The LCD mod is not needed, especially for that price, however there are LED bulb replacements for about $9.99 along with some DIY solutions to LED mods. Definitely an idea worth checking out.
you can use some plastx plastic polish or brasso to buff up the lens to a clear finish again, you just have to mask off the black areas as the coloring can buff out its only just beneath the surface of the plastic. also when the battery terminals split from corrosion you can brace and resolder them together as they are plated copper. i'd also advise just washing in heated white vinegar.
Aww, I loved my Game Gear, took good care of it for 15+ years, not a single scratch. Then I gave it to a neighbor's kid along with 5 games, sonic and others. Never knew Retro Gaming would become a thing :(
Word is that some Chinese company in the early 90s or late 80s got a capacitor formula via corporate espionage and such but the formula was bad and they released some cheap unstable caps. It was called the capacitor plague. Fun times.
It was the early 2000's companies like Dell, Apple, and HP took a large hit. Good luck findind a Pentium 4 Dell Dimension Tower or a P4 laptop... Horrible stuff. A company did find out who did it but never disclosed it.
@@jba2048 man I remember in like 2002/3 Dell has to hire a bunch of local PC Techs (they had to fix em fast, most were PC store owners) from all over and send them out to home and businesses to replace motherboards and PSU. My sister had to do that, even tho I am a system builder, at that time I couldn't beat there price.
@@xaer0knight Here's the best I could find, from a forum post: "Luminous Town Electric, a capacitor manufacturer, hired a scientist who worked for Rubycon Corporation, another and rather more up-market capacitor manufacturer. As part of the 'unwritten' terms of employment, he was supposed to steal Rubycon's far superior electrolyte formulation, a trade secret mix of chemicals that make Rubycon's capacitors so good. But he screwed up - accounts differ as to if he made an error, or if Rubycon management found out about the industrial espionage and swapped the formula on file for a deliberately defective one. Either way, Luminous got hold of a dud - and, thinking they now had Rubycon's famous electrolyte formula, went straight into production without testing it. They made and sold a lot of capacitors before customers realised that the new Luminous capacitors were prone to explode after a while."
@@keeleye7225 that's some great information! You should add it to Wikipedia and cite the source. All I could get was a ABIT found out what company made them and never disclosed it. They went under in 2008 and there only contribution was under volting on motherboards
yes, that and a LiPO battery pack and you will get hours of fun-time. or, gut the thing and put a Pi in it with all the games on an emulator, swap out the speaker and plug a USB hub to it and run xbmc with a keyboard and mouse and control all your smart devices on your wi-fi. use hdmi to display to the tv and play mario bros wirelessly with some IR transcription. the thing is primitive it will likely never be worth more than $6
@@icyuranus404 following this logic is best to buy cheaply PSP, mod it, and play every Game Gear game there ! But this is not the case here. I can understand the feeling and vibe playing this stuff. I still reminiscent old handhelds
Hey RetroRepairs thank you so much for your in depth channel! Inspiring video for me to get into electronics repairing. I saw you were messing with a drywall sanding block, maybe a wire brush would help better clean out the plating on battery terminals you think?
It could, but the only one I have is for prepping concrete for bonding new concrete, which is way too stiff. A lighter one could get into the spaces. The other trick is size. It's so small, you'll likely tear up up hand with a wire brush
Ive never owned a Game Gear, so this is something new for me. Looks like a cool console. In the 90s Gameboy was the thing over here, but since it was kinda expensive too, I had the "brick game". It was a very basic handheld, but at least you could have some fun waiting for a train or bus. I really wonder why they lost with Nintendo, I mean, there is no way the battery consuming was the only reason
Thanks for this video tutorial, you make it look easy AF! I bought a Game Gear last weekend for $40 untested at a thrift store. Surprisingly, mine had both battery covers which is a huge plus to a collector like myself. There is a ton of green corrosion all over the contacts. Going to try your method and see if I can make it portable again. I literally have no games to test the screen or the sound. I’ll worry about that later haha. Thanks again man, you just gained another subscriber!
I think you would benefit greatly from a rotary tool. It is very good for those hard to reach spots. You can get all sorts of attachments like buffing wheels and wire wheels. Great video as always!
I would love to see this fully restored with the mods you were talking about! This was my favorite back in the day. If I remember correctly we would play mortal Kombat on it a lot
Seems they cheaped out on Game Gear innards. Possibly due to the tech for backlighting and color screen was the most expensive parts. I think that brown coating could be a cheap form of RF shielding/cost saving.
Thanks for the vid. I've refurbed about a half dozen Game Gears but I've never removed the soldered terminals before. That's a pretty good idea. Regarding the plastic screen cover, you can remove it. The adhesive will probably last 100 years, unlike the caps.
this was a great video. i found my gamegear in the closet after at least 10 years (batteries expired 2012) and a ton of corrosion on the battery connections. this was super helpful to safely opening the case without breaking any wires. thanks
My Grandma baught me one of these back in 92 or 94 with everything the antenna for TV and the magnifying glass a four way power plug not sure for what it was for. But my gamegear fizzeled out when my mom's battery blew out on her Honda Civic
This thing is awesome, looks like a little TV and a game console from the 80s all shoved into a device as small as possible. Very old equipment in here, not a lot of surface mount stuff, just good old fashioned caps and resistors and fluorescent tubes run by AA batteries lol.
Actually it's 90%+ SMD components in there. And there is a TV tuner cart available, although sadly useless now analog is gone :( Actually, thank you, you just gave me an idea...
