idfkgohst I actually tried this mod with loca and it looked terrible! I think it has to do with the structure of the front light that loca simply passed along the light instead of the panel catching it and reflecting it. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this mod with loca.
on the actual front light there is a tab that is hanging off to the side with two little box things (not the main one, it is much smaller and to the left of the main one), the tiny ribbon cable connecting it has broken, will the mod still work?
Thank you. Even though I watched this video ONLY to learn how I should pry out the GBC screen without breaking it, I actually decided to take apart my GBC to use its screen on my first gen GBA SP with back lighting. The screen on my back up GBA SP is broken, and I figured this would be a good experiment to see if I could use them alternatively.
The end result of this mod looks great! I was so excited to try it out until I realized that my broken SP is an AGS 101 and not a 001. D: So it just ordered a frontlight kit and some LOCA instead.
+dj505Gaming dude what you need is a 001 ,,,, and then when u done , take the 101 screen and instal it on your 001 ,,, and then you have it there :D more fun :D lol
This is a great guide! I didn't want to sacrifice a GBA so I bought an aftermarket front light screen online. It's a little too bright... I may want to try this method with my red coloured GBP.
I don't know why. But i can't seem to get the light going on the frontlight. I used the right wires and also the right resistor but i can't seem to get it light up. I'm sure i soldered in the right places but nothing! Help would be appreciated.
Small question, i've noticed on a lot of forums that they desolder the 2 orange pads which are attached together where as here you kept the pads together. Did you have an issues with this? I've done the same as in the video and it doesn't appear to working so I was curious if this could be the issue.
Thanks for the video! However, I found that the light was too bright and I could barely see anything. I changed the resistance from 47 to 470 and it looks great now.
You don't need to sacrifice a perfectly good Gameboy Advance SP to do this, handheldlegend.com has a frontlight kit designed for use with the Gameboy Color, which costs way less than an SP.
for the 47 ohm resistor, what variation did you use. I'm aware that there are different wattage for them such as 1w, 1/2w, and 1/4 w. I've searched online but can't seem to find out which one is better for this project
My front lit GBC is the same color as this one in the video. But my front light has been cut to fit horizontally to eliminate the annoying vertical fuzzy lines you see in real life and much better lighting.
Any good ideas to not have the buttons light up? Perhaps some black electrial tape over the part that isn't visible, to cover the screen up? Would that work?
I love this and all but it's not worth breaking my very expensive gameboy advance sp so I'm gonna pause until I can find a cheaper gba sp with the same screen on letgo
The annotations on this video say what each song is at the beginning of that song. The first one towards the beginning is Joshua Morse - Turtle Dance 2, the second song used is Flexstyle - Enchanted. Both we found at ocremix.org
The gba sp adhesive gasket ripped in half and I ended up putting a nice large scratch in the light panel attempting to remove it, it works, but the scratch is there
There have been efforts to replace the GBC screen's reflective coating with a backlight, but it doesn't look good (or even acceptable) at all. Unless someone makes an entirely new drop-in replacement backlit screen, this is the best solution.
I'm thinking you could use some electrical tape on the light screen to block the light near the buttons. What do you think? Would that work or would it just make it too thick to fit in the housing?
Quick question, is it possible to put a switch between the resistor and the back-light to cut the flow turning the back-light off? or does this not work?
Hello, I added a front light from my 001 SP to my gameboy color and it produces a blue light instead of a white light. Do you have any ideas of why this happened? Also, my screen often glitches and skips while I am playing unless I squeeze the actual gameboy cartridge to the docking port, and all of my screws are tight. Thank you!
So while peeling the orange tab of the off the back of the lcd, I accidentally pulled the two sides apart. Will it still work even though the back of the tab was pulled off? The two contacts are still there, just they are now bare on both sides.
What soldering iron do you suggest using, I have a weller 80w 1mm tip, not sure if the wattage is too high and I know I will definitely need a different tip, any suggestions?
