Offline
France (au milieu)

Hi,

bit of a worry in my life of blips:

few weeks ago, little gray brick lost 1 pixel line on the side... bit of a bother with street fighter 2 sessions, but no real issue with lsdj...

last week, i've lost a second one (on the right side) and (this worries me most) noticed some strange stuff, like slowing down in the middle of a track, veryvery late response of A&B buttons and some times some silly WTF numbers on the song page...


I'm just starting to get into it and will try to add it to a duo project, but really scared to loose the instrument/data all in a sudden...
i've seen some tutorial on the net to recover the pixel lines with an iron... but what about the rest ?

should I make some human sacrifice ?

Offline

Disappearing lines of pixels are not uncommon as the LCDs age, and can be fixed by the soldering iron method.  I have done so successfully, but have also had one screen which seemed beyond repair.  You will probably be in luck.  Take it very slowly.

As for the other issues, first of all back up your saves.  I suspect that some kind of power issue (most likely dying batteries) is responsible.

Some things to try:

  • Replace the batteries

  • Clean battery contacts / inspect for corrosion

  • Try an AC adapter

  • Clean your cartridge slot and contacts on the cartridge (probably not responsible for the slowdown, though)

  • If possible, try your LSDJ cartridge in another DMG

  • If you have a backlight, try disconnecting it

  • Check your SRAM battery (just in case)

If none of these work, or especially if disconnecting the backlight solves the issues, the answer may be a bad power regulator board.

Offline
France (au milieu)

ok, thanks mate!

i'll try all of these as soon as I get the usb power cable then.

how do you clean contacts ? vinegar, 70° alcohol ?

scared about the iron method though, I'm 99.99% convinced i'm going to manage to screw it up.


actually got quite heavily hooked up by LSDJ (how surprising), so i'd scream a lot with loads of very bad words if the GMB dies... someone would have to pay...

thanks again for the advises

Offline
Jyväskylä, Finland

I've heard that vinegar works quite well with cleaning battery contacts. Also light sanding might work. Kitsch is also selling new ones for 0.80 dollars.

Fixing dead (vertical) lines is really easy with soldering iron. Just remove small strip of rubber/plastic from the bottom of the screen, clean area from glue and slowly heat brown ribbon cable. smile

Offline

Just dont heat it for too long and you wont have any problems

Offline
UK / FR

the slowing down, weird symbols on the screen and unresponsive buttons thing can happen to DMGs when theres a lot of cpu intensive stuff going on in the song, e.g. lots of vibrato and portamento and complex tables. You sure it isnt just that? Like does it happen when youre playing games?

Good luck with the lcd, it sounds scary but it really isnt that hard

Offline
France (au milieu)

hi, thanks for the feedback

no, my use of tables is... how could I say...

...rare smile

i just have a few lines inside

maybe my very own GMB does only dislike D&B... gasp...


have to steel a solder iron at work now...