I did an led backlight mod on a silent scope gun display that had a cfl tube. I ended up just using some cheap 5050 led strip I had lying around, looks just as good as the original backlight. Tapped into 12vdc off the board, been working for over a year.
Cleaned contact on an old game gear, following your example. It was not operative when he bought to me just as a memory a couple of years ago. Today I decide to try to do something (I have time due to quarantine) and... Ta daaa. It works in battery! Thanks for sharing this video
Weird situation, but I had a Game Gear for a couple of months as a child while a church friend was in some branch of boot camp, he let me borrow it for the time. All I remember is the 6 batteries required that lasted 2 hours and having more fun with that system than I ever did on a gameboy.
What you said around 18:45... I, personally, would NOT spend $120 on a backlight mod on something you intend to resell (if that's what you intend to do). You're right, such an expensive mod for a $6 Game Gear is not worth it. However, I DO suggest doing it for your OWN Game Gear, IF you use it alot on batteries (for example on long trips). If, however, you explicitly use an AC adapter in place of the batteries, then it's not economically advisable. _*Bonus Math*: Assuming the batteries last an exact 3 hours, if you use the Sega Game Gear for 1.5 hours per day (average), then it'll chew up about 90 batteries per month (1.5h*30d/3h*6batt). Assuming Duracell batteries (at roughly $1 per battery (there are other, lower-quality batteries with a much lower price than that, just using a common example), you're looking at around $90 per month._ _With just an AC adapter, assuming an electricity price of 14.6¢ per kWh (in Canada, Ontario), and the Game Gear uses 3W per hour, the total cost per month would be less than two cents (1.5h*30d*(3W/1000)*14.6¢)._ _Just my two cents (yes, pun intended, go ahead and flame if you want, I don't care)._
If it's about on-the-go power consumption, you can put in an LED backlight retrofit, the backlight panel is $10 on Handheld Legend. However what the modern integrated $100+ LCD mod does is give you a ghosting-free high-contrast screen. Also what's the deal with non-rechargeable batteries? Does anybody still use those, except in an emergency or in ultra-low-power devices? I have cheap store-brand Eneloop Pro clones everywhere, they're great, they come pre-charged and cost 5€ for a 4-pack, plus you need a smart charger, which could be like $15-$30.
@@SianaGearz alot of rechargable batteries don't have a very long shelf life anyway. They slowly lose the ability to charge to full capacity until they don't work and they generally cost more than regular batteries. Better to just plug the thing in.
In all reality, i rarely use it as it is, if i do, it will be plugged in. A screen replacement would be solely for better picture and for a project to do.
@@toxicavenger6172 Eneloop Pro (and even Chinese clones) have a life of upwards of 500 cycles until they lose a third of their capacity permanently; self-discharge is at the level of about 20% per year for genuine ones and up to 40% per year for cheap Chinese clones. This is an absolute game changer compared to prior NiMH chemistries, that while reached higher capacities, weren't nearly as long-term stable, losing most of the charge within 2-3 months. The specified capacity on store-brand clones made in China is 2400 mAh - not verified yet myself because lazy, but the store is super trustworthy. They also seem quite low-ESR and capable of high burst currents, as they easily max out 20A on my multimeter and don't get very warm in the charger, so they tend to fare pretty well against alkaline in unfavourable scenarios, in digital cameras and such. I have been using the same NiMH smart charger that i bought 20 years ago, it was still made right here in Germany by IVT, so it's been an excellent one-time expense. Non-Pro Eneloop version has lower capacity and even higher long-term stability with less capacity degradation per charge good for thousands of cycles and even less charge loss in storage than Pro version. Naturally plugging in when possible is a sane choice, but then, it's a handheld console, ideally you'd make use of the fundamental freedom the form-factor provides. Also wireless mice, controllers, etc. are a great convenience and for me they tend to accumulate at great pace - Xbox controllers for PC, Wii remotes, and more, all kinds of gadgets both bought and self-made. Xbox controller needs more power than a Gameboy Advance.
I came to watch this because I was curious to see if the Game Gear had a CRT-as that's what I read in several places-and the first video I saw had The Retro Future, the horrible trendy little chode, wiggling components until the solder broke instead of desoldering them like he should have, the creep. I'm glad to see you doing this properly-I'll take due diligence over flash any day. Do all of them have that orange interior?
The brown is resistive paint, it's commonly used in older laptops. I remember a laptop which had positive and negative lines inverted and it briefly shorted, nice smoke and smell ;-) no damage thought.
The capacitors were cheap because the cost of the CFO bulb was the bulk of the production cost per unit. Unfortunately. it came at a price of console failure over time.
This video is very important as you tell us how to put the batteries connectors properly and solder the wires connected to them properly. Not much Game Gear repairing videos do that like yours.
I agree, $120 for a backlight is crazy but the shared knowledge would help. I never went to school for any of this but have been doing repairs following RUclips instruction. Thank you for this, btw.
I just got a broken game gear in the mail, I think it has the same issue with the corroded battery terminals. Inside of it there was a ton of battery acid, but I don't think it damaged any electronic parts.
I loved my SEGA Game Gear when I was a kid. It's a shame it wasn't (super) successful. I remember stopping at convenience stores on long road trips with my family just to buy more batteries to keep my Game Gear going.
Adding salt to the vinegar bath and leaving it for much longer would make it work better. Also, you should drop them into a water/baking soda bath for a while after the vinegar bath to neutralize the acid.
The bubbling actualy comes from the corrosion that is not on the springs. It looks like some alkaline batteries leaked and caused that residue. Alkaline batteries are filled with a solution of Potassium Hydroxide, which converts to Potassium Carbonate on contact with air. Potassium Carbonate + Vinegar = CO2 bubbles, water and a solution of Potassium Acetate.
