Sister dropped her DS Lite

[Valkyrie-Favor]

My little sister dropped her DS Lite and it won't turn on anymore. Usually the green LED will light up for half a second and the screens sometimes flash. After that it turns off again. I tried replacing the battery and that didn't work, so I opened it up.

One of the small "100" chips in the bottom-left corner was loose, so I soldered it back down. No luck.


Any ideas? My sister might die of Mario Party withdrawal.

[CRTGAMER]

The drop could have caused other damage. Strange that the chip is loose, seems like the soldered connection would survive the fall. What does the soldered side look like in the back? Are all the solder joints that you remelted isolated from each other?

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Yeah. I couldn't spot any other problems.

[omp]

Am I spinning out or is L2 missing?

Another thing it could be is one of the screens is dead. My niece dropped my sisters DSlite, it would flash the power light when turned on. Swapping out the top screen and it is back to normal.

[scarper]

The DS Lite is, structurally, the cheapest and most breakable thing I have ever seen Nintendo make.

My younger sister also dropped her DS Lite one time, and the L button stopped working. When I opened it up, I saw the L button box out of its solder area, bouncing around the motherboard. I managed to resolder it back in, making it fully operational again.

That fact something soldered into the board broke off at all is a bad sign.

[Hobie-wan]

Am I spinning out or is L2 missing?

Good eye. The L2 label is surely for the black "100" component, but it does look a bit like there's a capacitor missing from the spot to the right of the label. Check another system or find a picture online to see if there should be one there?

[Curlypaul]

I had the same symptoms with the power light and it turned out to be dodgy connections on the screen's ribbon cables. I'd try re-seating them maybe

[brandman]

The DS Lite is, structurally, the cheapest and most breakable thing I have ever seen Nintendo make.

Agreed. I guess you get what you pay for, in this case the "lite" version.

[BoringSupreez]

The DS Lite is, structurally, the cheapest and most breakable thing I have ever seen Nintendo make.

Agreed. I guess you get what you pay for, in this case the "lite" version.

The Lite was only worth owning back when the only other option was the DS Phat.

[AppleQueso]

I remember dropping my original game boy off of the second floor of an apartment building a couple of times.

Never had any trouble out of it.

They just don't make 'em like they used to.