I figured out that people are cutting the SP light in order for it to fit with the light pointing upwards! does anyone know how in the hell this is possible without breaking the light?
i am confused on which wire to solder to the orange tab? does the wire connected to the resister go on the side closet to the contacts or the opposite side?
PANCAKES !!! Should work fine with the GB pocket, although you might need a different resistor. But because the screen is very different from the gb color's you can use a backlight like in the dmg (which is easier/better quality)
PANCAKES !!! Why would you want to do this with the Gameboy Pocket, those you can backlight, watch RetroGametech's GameBoy backlight mod, here's his video. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Xh-QZQUTt6Q.html
I did this mod today. My screen isn't nearly as bright as yours shown. I did get the glowing button so I know the front light is working, and if I go into a pitch black room I can see my screen lit up, but it is still too dim to play comfortably. Anyone have any ideas what my issue might be?
Help! I did this mod and everything is correct, I've checked it like a thousand times. My problem is that my frontlight screen barely glows, so the screen is still dark :/ What went wrong??
It didn't work for me. I did everything the way you said. But I did use a 100 ohm resistor. Which I thought was close enough to a 47 ohm resistor. But it should of worked anyways.
It's definitely a unique situation that you would want to do this. I personally work at a place that I see junk SP's pretty often and thought it would be pretty cool to take my Gameboy Color, which was the first system I ever owned, and give it new life. I know people are selling the front lights separately now, though.
Any way to make the GBC screen vsisble and bright without taking parts from other systems? I don't want to invest so much time and potentially money into something I could so easily emulate anyway.
It essentially just got soldered to the shielding of the power switch. It can be soldered to any place that serves as a ground on the board, we picked the power switch area because it was the closest and easiest to get to.
Failed hard at this. Saw people do this with out a resistor. Soni tried it. Worked for a second. So cracked it back open re soldered it aned fucked the connection.
i know this is kind of a dumb question but after going this it would make the gameboy sp no longer playable right? and another pretty dumb question is can gameboy color play gameboy sp games?
Mine almost did too. I started prying it but only the metal casing was coming out and it got all bent. I had to poke from the sides to get the screen off.
hi, i did all the steps to frontlight my game boy color, and it worked, but the light is like too bright, and I cant' see the images on the screen. Did i mess something?
I don't know a whole lot about the hardware of the GBC and original GB, so this might be a stupid question... but would it be possible to maybe swap out the blurry green/black display of the original GB and replace it with the one from the GBC? They look like the same size to me but I still wonder if the details inside might make this impossible/difficult. Not having any like with googling.
probably not but if you want a better screen get the old GameBoy pocket (1997 version) or the japan only GameBoy light. they have better and bigger screens and the light has a front/back light but sadly they still use the GameBoy internals.
cubesinanutshell I love the Gameboy Pocket of course, but purely for nostalgia reasons my hope was to have the original big brick in my hands. I recently bought one but quickly realized the memories are better than the reality lol. That dark, blurry as hell screen is nearly impossible to play on, so I was hoping to put in a screen that didn't smear so much and had some back-light.
gameboy color can play GB games. plus when the GAMEBOY COLOr pops up at the biginning, you can chose you palet range of color to replace the black-ish tones of the original BG to play with. So it is pretty neat. Another trick is that on ebay you can buy those custom light screen for GB and GBC cheap. So i dont see any reason nowadays to tear apart a nice GBASP. I just bought last weak a white LED screen and an orange light screen and some nice colored shield to pimp my 2 old gameboys
If you just google "frontlit gameboy" there are a couple places that sell them. We are looking into making and selling modded systems possibly in the future, too.
+Imre Saks But its also very bright and makes the screen look washed out. Found that out the hard way and ended up adding an extra resistor anyway. Plus you need LOCA to do the better version of the mod.
KindOfALotOGaming oh dang, i actually dont know how to solder, or where i can get soldering stuff, but is the resistor required? or is that just for glowing button, cause i dont rlly want even more soldering, thx :D
CristianNabiegames Radioshack carries everything you need for basic soldering, the resistor is for the frontlight and the button only glowing before its right next to the led in the frontlight.