What would be a device to try and fix with no experience? You have inspired me to try fix some circuit boards which I previously thought were impossible to fix without magic
Older is better. Atari, NES, etc. More room for error, less specialized chips. Nes systems are very hardy and the replacement parts can be found. Snes are much different, proprietary chips needing better smd techniques and precision
RetroRepairs I’ll look out for some. I have a soldering iron and some solder. Any other basic equipment I should pick up before I attempt to fix something?
Yes, depending of course on what you want to try and fix, but essentials are a good desoldering braid, rosin flux, 60/40 rosin core solder (thinner is better), tweezers, needle nose pliers, stranded 30awg wire (for jumping bad traces), isopropyp alcohol, q tips and a toothbrush. You will find that eventually you'll need to get replacement components as well such as capacitors and resistors, so even finding an inexpensive electronics repair kit could be useful.
@@RetroRepairs Thank you! You should consider making a video about getting started into repairing electronics (consoles and handhelds to be more specific) that you could link to in all your videos for anyone interested. I feel it could help out a lot of people. Just the basics of what to pick up and where/how to use them as an introduction to repairing things. You've definitely influenced me to try learn and I doubt I'm the only one who would find a video like that helpful. You could even use it as your channel trailer video! Just a suggestion, it's completely up to you! Thank you again and keep doing what you're doing!
There are videos on nickel plating and how to do it small scale, would be awesome for the post rust removal on these contacts to keep them from rusting again, the videos I've seen the plating done were typically hotwheels restorations but the ability to keep the contacts from rusting again could be worth the setup as often as you deal with small rusty/water/battery acid damaged parts.
I heard that BennVenn is planning on releasing a replacement screen that is half the price of the McWill one. It's still $60, but it's worth it if you collect.
At some point I plan on restoring mine. It works fine right now, but I’m gonna replace the capacitors to be safe and do the led backlight mod. Also I’ve found that you can get actual glass screens to replace the plastic one covering the display.
I'm amazes that he found one with the original caps in it that even works. I've done many of these as well and the caps are always gone, the contacts on the board often corroded completely off. This has to be the easiest repair I've ever seen on a GG. These have the worst caps of any console, with TurboDuos coming in a close second.
You should always try putting the terminals in vinegar to remove corrosion before sanding it removes corrosion like a charm I've done it on all of my battery terminals that've been corroded like my original gameboy and gba.
For rust I use the works toilet cleaner preferably in an ultrasonic cleaning machine just fill the machine with plain old water and use a small glass jar with enough of the works to cover the parts 3 min gets rid of all the rust note denatured alcohol to dip the parts in after de-rusting stops things from re-rusting if you don't have an ultrasonic cleaning machine it can be done without one it just takes longer I'm not sure how long 15 min or more you'll know just look'
My goal in life is to find one of these at an affordable price. Sonic is the only game I want lol. My grandmother bought me one for my birthday the year they came out. It was a lot of money back then.
You have a lot of great tools. I'm really interested into getting into hardware repairs from your channel but I have literally zero tools. Could you make a list of what you have and where to purchase them?
The screen replacement you mentioned I believe is the McWill screen but there is another coming soon from BennVenn which should be about 1/2 the price so look into that
The best thing to do with those, assuming you want to play GG games on original hardware rather than just on the 3DS virtual console (which is the best way to play them on a handheld IMO), is to take it apart, and replace the screen with a modern one. You get MUCH MUCH MUCH better battery life since modern backlights are LED rather than CCFL. And the screens themselves are much more power efficient.
Yeah I can kind of agree with that. I'm not enough into Game Gear to warrant the price. But for a Game Gear enthusiast, I can see doing it. The only Game Gear game I personally wanted to replay after all this time is Defenders of Oasis. Which is available on the 3DS virtual console so yay. I can play it on my New 3DS XL. Which, for some reason, has a "blur" option to emulate the blur from the crappy old screen the Game Gear used. Thankfully you don't have to turn that on.
Battery corrosion is a mixture of lead sulfate and copper sulfate. A dilute lye solution will clean it right quick and in a hurry. Lead sulfate reacts with the lye and copper sulfate is readily soluble in water. Vinegar will have very little effect on the lead sulfate at all (you'd need about a gallon to dissolve what you showed in the video.)
Got a cheap solution for the cfl bulb replacement, swap out the cfl for low voltage LEDs, find some 5-9 volt led micro bulbs, put them in series with each other hot glue them to a peice of platic running the length of the backlight cfl bulb,, run a line from the positive battery terminal to the brightness control, then to the positive of the bulbs and then back into the neg battery terminal. Cost ya 5 bucks in parts and take maybe 20 mins to rig and solder. as for the cfl... simply remove it and cap off its terminals with hot glue to prevent short circuiting. Congrats you now have an even brighter backlight and a battery life of about 12-15 hours with ni-mh rechargable batteries.
Do you think it would be of value to do the screen replace / lighting mod and replace the outer clear part? Not familar with the price but for 6 bucks id say its worth investing a bit to increase value or make it a collection piece.
Someone else mentioned it on here....do you have one of those ultrasonic cleaners? After seeing so many problems with rust on your videos, figured that would be a must.
