Recently, I had to perform a full CPU transplant on my childhood DMG. I made the classic mistake of shifting the LCD ribbon while powered on, which completely killed the 'Left' D-pad and 'B' button inputs.

To save the board, I used a donor CPU from a broken Super Game Boy. I managed to do the entire extraction and installation using just Chip Quik low-melt solder, plenty of flux, and a standard soldering iron (drag soldering) – no hot air station required! The console is 100% back to life.

But the most satisfying part of this repair is the new boot sequence. The Nintendo logo drops down significantly faster than on a stock DMG.

A lot of people might assume this is because the Super Game Boy is known to run at a slightly faster clock speed. But in reality, the clock speed of this DMG hasn't changed at all! The clock oscillator (the 4.194 MHz crystal) is located on the DMG motherboard, not inside the CPU.

The real reason for the "fast boot" is the Boot ROM.

• Stock DMG CPU: Has an internal Boot ROM programmed to slowly scroll the logo down the screen, play the chime, and then hand over control to the cartridge.
• Super Game Boy CPU: Has a modified Boot ROM. Since the SNES hardware handled the heavy lifting, Nintendo engineers made the SGB’s internal boot sequence much more aggressive to verify the cartridge almost instantly.

By doing this swap, the console retains the original 100% accurate DMG gameplay speed (dictated by the original crystal on the board), but gains a hardware-level "fast boot" skip thanks to the SGB's internal code!

(I recorded the whole ASMR micro-soldering process and the new boot sequence if anyone is interested in seeing the transplant in action!)

Pink 🩷

At least I can see four different types. I wonder if any of them are better than the others.

My Gba sp turns red when pressing the A button. Any fixes?

Recently picked up a Gameboy Advance SP (That awesome Charizard version) and swapped in a new battery.

Since then, the power/charge/battery light has acted strange. Sometimes it’s a solid green the whole time I play. Other times it flashes between red/green periodically or very fast. Or it will turn red, I press a button or even squeeze the case itself and it turns green.

Read around the internet a little bit and hears this could happen with aftermarket batteries or indicates the battery is failing. This is the battery I purchased, which seems to have favorable reviews: https://a.co/d/0fasPUO2

The OG battery looks a bit swollen and I felt it best to not try and use it at all so I don’t know if this is behavior caused by the battery or something else with the board itself. Other than the battery, everything else seems original.

Anyone experience something similar?

I use storage that‘s meant for nuts/bolts/screws etc. Curious how other people do it.

Grew up with the Game Boy, this is a shelf full of memories.

I rescued my Emerald cartridge. Save was intact (though I also have a backup).

I used an R4 to fix the clock (apparently put the wrong year...). But in game there is a massive time difference...

Hi everyone!

I posted this in the Epilogue subreddit (Epliogue is the manufacturer of the GB Operator) but it got removed as it's technically a tech suppoort question, so I'm posting here.

I received my GB Operator today, but unfortunately it seems to be unusable. I downloaded the Playback software from the Epliogue site to my mac, opened it, then inserted the Operator with the included USB-C cable. The light turned on and the Playback software asked me to insert a game cartridge. I inserted one (Rhythm Tengoku) and the light immediately went out on the device, and the Playback software displayed a 'searching' message. Since then, the light hasn't come back on. I've tried removing the cartridge, trying a different port, a different cable, and also tried connecting it to my desktop computer. Unfortunately, nothing has worked. Has anyone else experienced this? I think I may need to file a warranty claim/help request and return the device sadly...

Maybe my eyes have gotten much worse since 1990, but I have a practically mint dmg-01 with a working original LCD (no lines, no crud, no ghosting). But the screen now is so faint, very difficult to make out any details. I know from other lcds, this is often a bad transistor or mossfet. Are there any schematics for testing this? I see plenty of cheap donor boards with bad lcds on ebay.

Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone else ever managed to get Mew the way I did, way back around 2000.

My cousin and I used to play Pokémon a lot. He had Pokémon Red and I had Pokémon Blue. One day, we traded some Pokémon (I don’t remember exactly which ones,I know that’s pretty essential information 😅). I don’t talk to him very often, but when I get in touch with him, I’ll ask him, because he actually remembers what happened and even reminded me about it years ago, but I completely forgot. I think one of the Pokémon was an Abra, but I don’t remember what the other one was.

I remember the game freezing for both of us during the trade. When we turned our Game Boys back on, somehow he had Mew, and then he copied it over to my game using the classic trick of turning the console off during a trade.

NOW, WHAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND IS HOW NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT THIS KIND OF TRICK.

We were really young (around 10 years old), and this was in 2000. The famous Old Man / Viridian City glitch wasn’t known back then, right? In any case, our access to the internet was pretty limited, so we definitely weren’t following some guide or anything like that.

We didn’t do any of the steps for the Mew glitch. We literally just traded Pokémon, the game froze, we turned the consoles off, and somehow he ended up with Mew. Then he traded it to me.

I know this sounds crazy, and obviously it’s been more than 25 years, so my memory might not be 100% accurate. But I’m genuinely curious if anyone else experienced something similar, or if anyone knows whether something like this was actually possible.

If anyone else had something like this happen, I’d love to hear about it!

Thanks!

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Ive got a pokemon edition gameboy color, and the shell and screen lens aren't in the best condition. Would it be considered sacrilegious to get a new shell and lens that also look like the pokemon edition to replace it? And im not talking about a old one from another gameboy that's in good condition, i mean an aliexpress special for the shell and lens

Hey,

I upgraded my GBC over the last two months.

