Alright then, I'll go grab some. Thanks for all the help 
1 Jun 6, 2014 2:35 pm
Re: Gameboy Color Frontlight Mod Failure - Could use some help! (9 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
2 Jun 6, 2014 5:18 am
Re: Gameboy Color Frontlight Mod Failure - Could use some help! (9 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
I'm afraid not. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to buy some flux along with everything else...
3 Jun 6, 2014 5:01 am
Re: Gameboy Color Frontlight Mod Failure - Could use some help! (9 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
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?
4 Jun 6, 2014 1:04 am
Topic: Gameboy Color Frontlight Mod Failure - Could use some help! (9 replies, posted in Nintendo Handhelds)
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.