You probably wouldnt be able to swap the screens. Different resolution, different connectors. But there's a way to use LEDs instead of a cfl bulb which would definitely help
@@RetroRepairs Not the screen just the backlight, you can seperate the backlight panel from the image producing part, im pretty sure that's how we used to do cheapo gameboy backlights back in the day :)
I am a big fan of the gaming market in America. From the damage there is no maintenance center in Saudi Arabia, our maintenance depends only on the era of the issuance of the device only from one to four years, despite the availability of devices and accessories, but suddenly disappear from the market despite our abundant quantities and become strangely rare and some exploiters sell devices and accessories The price is exaggerated like a treasure Aouktah note that just Archeological Consol surprised in the American market, their prices cheap and they deserve it because they are old and at the same time we have the beautiful memories
I've been watching a lot of your videos, I like repairing stuff and I like videogames but I never tried to repair electronics. Any advice for an absolute newbie?
I have a game gear that turns on but has basically no picture but sound, and has a static-y like screen when there's no cartridge in and will turn itself off sometimes. It's been recapped but idk what's the main cause
As for the speaker... just drill out the plastic rivets and then use hot glue to reset it in place. did thet with mine when I replaced the speaker eons ago. lol
You should really try to get a buffing tool and some fine sand paper. I love your vids, but hate how most of the plastic on your projects are semi fixed. Some sanding and buffing should fix a lot of those scratched up cases. Not 100% new, but something.
There's a cheap backlight mod you can get. Its very similar to the game boy one i did a while back in my videos. It's not great, but only like $15. The lcd replacement is about $120, i can't justify that
ah yes... game gear... the only hand held to tae 6 AA batteries that lasted 2 hours... man oh man... i remember not going ANYWHERE without the car adapter and AC outlet...
That's pretty nice to know guys, maybe I'll grab one to fix then. I found the comment kind of funny though, I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been :P
@@RetroRepairs I want to do that but my local component store doesn't have what I need and because I'm 13 and don have a credit card I cant get any online. I know I a store that has the right ones but it's an hour long drive! I'm going this weekend with my dad. It seems every time I get a lead there is a roadblock to stop me XD
@@SparksNZeros I got it to play sonic but the screen was only displaying one segment of the screen over and over to fill the screen. The audio was also really quiet (probably the amplifier). That's when another capacitor exploded.
those are just the capacitors that were available during that era, they failed a lot on computer motherboards and tvs and etc as well! technology is better now :D
The LCD mod is not needed, especially for that price, however there are LED bulb replacements for about $9.99 along with some DIY solutions to LED mods. Definitely an idea worth checking out.
This. Very inexpensive, very easy! It'd make a fun video.
Agreed
I was about to say... Couldn't you just replace the CFL with an led?
Does it make a big difference in battery life?
you can use some plastx plastic polish or brasso to buff up the lens to a clear finish again, you just have to mask off the black areas as the coloring can buff out its only just beneath the surface of the plastic. also when the battery terminals split from corrosion you can brace and resolder them together as they are plated copper. i'd also advise just washing in heated white vinegar.
PolyWatch also works. I have some for my watches and use it on other plastics
For sure a light buffing would work great
Aww, I loved my Game Gear, took good care of it for 15+ years, not a single scratch. Then I gave it to a neighbor's kid along with 5 games, sonic and others. Never knew Retro Gaming would become a thing :(
Word is that some Chinese company in the early 90s or late 80s got a capacitor formula via corporate espionage and such but the formula was bad and they released some cheap unstable caps. It was called the capacitor plague. Fun times.
It was the early 2000's companies like Dell, Apple, and HP took a large hit. Good luck findind a Pentium 4 Dell Dimension Tower or a P4 laptop... Horrible stuff. A company did find out who did it but never disclosed it.
@Mystical Glimmer
Thanks. I couldn’t remember exactly when it happened.
@@jba2048 man I remember in like 2002/3 Dell has to hire a bunch of local PC Techs (they had to fix em fast, most were PC store owners) from all over and send them out to home and businesses to replace motherboards and PSU. My sister had to do that, even tho I am a system builder, at that time I couldn't beat there price.
@@xaer0knight Here's the best I could find, from a forum post: "Luminous Town Electric, a capacitor manufacturer, hired a scientist who worked for Rubycon Corporation, another and rather more up-market capacitor manufacturer. As part of the 'unwritten' terms of employment, he was supposed to steal Rubycon's far superior electrolyte formulation, a trade secret mix of chemicals that make Rubycon's capacitors so good. But he screwed up - accounts differ as to if he made an error, or if Rubycon management found out about the industrial espionage and swapped the formula on file for a deliberately defective one. Either way, Luminous got hold of a dud - and, thinking they now had Rubycon's famous electrolyte formula, went straight into production without testing it. They made and sold a lot of capacitors before customers realised that the new Luminous capacitors were prone to explode after a while."
@@keeleye7225 that's some great information! You should add it to Wikipedia and cite the source. All I could get was a ABIT found out what company made them and never disclosed it. They went under in 2008 and there only contribution was under volting on motherboards
You don't need to change the lcd, there is a led mod to remove the florescent light.
@RetroRepairs Please do it and make a video 👐
Exactly what I thought !
@@KISSbestfan Me too
yes, that and a LiPO battery pack and you will get hours of fun-time. or, gut the thing and put a Pi in it with all the games on an emulator, swap out the speaker and plug a USB hub to it and run xbmc with a keyboard and mouse and control all your smart devices on your wi-fi. use hdmi to display to the tv and play mario bros wirelessly with some IR transcription. the thing is primitive it will likely never be worth more than $6
@@icyuranus404 following this logic is best to buy cheaply PSP, mod it, and play every Game Gear game there !
But this is not the case here. I can understand the feeling and vibe playing this stuff. I still reminiscent old handhelds
Hey RetroRepairs thank you so much for your in depth channel! Inspiring video for me to get into electronics repairing. I saw you were messing with a drywall sanding block, maybe a wire brush would help better clean out the plating on battery terminals you think?
