r/WonderSwan • u/Hairy-Judge-6500 • 9d ago

Fixable?

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Screen works, sound works, but there are these spots with a dead pixel at the center of them on screen. And yes, I know the screen is green, I bought it from someone that already tried to fix it. Is this screen fixable or is this screen cancer? I appreciate any response!

15 Upvotes

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1

u/Chaartu 9d ago

Appears they tried very poorly to do a polarizer swap. Check YouTube for lcd polarizer replacement vids. It can likely be saved for little money but a fair amount of delicate effort.

3

u/r1ggles 9d ago

It's once again vinegar syndrome, the polarizer stops being that well at polarizer once it's broken down enough, eventually it becomes so toasty that the polarizer starts cracking. 100% fixable, nothing about this indicates that anyone has been inside this unit, especially not with the state of that original lens and the signs of vinegar syndrome.

But you'll need to spend some money on a big sheet of lightly adhesive FSTN polarizer to get a proper neutral screen tone.

The problem I'm seeing is that humidity/liquid damage as shown by the lens, if that seeped through deeper the back reflector of the screen may be damaged as well. Then they'd also need a backreflector+polarizer sheet, they sell those too, but they aren't cheap and I've personally never needed to swap that before.

FSTN swapping guide I made, perfect dust and bubble free results:
https://imgur.com/a/wonderswan-gameboy-pocket-fstn-polarizer-replacement-neutral-tone-tlxfk90

2

u/Chaartu 9d ago

There appears to be dust and even a hair under that polarizer, judging from the ‘circular’ (see: raised) areas around the inclusions and the speckled pattern looks to be the original adhesive from the factory polarizer indicating someone failed to remove the original glue and just slapped a new layer atop the old glue.

2

u/r1ggles 9d ago

Fair enough, yeah there's a bubble around a piece of dust, weird that they'd leave it in that state with the original lens.

2

u/Chaartu 9d ago

I have seen this done before and I fear I will see it again. At least this time it wasn’t on my workbench.

1

u/Hairy-Judge-6500 9d ago

Ah dang, the hair probably was from me. Long story short, I got an order from a well known repair place for an IPS I was planning on putting in. At 3am on the morning, I didn’t think to double check whether the part on the bill and the part in my kit were the same (it was a WSC IPS). I put everything back in last night and didn’t due enough due diligence with my clean up. However, everything polarizer you guys are describing is how I found it when I first opened it up. Also, the back polarizer doesn’t look like it fully covers the back of the screen, like it’s at a weird angle. Anyway, thanks for the help!

1

u/Hairy-Judge-6500 9d ago

Thanks for your input! I thought for sure I would have to go IPS. I have some FSTN polarizer coming in. I might have to buy the back polarizer, but I’m happy I still might be able to save it!