Sega Game Gear Diagnostic: Power LED Only, Nothing Else

Had lunch with a couple of friends and one of them brought me this, to see if something can be done about it. Gotta be frank, I had never seen or knew that there were Game Gear units with the transformer directly attached to the inside of the console. #RETROGAMING #Sega #GameGear

Let's do this then! This is going to be a long one. Started off with cleaning the cartridges and the slot on the console. #RETROGAMING #Sega #GameGear

Followed up with recapping the original Sega PSU brick.

Assessed the condition of the various boards and found that, well... This is a Game Gear, so... Vomit city 🤮 Also found an "interesting" bodge had been done with the PSU. Fire-hazard one might call this.

Say what you will about the "twisting" method but it does work well in cases like this. Found broken solder joints on the power jack. Dipped the boards in white vinegar and then isopropyl to rinse.

Removed the old caps on the main board. Actually missed one on the first pass but sorted that out later.

Cleaned up the audio and power boards and put them through the ultrasonic.

Recapped them and reflowed solder.

Cleaned up the main board to prepare for new capacitor installation. Found a button pad in rough shape due to the leakage of electrolytic. Cleaned them all up and applied some deoxit.

Installed the new capacitors and cleaned up the solder on various components.

Cleaned up the years of crud on the buttons .

Powered it on and it seems to work, apart from the screen, the backlight doesn't come on.

One of the fuses was dead, so I replaced it.

Voilà, we have the screen working but the console seems to power off randomly.

I looked around, touched up more solder, I took off some additional components for further cleaning. With that it stayed on for 1h before I shut it off. Seems stable but seems to heat up a fair bit though. Here's some Lion King for you guys. #TheLionKing #Sega #GameGear

Finally, took care of the external PSU and restored it to its original form.

One thing wasn't sitting right with me, so let's fix that too. The power brick had tape over it, near to where the wires come out of the casing. #Sega #GameGear

Cut the tape out and the wires. Inserted heat shrink tubing around the individual wires, then a bigger one to encase both wires and then a bigger one to encase that and part of the strain relief. Soldered the wires and then began shrinking the tubes in order.

Still works and looks much better. No?

Keeping it simple today, just cleaning some games. #Sega #GameGear #RetroGame

Since someone asked, this is how you open up a Game Gear cartridge. Here you go @Captainfap020. #Sega #GameGear

This Game Gear had a dim image, even after being recapped. I probed around a bit and then came to the conclusion the bulb was the culprit. Fortunately I had a spare CCFL from a Game Gear in which I installed a BennVenn screen. Problem solved. #sega #GameGear #retrogaming

Been slowly fixing various issues in a friend's Game Gear, this was the final one. Audio output was low, in spite of new caps, new pot, no issues with audio jack or other passive components. Turned out to have a couple of vias on this ground plane that were internally broken.

There was continuity from the top of the vias to the screw hole plating on both sides but there was no connectivity between the sides of the board. I soldered a kynar wire as a template (removed after validation) and then soldered a multi-strand wire.