It could, but the only one I have is for prepping concrete for bonding new concrete, which is way too stiff. A lighter one could get into the spaces. The other trick is size. It's so small, you'll likely tear up up hand with a wire brush
I would pop the spring off (some twist) get a polish brush on a dremel and tackle it that way.. you'd restore the shine and make it look new again..
18:21 can you replaced with an led bulb or stripe? i should be a big improvement in battery life and a cheap mod also.
I was thinking the same. Can you mode an LED in there
English 60 (out of 100)
I learned a lot from your videos and they help me repair things! Thank you :D
Ive never owned a Game Gear, so this is something new for me. Looks like a cool console. In the 90s Gameboy was the thing over here, but since it was kinda expensive too, I had the "brick game". It was a very basic handheld, but at least you could have some fun waiting for a train or bus. I really wonder why they lost with Nintendo, I mean, there is no way the battery consuming was the only reason
The SMD electrolytic capacitors in Apple computers of the same time period are notorious for leaking, too. I replace them with tantalums, works great.
Hmm... so capacitors had a "Dark Age" too... good to know.
@@Operational117 Yep, the capacitor plague
What a steal! 6 Dollars!
Right? I couldn't not buy it
RetroRepairs that was the only thing that your d o ing is the wrong thing
love the videos man, i do this kind of stuff but never video tape it maby i should start?
Qtips and vinegar!
Neutralize the alkaline residue with a mild acid.
Thanks for this video tutorial, you make it look easy AF! I bought a Game Gear last weekend for $40 untested at a thrift store. Surprisingly, mine had both battery covers which is a huge plus to a collector like myself. There is a ton of green corrosion all over the contacts. Going to try your method and see if I can make it portable again. I literally have no games to test the screen or the sound. I’ll worry about that later haha. Thanks again man, you just gained another subscriber!
I think you would benefit greatly from a rotary tool. It is very good for those hard to reach spots. You can get all sorts of attachments like buffing wheels and wire wheels. Great video as always!
Lol the first three comments were all things I wanted to comment about. Put an LED bulb, buff the lense, and get a dremel!
I would love to see this fully restored with the mods you were talking about! This was my favorite back in the day. If I remember correctly we would play mortal Kombat on it a lot
Seems they cheaped out on Game Gear innards. Possibly due to the tech for backlighting and color screen was the most expensive parts. I think that brown coating could be a cheap form of RF shielding/cost saving.
Thanks for the vid. I've refurbed about a half dozen Game Gears but I've never removed the soldered terminals before. That's a pretty good idea. Regarding the plastic screen cover, you can remove it. The adhesive will probably last 100 years, unlike the caps.
this was a great video. i found my gamegear in the closet after at least 10 years (batteries expired 2012) and a ton of corrosion on the battery connections. this was super helpful to safely opening the case without breaking any wires. thanks
Why not use 4 white LEDs to replace that CF Light Tube? I've seen others do it for like GBC
My Grandma baught me one of these back in 92 or 94 with everything the antenna for TV and the magnifying glass a four way power plug not sure for what it was for. But my gamegear fizzeled out when my mom's battery blew out on her Honda Civic
This thing is awesome, looks like a little TV and a game console from the 80s all shoved into a device as small as possible. Very old equipment in here, not a lot of surface mount stuff, just good old fashioned caps and resistors and fluorescent tubes run by AA batteries lol.
Actually it's 90%+ SMD components in there. And there is a TV tuner cart available, although sadly useless now analog is gone :( Actually, thank you, you just gave me an idea...
hd downscaler and ota hd antenna game cart?
@@RetroRepairs has it been done?
@@danmackintosh6325 no idea, that would be pretty cool to do though.
@@RetroRepairs certainly would, might look into it if i have time but feel free to claim the idea if you want lol
I did an led backlight mod on a silent scope gun display that had a cfl tube. I ended up just using some cheap 5050 led strip I had lying around, looks just as good as the original backlight. Tapped into 12vdc off the board, been working for over a year.
Cleaned contact on an old game gear, following your example. It was not operative when he bought to me just as a memory a couple of years ago. Today I decide to try to do something (I have time due to quarantine) and... Ta daaa. It works in battery! Thanks for sharing this video
Weird situation, but I had a Game Gear for a couple of months as a child while a church friend was in some branch of boot camp, he let me borrow it for the time.
All I remember is the 6 batteries required that lasted 2 hours and having more fun with that system than I ever did on a gameboy.
What you said around 18:45...
I, personally, would NOT spend $120 on a backlight mod on something you intend to resell (if that's what you intend to do). You're right, such an expensive mod for a $6 Game Gear is not worth it.
However, I DO suggest doing it for your OWN Game Gear, IF you use it alot on batteries (for example on long trips). If, however, you explicitly use an AC adapter in place of the batteries, then it's not economically advisable.
_*Bonus Math*: Assuming the batteries last an exact 3 hours, if you use the Sega Game Gear for 1.5 hours per day (average), then it'll chew up about 90 batteries per month (1.5h*30d/3h*6batt). Assuming Duracell batteries (at roughly $1 per battery (there are other, lower-quality batteries with a much lower price than that, just using a common example), you're looking at around $90 per month._
_With just an AC adapter, assuming an electricity price of 14.6¢ per kWh (in Canada, Ontario), and the Game Gear uses 3W per hour, the total cost per month would be less than two cents (1.5h*30d*(3W/1000)*14.6¢)._
_Just my two cents (yes, pun intended, go ahead and flame if you want, I don't care)._
If it's about on-the-go power consumption, you can put in an LED backlight retrofit, the backlight panel is $10 on Handheld Legend.
