It had two Problems: 1. A few dead vertical lines (I fixed them) 2. After turning on, the screen is all black Adjusting the contrast wheel wouldn‘t help. To be sure that its not the wheel, I replaced it with another one (confirmed working in another DMG). Game Boy Backlight How to Install Game Boy DMG Step 1: Disassemble and Clean. To begin, remove all 6 tri-wing screws from the back. Step 2: Remove Polarizing Film. To remove the polarized film on the underside of the LCD. Step 3: Backlight Preparation. Clean behind your LCD screen with a. The Gameboy Curse - Vertical Lines & Dead Pixels - While most DMG Gameboys ( Dot Matrix Gameboy ) are still functioning a growing number of them have vertical lines in the display. Or glitched games displayed on the screen. How to access and replace the black and white LCD screen in your original Game Boy. This is an advanced repair. You'll need to know how to solder to complete this repair, so be sure to check out iFixit's soldering technique guide. Note: If your Game Boy’s display has the classic “vertical lines.
I told you this was easy right?
Use the triwing screwdriver to unscrew the back of the Gameboy. Be careful not to whip it open once you've got the screws out. There are short wires that connect the front and back portions of the unit. Slowly, open it and set the side with the screen on top of the back. It won't be perfectly flat, but that's ok.
The next super easy part is to use the phillips screwdriver to take the screws out of the circuit board that is in the front portion of the Gameboy. This is the side with the screen in it.
You may need to use the flat head screwdriver to unpinch three prongs holding the circuit board down.
Once you've got the circuit board out slide the piece of paper in between the two sides of the Gameboy. This will act as insulation to prevent any electrical shocks.
Now, look for a thick black sticker running the length of the bottom of the screen. You're going to peel this off slowly. Very slowly. Underneath this are the little soldered joints connecting all that processing power to the screen. Some of these soldered joints have come loose. You need to be gentle so you don't break any more of them.
You may need to use the flat head screwdriver to scrape, gently, to get the black sticker off.
Save the sticker.
I was inspired by the many Game Boy Zero builds on You Tube, but one in particular where the user used an original Game boy cart to house the micro SD card. I give the user props for a good functioning build, but with my ability to design PCBs and some more knowledge about getting hardware working I set out to build my own. My project is all working in prototype form except for the audio at this point because i didn't buy an audio amp board for prototyping.Use the triwing screwdriver to unscrew the back of the Gameboy. Be careful not to whip it open once you've got the screws out. There are short wires that connect the front and back portions of the unit. Slowly, open it and set the side with the screen on top of the back. It won't be perfectly flat, but that's ok.
The next super easy part is to use the phillips screwdriver to take the screws out of the circuit board that is in the front portion of the Gameboy. This is the side with the screen in it.
You may need to use the flat head screwdriver to unpinch three prongs holding the circuit board down.
Once you've got the circuit board out slide the piece of paper in between the two sides of the Gameboy. This will act as insulation to prevent any electrical shocks.
Now, look for a thick black sticker running the length of the bottom of the screen. You're going to peel this off slowly. Very slowly. Underneath this are the little soldered joints connecting all that processing power to the screen. Some of these soldered joints have come loose. You need to be gentle so you don't break any more of them.
You may need to use the flat head screwdriver to scrape, gently, to get the black sticker off.
Save the sticker.
What I did is design a set of custom PCBs to replace the original GB PCBs and clean up the project significantly. Even though i was capable of designing the battery charger and audio amp circuits myself, I took the lazy route and leveraged some readily available designs from Adafruit and copied the Layout and schematics into my project.
Specs,
Original Game Boy DMG-01 Case.
Custom Main PCB
Custom Cart PCB
![Gameboy Dmg Screen Gameboy Dmg Screen](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126032942/293023697.jpg)
Custom Button PCB with extra X - Y buttons.
Adafruit 3.2' SPI TFT screen
Mono 2.5W amplifier Circuit
2000mA hour LiPo Battery
Battery Charger circuit
Main PCB
Gameboy Dmg Screen Dimensions
Holds the Pi Zero in a cut out in the middle of the board. Bridges the Connections over to the Cart header for the Mircro SD card. Also bridges the required pins from the GPIO to the screen header. Has Micro USB port for charging. Has USB-A port for external devices. Holds the battery charger circuit and audio amp circuit. I will be using the basic PWM out gpio pin for audio. the audio on these games are pretty crude anyways. The battery connector sticks through one of the openings in the battery compartment with some modification to the opening. I decided not to try to bring out the HDMI port as it would have been very complicated and using a SPI screen the output of the HDMI is the same very low resolution of the built in screen. I am also using the extra GPIO pins for the buttons instead of using a USB device like the teensy. this eliminates the need for a USB hub if you want a USB port on the outside.Cart PCB
Gameboy Dmg-01 Replacement Screen
replaces the cart board with a custom board that holds the Micro SD card. Replaces the card edge connector with a female 0.1 pin header. I will post pictures of the board layout software, but the actual implementation will become more clear once I have the boards on monday.
Button PCB
There were existing options for the DMG-01, but they only had A and B buttons, I used the super game girl board at first for prototyping, but it wasnt really designed for the DMG GB even though it was based on the original 2 button PCB--ABXY button pads didn't line up. I decided to make my own board specifically for the DMG GB with the extra X and Y buttons. I am selling the extra boards on Ebay. I received them today and have pictures.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231974209588?ss ... 1555.l2649
Pictures and video.
Video of GPIO mapped buttons and Adafruit screen working in Prototype form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM_RlXi ... e=youtu.be
Main board and Cart board Panelized (Layout Software screen shot)
Button Board PCB