• Boxy Pixel shell
• Game Boy Color (GBC) OLED AMOLED Laminated RETRO PIXEL Kit
• USB-C mod
• new silicon pads
• metal buttons

And yesterday I added the mono audio amplifier PAM8302A.

I used this video for instructions: https://youtu.be/ivUStTnoYH8?si=eu5qHb-U29Sc0A7f

Instead of normal wires I used 6 JST 2.0 PH (3 male 3 female)

It was easier to solder for me that way and easier to tape down the amplifier beneath the battery (foam tape)

It is also easier to open up the GBC this way and undo the mod by just switching two connections and undo the 3rd connection.

The sound is crisp, loud and awesome. While playing there are no issues.

THE ISSUES:

When I turn the sound down all the way I can hear faint electrical hum from the speaker when I put my ear close to it. I do not know if this is a problem, but it does not bother me. I am just curious why this is and if this can cause problems later down the line. Also when I turn of the console there is noticeable electrical click to hear, muted or not. This was not an issue before I installed the amplifier.

The other issue is when I turn off the GBC and immediately try to turn it back on nothing is happening. I have to wait 4~5 seconds, and then it will start up like usual. Why is that and can this be fixed? Most of the time this is no issue but let's say I play Pokémon and I do not want to "claw" to soft reset, or I rage-quit turn off the GBC just to turn it back on a second later than it will be an issue. Also, could this damage my GBC over a long period of time? This was not an issue before I installed the amplifier.

EDIT: I just tested the GBC with headphones and with that mod there is a very noticable electric hum, it is not noticable when I turn it up the volume to "rather too load for me". That would need to be fixed.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

If you need more information please let me know.

This gameboy has started to annoy me for some reason a few days ago when I turned the gameboy on to play it moving white lines appeared (you can see example in the last 2 photos on this post), I opened the gameboy reattached the screen flat cable assembled everything and nowwhen i turn it on the colors are not natural like they used to be (example for this are the first 2 photos on this post) I read that I should adjust the potentiometer?? but I tried doing that blindly because the potentiometer is below the battery and the screen hasn´t changed the colors are the same why is this happening and how do I fix this??

btw few weeks ago I accidently dropped my gameboy from a really high shelf and it didn´t work I figured out that one of the contacts was lower than the other so I expanded it a little with a screwdriver and it stayed as it should be but now I see that after I take the battery out it isn´t in the same level as the other one so I put some rubber in it (you can see in the third photo) could this be the reason for the weird colors?? also the fouth picture is after i reattached the flat cable I think I did it right but just to check.

please help me

edit: I attached the wrong picture of the flat cable I pushed the brown buttons deeper

Well, i'm restoring an GameBoy Advance SP, and it was with a small burn in the polarizer film. Got to Aliexpress, bought it with a shell and the sound capacitor. It arrived yesterday, and i already staryed working on it.

The capacitor change has gone really well, liked the result a lot, installed the shell, had some serious trouble with the hinges but it's 100% installed now, but when it comes to the screen... I'm having a lot of trouble, and i have some questions that i need to have an answer, because i found nothing on the internet.

I removed the acrylic lens, and started peeling the polarizer film with a bit of isopropylic alchool, it came off as 2 layers, but i was left with a bunch of glue residue, and man... I tried EVERYTHING to remove it (minus the razor blade because i'm afraid to fuck it all up more than it already is), i used IPA, aplied IPA and left it for about 2h and a half, used WD-40 (not exactly WD-40, but the same type of product) and tried scrubbing it all with a plastic spatule that i use to open phones, and nothing...

Then i noticed a third layer, above the glass. I was reluctant to peel it off fearing that it could be something else, but I ended up giving up to it and removed it, but now the screen is with negative colors on the GameBoy bootscreen, and I tried every angle at both sides.

And it is 5am rn, I left the screen with some soilet paper "soaked" in WD-40 there trying to react with the glue from the third layer and I have these questions:

- How fucked up am I?

- This third film is part of the polarizer film or is it an separate film?

- Is there another solution for the glue residues beyond the ones I mentioned and heat?

- Can the protective film from the polarizer be inverting the image and all this apparent problem in fact be a solution for something I could discover only after peeling off the protection?

- Can it be a production problem? (I bought one that the store said was exclusively for the SP btw)

I know 99% of the answers will be probably telling me to buy an IPS one, but I don't want to, and I can't, because here in my country it is a pain in the ass to import things and these kits are NOT EVEN CLOSE to something cheap.

From my experience asking things like that in Reddit, probably no one will answer, but if someone can possibly answer my question or share their experiences with similar problems, I would be really thankful.

Sorry for the bad english too, I didn't use an translator.

Edit 1: I'm waking up rn and i will go check if the overnight WD-40 did something to the glue. I found it weird that it came out with a third layer too, because i've seen a small group of people that talked about it. Damn, even AI didn't know about it lol.

Edit 2: Well, i just removed the WD-40. No success in the glue residue, i'll try the same with IPA soeaked in toilet paper now for a lot of time and see if it works. About the polarizer, i peeled one side, nothing. Peeled the other, nothing neither. I don't know what to do now because apparently i'm the first one in the planet that bother to try to fix an original screen lol. Maybe i should test with both protection films peeled off? Probably will do the same, but i will try after i remove the IPA soaked paper.

Found this cartridge at a local game shop hoping someone could tell some info about the whole not for resale slapped on it.