However what the modern integrated $100+ LCD mod does is give you a ghosting-free high-contrast screen.
Also what's the deal with non-rechargeable batteries? Does anybody still use those, except in an emergency or in ultra-low-power devices? I have cheap store-brand Eneloop Pro clones everywhere, they're great, they come pre-charged and cost 5€ for a 4-pack, plus you need a smart charger, which could be like $15-$30.
@@SianaGearz alot of rechargable batteries don't have a very long shelf life anyway. They slowly lose the ability to charge to full capacity until they don't work and they generally cost more than regular batteries. Better to just plug the thing in.
In all reality, i rarely use it as it is, if i do, it will be plugged in. A screen replacement would be solely for better picture and for a project to do.
@@toxicavenger6172 Eneloop Pro (and even Chinese clones) have a life of upwards of 500 cycles until they lose a third of their capacity permanently; self-discharge is at the level of about 20% per year for genuine ones and up to 40% per year for cheap Chinese clones. This is an absolute game changer compared to prior NiMH chemistries, that while reached higher capacities, weren't nearly as long-term stable, losing most of the charge within 2-3 months. The specified capacity on store-brand clones made in China is 2400 mAh - not verified yet myself because lazy, but the store is super trustworthy. They also seem quite low-ESR and capable of high burst currents, as they easily max out 20A on my multimeter and don't get very warm in the charger, so they tend to fare pretty well against alkaline in unfavourable scenarios, in digital cameras and such. I have been using the same NiMH smart charger that i bought 20 years ago, it was still made right here in Germany by IVT, so it's been an excellent one-time expense.
Non-Pro Eneloop version has lower capacity and even higher long-term stability with less capacity degradation per charge good for thousands of cycles and even less charge loss in storage than Pro version.
Naturally plugging in when possible is a sane choice, but then, it's a handheld console, ideally you'd make use of the fundamental freedom the form-factor provides. Also wireless mice, controllers, etc. are a great convenience and for me they tend to accumulate at great pace - Xbox controllers for PC, Wii remotes, and more, all kinds of gadgets both bought and self-made. Xbox controller needs more power than a Gameboy Advance.
I came to watch this because I was curious to see if the Game Gear had a CRT-as that's what I read in several places-and the first video I saw had The Retro Future, the horrible trendy little chode, wiggling components until the solder broke instead of desoldering them like he should have, the creep. I'm glad to see you doing this properly-I'll take due diligence over flash any day.
Do all of them have that orange interior?
I'd love to get a GG to play some Master System games, very cool find man, have been really enjoying your videos, great work!
The brown is resistive paint, it's commonly used in older laptops. I remember a laptop which had positive and negative lines inverted and it briefly shorted, nice smoke and smell ;-) no damage thought.
The capacitors were cheap because the cost of the CFO bulb was the bulk of the production cost per unit. Unfortunately. it came at a price of console failure over time.
What about an LED replacement for the backlight? Still use the original screen, but pull out the CF stuff and wire in a 5v LED matrix.
8:57 i died lol "If it doesn't come, I can always use tweezers to try and make it" Voultar would have a field day!
This video is very important as you tell us how to put the batteries connectors properly and solder the wires connected to them properly. Not much Game Gear repairing videos do that like yours.
I agree, $120 for a backlight is crazy but the shared knowledge would help. I never went to school for any of this but have been doing repairs following RUclips instruction. Thank you for this, btw.
Found a game gear at a garage sale for a $1 in great shape.. love it.. best dollar ive ever spent :) :D
Great job brother , you put way to much effort to save these puppies. Love your channel , thanks man
Thanks so much for your informative videos :)
Hopefully you'll get much more recognition
Glass screen is affordable and well worth it. I got mine in today and it looks and feels more classy and cleaner.
I just got a broken game gear in the mail, I think it has the same issue with the corroded battery terminals. Inside of it there was a ton of battery acid, but I don't think it damaged any electronic parts.
I loved my SEGA Game Gear when I was a kid. It's a shame it wasn't (super) successful. I remember stopping at convenience stores on long road trips with my family just to buy more batteries to keep my Game Gear going.
Thanks for the good video. What is the acidity of your vinegar?
lime, vinegar, and some baking soda neutralize the battery acid and stop the corrosion! love ya repair vids dude, cheers!
Adding salt to the vinegar bath and leaving it for much longer would make it work better. Also, you should drop them into a water/baking soda bath for a while after the vinegar bath to neutralize the acid.
i picked up a game gear from a recycling plant awhile back, never knew about the capacitors being notoriously faulty!
The bubbling actualy comes from the corrosion that is not on the springs. It looks like some alkaline batteries leaked and caused that residue. Alkaline batteries are filled with a solution of Potassium Hydroxide, which converts to Potassium Carbonate on contact with air. Potassium Carbonate + Vinegar = CO2 bubbles, water and a solution of Potassium Acetate.
What would be a device to try and fix with no experience? You have inspired me to try fix some circuit boards which I previously thought were impossible to fix without magic
Older is better. Atari, NES, etc. More room for error, less specialized chips. Nes systems are very hardy and the replacement parts can be found. Snes are much different, proprietary chips needing better smd techniques and precision
Game gears have very common capacitor faults, so often many different symptoms can be fixed with new capacitors
RetroRepairs I’ll look out for some. I have a soldering iron and some solder. Any other basic equipment I should pick up before I attempt to fix something?
