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  • Joined: 11 Mar 2006
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Game Gear problem
Post Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:20 pm
the problem is that the lcd has light bars. objects in motion have a light bar. i made a picture in an emulator witch shows my problem. sorry for my bad english
untitled.JPG (16.94 KB)
untitled.JPG

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  • Joined: 28 Sep 1999
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 8:17 pm
gorgyrip wrote
the problem is that the lcd has light bars. objects in motion have a light bar. i made a picture in an emulator witch shows my problem. sorry for my bad english


I don't know how bright your light bars are, but on my GameGear they are very noticable. All GameGear have a lot of blur and 'crosstalk' where lit parts of the screen make rows and columns also light up. I checked Super Columns and it looks the same way for me.
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  • Joined: 11 Mar 2006
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:53 pm
thanx for the reply.
indeed the light bars are very noticable. when i play fatal fury special, at the title screen there's a white line from top to bottom of the screen.
Another problem is the the screen has faded colours, and when i look at the screen from 90 degrees, i can't see almost anything. the only way to play a game is to look at the screen from about 130 degree. is this normal? i never had a working game gear. And i've played only on a gear with the lcd broken, and i could see only 1/7 of the image, but i remember the colours were very vivid.
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:24 pm
gorgyrip wrote
thanx for the reply.
indeed the light bars are very noticable. when i play fatal fury special, at the title screen there's a white line from top to bottom of the screen.
Another problem is the the screen has faded colours, and when i look at the screen from 90 degrees, i can't see almost anything. the only way to play a game is to look at the screen from about 130 degree. is this normal? i never had a working game gear. And i've played only on a gear with the lcd broken, and i could see only 1/7 of the image, but i remember the colours were very vivid.


Yeah, the screen really is that bad. I had an original GameGear when it launched, and the colors are indeed washed out beacuse of the backlight. The newer Majesco re-release of the GG is the exact same way. Same thing with the viewing angle - the colors sort of look inverted and greenish when you are out of the proper viewing angle.

It's just old, old LCD screen technology. I think nowadays we are spoiled by the much nicer looking TFT LCD displays. :)
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viletim!
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 7:13 am
While the Game Gear screens are not great, they are not so bad as peoples memories. There is a chronic problem with many (all???) Sega manufactured units... A particular type of componet, the SMD electrolytic capacitor, was used in various parts of the internal circuitry. These horrible components are all starting to fail now.

The symptoms are exactly as you describe - Washed out picture, pixes interacting with others on the same line/column, crazy viewing angle, and, of corse, distorted/missing audio. Even when new the screen looked a bit washed out and the pixels interacted with each other a little bit but not enough to bother anyone.

I've ranted about this a number of times on these forums and I get the feeling people don't believe me. Take the Atari Lynx (well...Lynx II, I don't have an original model) for example. It uses exactly the same type of LCD screen as Game Gear. There are a different ammount of pixels, but one could remove the LCD pannel from on system an put it into the other. There two systems are both roughly the same age, yet only the Game Gear exibits all these unusual problems.

Gorgyrip, in order to fix your game gear you'll have to open her up, replace the dozen or so capacitors on the main board and clean up any electrolyte (corrosive liquid that sometimes leakes from these capacitors when they fail) leakage.
 
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:17 am
i also just discovered today that my GG screen is messed up actually appears to be scrolling. i opened it up to find a little bit of oilly clear liquid on the main board. i have already replaced my GG once before and hate to do it again, it in exelent condition. does anyone know exactly which caps. need to be replaced. thackyou in advance.
 
  • Joined: 24 Sep 2006
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:22 pm
Dave,
Scrolling? You mean like an old TV with the vertical hold misadjusted? Strange... The liquid can be cleaned up with metho and a cotton bud (or old toothbrush, etc). Replace all the electrolytic capacitors on the main board. They look like a metal cylinder encased in a plastic, either white or black, with the value marked on the top. Not all of them may be leaking/faulty but they are all failure prone.

When you replace them you'll notice a distinct rotting fish type smell that comes from heating up the leaky electrolyte that has accumulated around the component legs. Standard radial electrlytic capacitors (the type found at any electronics shop) make suitable replacements.

Here's a picture of one of my Game Gears with the capacitors replaced (ignore the modification board) though I seem to have missed one in the lower left hand corner.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:23 pm
Thanx alot for your help, will try as soon as i can get my hands on some new caps. may i ask what's with the mod'ed board. it looks like you've put in a serial port on top of the GG. is this for a pc connection and rom loading, if so do you have info on that or a link ect. i've looked into that one persons site that offers a home brewed card with a serial port on it for putting a bunch of roms on it but he wants about 100.00 us dollars for it. to much for me to spend on such a old unit.
 
