested in doing this mod on

scannerboy
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Poland, Gdansk

I tried the mod and to be honest I heard only a little to no difference depending on the unit sad

oliver
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Well, it may depend on the unit, I'll try it with my other one, too. On this one, the difference is quite noticeable. The hum is still there, but at a much lower, SP-like level.

Did you use full 1000uF? Smaller capacitors don't work.

CarrieStronggrog
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Thank you so much for this oliver! Could you maybe share a link to where you'd recommend to buy these capacitors ? Would any generic 100uF 16v capacitors from like amazon be sufficient ?

oliver
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it's 1000uF = 1F, generic model should be fine.

4ormal
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I can only find a 1000uF  50v locally.  Is 50v too big?

scannerboy
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Poland, Gdansk

will it fit into the casing?

oliver
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anything above 5v should be ok. 50v is probably too big in size.

GLOOMS
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The Forest, WA

Yeah I went to radioshack here in the US and thought the dude handing me the 50v was a joke because it was so big.... so can confirm 50v is close to the size of your thumb!

4ormal
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I went to the electronics shop today and they actually had some 1000uf 16v caps, but I've just tried to fit them in the case and they are physically too large.  I'll have to go back and see if I can find some smaller 5v ones that will hopefully fit better.

4ormal
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