Yes, depending of course on what you want to try and fix, but essentials are a good desoldering braid, rosin flux, 60/40 rosin core solder (thinner is better), tweezers, needle nose pliers, stranded 30awg wire (for jumping bad traces), isopropyp alcohol, q tips and a toothbrush. You will find that eventually you'll need to get replacement components as well such as capacitors and resistors, so even finding an inexpensive electronics repair kit could be useful.
@@RetroRepairs Thank you!
You should consider making a video about getting started into repairing electronics (consoles and handhelds to be more specific) that you could link to in all your videos for anyone interested. I feel it could help out a lot of people. Just the basics of what to pick up and where/how to use them as an introduction to repairing things. You've definitely influenced me to try learn and I doubt I'm the only one who would find a video like that helpful. You could even use it as your channel trailer video! Just a suggestion, it's completely up to you! Thank you again and keep doing what you're doing!
There are videos on nickel plating and how to do it small scale, would be awesome for the post rust removal on these contacts to keep them from rusting again, the videos I've seen the plating done were typically hotwheels restorations but the ability to keep the contacts from rusting again could be worth the setup as often as you deal with small rusty/water/battery acid damaged parts.
That screen takes me back to when best buy still sold them and I had to lean on my tippy toes to try and get a good enough angle to play sonic.
I heard that BennVenn is planning on releasing a replacement screen that is half the price of the McWill one. It's still $60, but it's worth it if you collect.
At some point I plan on restoring mine. It works fine right now, but I’m gonna replace the capacitors to be safe and do the led backlight mod. Also I’ve found that you can get actual glass screens to replace the plastic one covering the display.
after fixing 100s of these always replace the capacitors they will fail eventually
100%. That's going to be a future video for this unit.
@@RetroRepairs sweet I look forward to your vids!
@@Renebean I second that statement! (the second statement, not the first :P)
I'm amazes that he found one with the original caps in it that even works. I've done many of these as well and the caps are always gone, the contacts on the board often corroded completely off. This has to be the easiest repair I've ever seen on a GG. These have the worst caps of any console, with TurboDuos coming in a close second.
You should always try putting the terminals in vinegar to remove corrosion before sanding it removes corrosion like a charm I've done it on all of my battery terminals that've been corroded like my original gameboy and gba.
For rust I use the works toilet cleaner preferably in an ultrasonic cleaning machine just fill the machine with plain old water and use a small glass jar with enough of the works to cover the parts 3 min gets rid of all the rust note denatured alcohol to dip the parts in after de-rusting stops things from re-rusting if you don't have an ultrasonic cleaning machine it can be done without one it just takes longer I'm not sure how long 15 min or more you'll know just look'
My goal in life is to find one of these at an affordable price. Sonic is the only game I want lol. My grandmother bought me one for my birthday the year they came out. It was a lot of money back then.
The game gear was 150 dollars US currency the gameboy was 80 bucks
@@illkid86 I was lucky and had both.
Have you ever used isopropyl alcohol for rust? It's the best.
You have a lot of great tools. I'm really interested into getting into hardware repairs from your channel but I have literally zero tools. Could you make a list of what you have and where to purchase them?
Swap the batteries out for a litium ion one? Or set? Could be a neat video, like the GBColor one.
Yeah, a rechargeable would be sweet. Could be a future mod for sure
The screen replacement you mentioned I believe is the McWill screen but there is another coming soon from BennVenn which should be about 1/2 the price so look into that
Yeah, it's the mcwill screen. I'll have to keep an eye out for that new one
The best thing to do with those, assuming you want to play GG games on original hardware rather than just on the 3DS virtual console (which is the best way to play them on a handheld IMO), is to take it apart, and replace the screen with a modern one. You get MUCH MUCH MUCH better battery life since modern backlights are LED rather than CCFL. And the screens themselves are much more power efficient.
I've seen those, but the replacement display is about $120, which i have a very tough time talking myself into doing
Yeah I can kind of agree with that. I'm not enough into Game Gear to warrant the price. But for a Game Gear enthusiast, I can see doing it. The only Game Gear game I personally wanted to replay after all this time is Defenders of Oasis. Which is available on the 3DS virtual console so yay. I can play it on my New 3DS XL. Which, for some reason, has a "blur" option to emulate the blur from the crappy old screen the Game Gear used. Thankfully you don't have to turn that on.
Battery corrosion is a mixture of lead sulfate and copper sulfate. A dilute lye solution will clean it right quick and in a hurry. Lead sulfate reacts with the lye and copper sulfate is readily soluble in water. Vinegar will have very little effect on the lead sulfate at all (you'd need about a gallon to dissolve what you showed in the video.)
Got a cheap solution for the cfl bulb replacement, swap out the cfl for low voltage LEDs, find some 5-9 volt led micro bulbs, put them in series with each other hot glue them to a peice of platic running the length of the backlight cfl bulb,, run a line from the positive battery terminal to the brightness control, then to the positive of the bulbs and then back into the neg battery terminal. Cost ya 5 bucks in parts and take maybe 20 mins to rig and solder. as for the cfl... simply remove it and cap off its terminals with hot glue to prevent short circuiting. Congrats you now have an even brighter backlight and a battery life of about 12-15 hours with ni-mh rechargable batteries.
Do you think it would be of value to do the screen replace / lighting mod and replace the outer clear part? Not familar with the price but for 6 bucks id say its worth investing a bit to increase value or make it a collection piece.
Have you had to fix button pads? I have a device who's pads are used up or the rubber dome is damaged... I have not found a solution.
i love repairing things. i repaired my asterix game for the snes today :) thx to your videos.