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 8:25 pm
Viletim,
hi, i just got back from driving all over Gods creation, looking for some caps. the one place i know would be able to help me (have in the past) went out of business years ago, and the people at RadioShack could not be more useless. could you give me the specs on the caps i need to replace and maybe a reliable online site to buy from. thax alot for your help
 
  • Joined: 24 Sep 2006
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:32 am
The modification board allows me to play the Game Gear on my TV. I've put up a page about it at
http://members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/ggrgb/ggrgb.html

There's also more info about replacement capacitors towards the bottom of the page. The capacitor values are printed on the capacitors themselves. Notice the capacitor in the bottom left corner of the picture has 10 6 printed on the top. This means 10μF (micro-farad), 6 volts. It's ok to use a higher voltage replacement...

I can't recommend you any component suppliers because I don't live in the USA (you metion Radio Shack). Maybe try Mouser or Digikey?
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:16 pm
Just wanted to thank you Viletim for all your help. I got my hands on some new capacitors and replaced as described and my Game Gear is just like new again. So thank you again for your help.
 
  • Joined: 05 Jan 2006
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Post Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:19 am
I also want to extend my thanks to viletim for posting this info...thanks to this thread I was able to *finally* repair my most screwed up GG. I actually had desoldered the LCD and other components because I though it was unfixable lol. but not my GG lived again ^_^

-Segasonicfan
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help with a game gear problem
Post Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:32 pm
I had preaty much the same problem with the screen colors, I followed the instruction on how to replace the capacitors and the problem was fixed though not intierly - the picture is well created but with third of the screen (exactly in the middle of the screen) darker than the rest (the left and right parts)
Do you have any idea of what could have caused such kind of defect?
Another problem Im experiancing is that the Game Gears built in speaker make a much lower sound than it suppose to make. any idea about that problem?

Thanks, Ran.
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Post Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 6:58 am
Same problem, replace the caps on the sound board. http://www.smspower.org/dev/docs/GGFix.zip
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Jeanna
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Blank screen?
Post Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 5:58 pm
Thanks for the tips, tim. I'm going to try cleaning that fluid up. I've had my game gear since I was about 2 or 3 years old (it belonged to my brothers before I inherited it haha) And it has been through a lot of sitting in the heat and stuff over the years. But about 3 or so years ago, the sound card started to fail. The other day I turned it on for old-times-sake and the screen was almost impossible to see with lines and such all over it. And NOW... none of my games will even show up. I thought it could have been the power supply, so I changed that around and it finally turned on. A lot of luck that gave me... Should I risk opening her up and cleaning it or is it just a lost cause by now? I don't want to replace this game gear with another... I've had it for so long. Even my genesis isn't working right, but that's another story...
 
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Post Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:44 pm
sorry for the long reply, but i completly forgot about this forum.
i replaced all the capacitators, except 22, 33 and 68uf because i didn't found them in my town. but now there's a huge difference. the lite bars are dimmer, basicaly the image is a lot better. i also replaced the caps from the audio board, and now the sound is soooooo loud! thanx for your help. the hardest part was bearing the smell when i desoldered the capacitators. :)
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Post Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:14 pm
Sounds like a good project for the weekend, still have a couple of GGs (one I've had since new the other second hand) that will likely require the caps replaced.

The sound died a while ago on my original GG and I already replaced the cap on the board with the same spec. It did fix the sound but there was a noticable quality loss and some white noise. I'm wondering if its because I either need a better capacitor or maybe some of the others have failed also.



On a side note its very cool to see the TV mod working in full on your site. Last time I checked (admittedly a while ago) the closest anyone had got was a basic monochrome output to the TV.
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Post Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 11:44 pm
Hey I just purchased an old game gear off eBay but when it rocked up the screen was all screwy. Its kinda just static horizontal coloured bar lines and there is no sound.

Do you think i will be able to fix this with the above tips? Very cool post. But i haven't done much electronics, what do i need, a soldering iron? This is a good opportunity to finally crack open a system and have a tinker with it.

Also i have no idea what capacitors are needed etc... i'm in Australia, what do i buy? Any tips?

Cheers guys, Matt
 
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Post Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:05 am
read all the thread and you will find out how to identiy the caps. all you need is a soldering iron and about 2$ to buy the caps. you can find the caps in any electronic shop. if you can't find the exact voltage you cand use caps with higher voltage.
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Post Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 1:31 pm
I should mention that the game gear repair page has been moved here:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/eviltim/ggrgb/ggrepair.html
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Replaced caps - still vertical line
Post Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:36 pm
Hi, I aquired a GG about 3 weeks ago and itworks fine except it has many coloured vertical lines down the screen. I have just replaced 11 capacitors inside as recommended by the above site - it is the board with two ASIC chips on it. The screen has become brighter as a result but the lines are still there, crisp as ever. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what may be the cause of this?

Many thanks in advance,
Alex.
 
  • Joined: 11 Aug 2007
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Post Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 9:51 pm
I had that problem.
In my situation, it was some kind of bad contact between the chips in the LCD and the glass itself (the 3 chips in line in the LCD). Try to press them and see if the lines change... if yes, it's the same problem I had.

Solution: replace the LCD =P
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