Categories
Projects Video Games

Game Gear Resurrected!

It is finished! I am thoroughly glad with how this project turned out. I wasn’t sure If I would be able to resurrect my Game Gear from the grips of death, but I am pleased to announce that it is currently back up and running like a champ. I will do a quick recap (that very well could be a pun here in a second). Many electronics at the time of the release of the Game Gear had some poor capacitors in them. They would often break and leak electrolytic fluid. This fluid tends to corrode traces on the board. This happens not only on the main board, but also on the audio board. What is the solution to fixing this you ask?

18298004

 

IMG 0462

Here is an example of some corroded point. If you see the nasty stuff next to the 22 microfarad cap. All of this needed to be scrapped off and cleaned to create a  good solder point. Kind of a pain.

IMG 0463

This is what it looks like with the new caps in place and the corrosion cleaned off to the best of my ability.

IMG 0469

I replaced all the caps on the board. ALl the blue cylinder things are the new ones. 11 in total. There was probably 3 or 4 leaky ones, but it was a good idea to just replace them all.

IMG 0468

WOOO! Go get’em Sonic. The small board in the upper left is the audio board before I replaced the caps.

IMG 0471

This board was surprisingly worse than the main board. It was extremely corroded. Almost all the caps were leaking, too.

IMG 0472

This is the Game Gear all back together. Everything works again including the audio.

IMG 0473

Ditto.

IMG 0477

These are all the bad, old caps that were replaced.

IMG 0476

The aftermath.

I am very happy with how this turned out and it gives me more confidence to do this kind of stuff in the future so watch for more projects of this nature.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.