I've had success heating a metal ruler with a hot air gun, then using that to press against these strips. Much better control over heat, as you can let the ruler cool off more or less as needed. Need oven gloves of some sort though.
Good idea. You would need quite a lot of workspace though. :) It should also be mentioned that there exists T shaped soldering iron tips that are made specifically for these situations and some even come with silicon rubber to help even the pressure without overheating the cable. You can get cheap ones directly from Asia on aliexpress for example. Another solution that doesn't involve soldering is to use pressure just like when you press down around the edge with your fingers. You could for example cut strips of rubber and place them over the cable on the PCB then screw everything back on tight. Add more layers until you get the best result while not deforming the plastics. This additional pressure if often enough to restore the contacts before attempting anything else.
Even a steam iron without the steam would be better than a soldering iron. There's a video from Markusfuller where he uses one to fix an MC-505 LCD screen.
I remember being about fifteen in Christmas 1997. I was at Wal*Mart checking out what's new for the season (Star Trek / Star Wars figures primarily) when I saw this on display. I toyed around with it for about five minutes and for the time, it wasn't half bad. It touted internet capability which was basically unheard of back then, but little did you know that browsing the super information highway would be text base only. Sucks seeing this had the ability to draw graphics.
I can't believe you messed up a quick and simple fix due to impatience.. It was clearly working and there a tons of tutorials online on how to correctly "re-flow" such a ribbon cable.
I could hardly believe my eyes when this video showed up in my subscription feed. Great to see another video from you. It's a good thing you and I derive much of our enjoyment of consoles while working on them, because this one is not a great deal of fun to play.
I've used a metal strip in the past, laid over the ribbon cable and gently stroked with a soldering iron , helps to spread the heat out a bit and stop heating 1 spot too much
I admire the gall of using an iron; I'd have thought a hot air rework station would be the right tool. Thanks for documenting in any case, brings me back to the GBA Afterburner days!
Just took mine out of storage and it was in the same condition (lines). You can buy a soldering iron tip with a silicone attachment, meant to do this job. metal on the plastic strip will melt it, the heat from the silicone covered soldering tip won't melt it, but reactivate the glue. I originally purchased the iron for a computer LCD of mine, but will try it on this. Other people had success with a hair dryer and pressure.
I would have tried liquid flux and applied a little heat to try to reflow them contacts. Shame it didn't work out, better luck next time. Glad to see you back again.😁
Just wanna let you know man that your videos inspired me to start restoring my own faulty stuff! Really feels like diving into a new passion of mine, so thank you! Wouldn't have discovered it without your content!
That particular style of connector is notorious for causing partial screen failures. It uses a heat activated adhesive, rather than solder to adhere to the glass screen and/or PCB, which requires much less heat to affix. The plastic ribbon cable, although heat tolerant, has a much lower melting point than that of solder so care should be taken to avoid overheating as this could damage the cable or break the screen. I have repaired a few devices with this type of connection and find that using hot air, set to around 150°C, and a small tubular object as a kind of rolling pin works best.
That's shame it didn't work out, but on the bright side it was a good learning experience, relatively cheap and if/when you get another one, you'll have more experience + extra parts to cannibalise if necessary.
So happy mine still works. For some reason I really like it, games are on the slow side and most aren't that good but better then some Atari 2600 games. I haven't seen my stylus since I got the thing.
I'm sorry to see that it didn't work out, but as a titbit for the future, whenever you attempt a reflow on ribbon cables, always cover it with a strip of kapton tape, it reduces the chance of melting it significantly.
It's a shame these are such a pain to work on. I have a system with similar issues and thought maybe I could crack it open and wiggle a cable or something, but after seeing your video I realize it's a lot more complex to deal with than it's worth.
Awww bugger. I use a hot air gun on Gameboys as you said. Definitely gives you a bit more temperature control. I had completely forgotten this console existed. 😀👍🏻
I've had good luck repairing virtual boy lcds with a heat gun. I heat it up a little and then press down on the connection with a rubber eraser and let it cool, that seems to be a lot safer than the soldering iron method although it's not without it's own risk.
I don't normally like videos I like.....because I suck and just move on to the next video with my attention span. But I'll like your videos more if it means you'll continue to make them. It sucks waiting for months to see the next one :(
I give it points for having a D-button, most companies seem to use small two to three letter alphabets heh. I'm all for original restoration but when it comes to the Game Com I think any new touch screens would be better. Maybe backlight mod it, make it better than it was.
That thing was way a head of it's time and had some big name titles on it, shame they didn't make an updated model with more power. Any chance of you doing a top 10 N-GAGE games video.
i have one of these i got of ebay a couple of years ago for 42usd including shipping from usa to new zealand came with 7 games and was almost mint condition
Little known fact: it was called the "game com". Everyone knows it as the "game dot com" because of the "dot com" boom still at full force. Also, it could read into a sort of leaderboard online and had two slots for cartridges. The system's screen was "resistive" which had to be pushed to click, not the "capacitive" screens which we know today.
Well, no success at repairing the screen, so I removed it completely to expose the 11 LCD pins on the mainboard. Interesting fact, the touchscreen digitizer? Yeah, that's not even soldered down. It's held down to the pads via adhesive, pads, and pressure from the plastic frame screwed down. So I am going to see if I can figure out how to put a backlit touchscreen LCD in it.
Too bad about the Game.com, but at least you can chuck in a Raspberry Pi in it with a new screen. Someone has already done this with an old Tiger handheld.
Is it a bespoke screen that's in there then? I have an old Game.Com and I was thinking about trying to replace the screen with something a bit better, as the screen are notoriously hard to see and suffer from motion blur. Mine also has a bit of leakage. Something with a back-light would definitely make a huge difference to a Game.Com.
hmmm has to be a way of doing this in a better way i wonder if you can use a clothes iron try on low to high bit at a time also a larger coverage rather than small solder iron?
Calyn G Usually lines on a game gear are due to the ic corresponding to the display. If you get your iron and heat up the one to the right you'll notice some lines appear again, but they almost immediately disappear again. There is no real fix other than paying $100 for a McWill Screen (which is honestly worth the money if you're emotionally attached like me and have a good library of games) or you could strip it to try to make it into a consolized game gear. Cheers!
Police responded to a call reporting loud shouting and what sounded like furniture being thrown around. They broke the door down and found a disheveled man sitting on the floor in front of a Tiger Game.com he had been trying to take the screen out of.
Does anybody know what kind of glue they use to fix such flexible plastic ribbon cables to a circuit board? I'm guessing it's some sort of conductive glue. But how do they apply it so it doesn't short out across the traces? I've ruined several different machines trying to repair stuff like this
When you are watching old RetroGameTech videos and you get a notification for a new RetroGameTech video, you have to change your pants after. Or is that just me? Also i unfortunately have to buy one of these for my Resident Evil collection. Know of any mods that will make the games look better? Besides pepper spraying yourself that is.
"I'm going to use parts from these two consoles to make one good one." It'd still be a Game.com. Still, they came up with The Furby a year later so they did something right.
Glad you posted this. I think you were pretty much doomed from the start. Not a quality item and poorly designed and assembled. The DMG is a lot better in layout and quality. This is a poor competitor. But well done for trying. 👍
Clearly these things were never meant to be serviced considering how the wires connecting to the screen were soldered to it rather than being connected to a header.
Ah well, it’s not a big loss. The game con, one fine piece of whang chung low engineering..... apprearantly mark from classic game room used it to tease his video editor with one of these. He always looked foreward playing the game con.
