Dmg Advance Download Step 1

Its a lot of fun to mess with, so heres a quick guide of my experiences taking apart, restoring, and modifying the DMG with an awesome new backlight.

The Gameboy I had was in fairly good condition, with the exception of several vertical lines through the display.

After some research, I learned this is usually due to a faulty display connector, where the solder connections have weakened and eventually separated from the top layer of the display circuitry.

Using a soldering iron, I learned that we can reflow (that is, remelt and reconnect) this broken solder below the connector.

Its not that hard, and fixes what is perhaps the most common issue with these Gameboys.

Dmg Advance Download Step 1

Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 1: Taking It Apart The first step is to remove the back cover of the DMG.

Triwing screws, for those of you unfamiliar, are Nintendos favorite way to make opening their products just ever so slightly more irritating.

If you dont want to spend a couple dollars on a triwing driver, you can do what I did and use a small flathead in one of the three slots in the screws.

Its not super difficult, but you definitely want to be careful to avoid stripping the screws.

Theres four obvious ones on the back of the Gameboy, and two inside the battery compartment.

Once you take those screws out, dont pull the Gameboy apart quickly.

Theres a fairly short ribbon connector connecting the screen half of the Gameboy to the circuitry half.

You could disconnect the ribbon cable at this point (its a ZIF socket, so the connector just slides out), but I didnt want to bother having to reconnect it when I was done.

You can do this repair quite easily without having to put this connector back in.

Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 2: Removing the Circuit Board Next, you have to remove ten screws holding the display board onto the front case.

From this point forward, all the screws well be dealing with are just phillips.

Remove those ten screws, and gently wiggle the front board away from the case.

Dont be too violent here, the board is thin enough you could put some stress fractures in it if youre not a little careful.

If youre having some real difficulty, double check that you have removed all ten screws.

Its a good idea at this point to place a slip of paper between the top board and bottom board so that you dont short anything out you dont want to.

Once youve done this, put the batteries in the Gameboy, turn it on, and change the contrast with the knob on the left side of the display until the whole thing turns black (with the exception of the lines were fixing).

You can see here that the act of removing the display from its housing was enough to cause even more black vertical lines to appear.