The LCD mod is 120 dollars, or about five hours of runtime in AA batteries.
Someone else mentioned it on here....do you have one of those ultrasonic cleaners? After seeing so many problems with rust on your videos, figured that would be a must.
Great video, regarding the backlite how about looking into if you can use the backlight panel fra a ds instead ? much cheaper :D
You probably wouldnt be able to swap the screens. Different resolution, different connectors. But there's a way to use LEDs instead of a cfl bulb which would definitely help
@@RetroRepairs Not the screen just the backlight, you can seperate the backlight panel from the image producing part, im pretty sure that's how we used to do cheapo gameboy backlights back in the day :)
@@RetroRepairs Actually just google it, there's videos of the backlight swap both on the dmg gameboy and the game gear :D
For the screen lens you could get the finest sand paper and make it look like new
Great job! I have a old Game Gear in some place. I will look for it and i wil try to repair it too. Thanks for the video
I am a big fan of the gaming market in America. From the damage there is no maintenance center in Saudi Arabia, our maintenance depends only on the era of the issuance of the device only from one to four years, despite the availability of devices and accessories, but suddenly disappear from the market despite our abundant quantities and become strangely rare and some exploiters sell devices and accessories The price is exaggerated like a treasure Aouktah note that just Archeological Consol surprised in the American market, their prices cheap and they deserve it because they are old and at the same time we have the beautiful memories
I've been watching a lot of your videos, I like repairing stuff and I like videogames but I never tried to repair electronics. Any advice for an absolute newbie?
Damn 6 double AAs, my parents would have hated me if I had gotten into the game gear.
I have a game gear that turns on but has basically no picture but sound, and has a static-y like screen when there's no cartridge in and will turn itself off sometimes. It's been recapped but idk what's the main cause
I really like your videos but you should check out acid brushes. They’re the best thing to use for cleaning corrosion and flux.
I still have my Game Gear in a box in my room. I also have the magnifying glass attachment :)
Very cool.
Oh the magnigear by beeshu
Putting the batteries in the right direction might help lol
Did you figure out how to repair the 3 pointers?
As for the speaker... just drill out the plastic rivets and then use hot glue to reset it in place. did thet with mine when I replaced the speaker eons ago. lol
don't they have led bulbs that are the same shape and use the same plug as the cfl? would think could just change the bulb to led?
Problem is the bulb doesn't plug in, its hardwired to the board, so it's a proprietary bulb. I'm sure it's possible, but i haven't seen one
Should have used baking soda to neutralize the acid from batteries leaking.
You should really try to get a buffing tool and some fine sand paper. I love your vids, but hate how most of the plastic on your projects are semi fixed. Some sanding and buffing should fix a lot of those scratched up cases. Not 100% new, but something.
You should get the $120 lcd screen for the content as I would be interested in seeing how it is installed.
handheldlegend.com/products/game-gear-backlight-replacement
120$? you mean 10$
Nope, that's not an lcd replacement, it's a backlight panel.
wow 6 bucks lol inflation hit hard lol paid 40 for mine and 6 bucks cant even get me a soda with chips lmaooo
Great video just bought mine at a thrift store broken for 6$ :)
I was also going to suggest the led mod instead of the screen replacement
I have a sega game gear somewhere with no power, I'll definitely dig it out and see if I can fix it!
Good luck. I like finding no power systems, they're usually a fairly quick fix. Usually either bad battery terminals or a fuse.
Can The backlit be replaced with something low power such as a bunch of LEDs?
They make led panels that replace the diffuser and cfl bulb, cost about $10, so i think that will be yet another video
@@RetroRepairs oh sounds great!
would love to see the backlight mod but if you still dont want to then i'd settle for a new screen cover install
There's a cheap backlight mod you can get. Its very similar to the game boy one i did a while back in my videos. It's not great, but only like $15. The lcd replacement is about $120, i can't justify that
Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to simply replace the CFL bulb with some LEDs?
ah yes... game gear... the only hand held to tae 6 AA batteries that lasted 2 hours... man oh man... i remember not going ANYWHERE without the car adapter and AC outlet...
could you polish the scratches out of the screen lense?
Taking pictures really helps in putting thing back together
Please show us how to replace the capacitors sooner rather than later.
Deoxit, buy it, use it, love it.
Mine has a bunch of dead capacitors and every time I replace one another one blows up!
Like changing a headlight bulb, just change them all. Capacitors on this system are always prone to failure. It's not a matter of if, but rather when
yeah its a guarantee they'll all fail, in my experience its the number 1 reason why this system becomes faulty.
That's pretty nice to know guys, maybe I'll grab one to fix then. I found the comment kind of funny though, I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been :P
@@RetroRepairs I want to do that but my local component store doesn't have what I need and because I'm 13 and don have a credit card I cant get any online. I know I a store that has the right ones but it's an hour long drive! I'm going this weekend with my dad. It seems every time I get a lead there is a roadblock to stop me XD
@@SparksNZeros I got it to play sonic but the screen was only displaying one segment of the screen over and over to fill the screen. The audio was also really quiet (probably the amplifier). That's when another capacitor exploded.
i once hooked up a Game Gear to a soviet era nuclear reactor and it ALMOST lasted an entire afternoon! :P
Don't lie, you plugged into chernobyl and caused the meltdown because it couldn't supply enough power, right?
the lcd mod is soo worth it it makes the games super crisp
Can you make a modification to make game gear work with some cellphone battery? Is it possible?
It's possible, but I've never done it
those are just the capacitors that were available during that era, they failed a lot on computer motherboards and tvs and etc as well! technology is better now :D
Love your repair videos as always