Game Gear Replacing Capacitors

[fvgazi]

My friend gave me two game gears with video problems where it was unplayable except at extreme angle. I opened up both game gears to find out which parts I needed (based on being 1 or 2 ASIC models.) I replaced all the video Caps on one of the Game Gears, but made some mistakes (some of the caps had the + and - backwards) Luckily none of the caps exploded or leaked.

The problem I'm having is that both game gears, when turned on display vertical lines and the sound is high pitched and or white noise. I don't get any game video or sound. The contrast affects the screen and the volume still works. When I received both consoles, I'm pretty sure they were in working condition as I remember playing them. The sound was intact too.

I've been using an AC adapter to test out the consoles and Headphones to see if it was the audio capacitor that was messed up. The sound was still noise in the headphones.

Is it possible I shorted them out just opening them up? I plan on fixing the 2 or 3 capacitors that are on backwards for the game gear I worked on, but the second one I didn't even do anything to yet.

[vxbinaca]

Check to make sure all the wires and ribbons are seated right.

Dumb question but I don't own a GG, but it's caps are all SMD, right?

[Hobie-wan]

Dumb question but I don't own a GG, but it's caps are all SMD, right?

IIRC there might have been a few, but no the problem with GGs is that they came out when there were all those terrible quality can caps being made. There are about a dozen or so to replace between the main system and the sound module that tend to die or puke their guts all over.

[fvgazi]

I've replaced some of the reversed caps, but this didn't do anything except make the screen brighter.

I think I'm going to swap some parts between the two and make sure the ribbon cable is snug. I cleaned the main PCB and got quite a bit of dirt off, but still the same symptoms. I'll update tomorrow when I give this a try.

It's also possible I did a terrible soldering job, and smushed some traces.


Do you think the ribbon cable would affect the sound distortion? I'm not getting any game sound. It sounds like a Sin Wave that is being run through distortion and occasionally changing frequencies.
"eeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeoooooooo", heh.

[vxbinaca]

A cleaning can never hurt.