31 January 2011

Project "Nintendo Gameboy Color"

helped a friend fix a gameboy color, apparently the A and B buttons don't work anymore.




the game 'included' is mario golf...tried playing it for a few minutes and i totally lost interest...mario should be best left climbing down sewer pipes and saving princess peach and not playing golf...maybe even take up go-karting but definitely not golf...





it was a very straightforward task, in fact the hardest part was trying to get it open because well you see, apparently screwdrivers were made differently back in the 90's...no i'm kidding it's probably some special screw to discourage kids from opening up their gameboys and making super gundam robots out of them:





anyway, all that was needed was a small enough flathead screwdriver to jam inbetween two of the three holes in the screw and it was enough to turn them.









the powerful 8MHZ processor with 32KB RAM and 16KB GFX processor!!!







the last picture shows the culprit of the malfunctioning buttons. it seems a layer of dust/corrosion built up on the contacts and some contact cleaning fluid and cotton buds got rid of it. all in all it works as good as it should right now, it should work as long as it is not neglected for the next decade or so!

oddly, even after i manually removed all of the visible dust out of the game cartridge and slot on the gameboy, the game still has glitches when you first slot it in. the one and only way to fix this is to blow air into the game cartridge and it works again...seems like that is the only way to get games of the 90's to work properly.

2 comments:

  1. What kind of cleaner fluid do you use?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i used a contact cleaning fluid i got from a hardware DIY shop here, i can't remember the brand but i'm pretty sure any good DIY shop will stock a good contact cleaner. alternatively you should try a dab of isopropyl alcohol and that might work as well!

      Delete