Gameboy Color Speaker Repair

After weeks of researching why I wasn't getting any sound from the speaker in my Gameboy Color, I've finally figured it out. The most common answer spewed out haphazardly was to change the speaker, but being the type of person who will test the most common answer as a theory, rather than accept it as fact, I proved that wasn't the case for my particular GBC. When tracking down why your GBC isn't making any sound there are many things to keep in mind. The GBC has many little components within the system that drive the speaker, so for many various reasons your GBC may not have sound. Most of these components will be perfectly fine, but sometimes you'll need to dig a little deeper than thousands of people saying the same thing in the same thread on a forum.

I know my speaker works because I tested it in another GBC, just to be sure that I didn't need to change the speaker. By this point I was fed up with having no sound and I was ready to just bypass the headphones and hardwire the speaker to get any sound from it at all. When I held the speaker wires to the headphone connections on the other side of the board the speaker came to life, which I found a little odd, as I don't believe the headphone jack should be live at this point.

So after a little more poking and fidgeting around, I goofed into figuring out what was ailing my particular GBC. Within the headphone jack of the GBC there is a tiny switch that either opens or closes the electronic signal path to the speaker output. As anytime with metal, sometimes it can corrode or tarnish, as was the case with my GBC. This doesn't allow the switch (simply two pieces of metal) to close properly, sending the signal that should be going to the speaker, instead directly to the headphone jack.

The switch in question is at the bottom right of the jack.

Outlined in red and yellow, these two pieces of metal should make
proper contact to send the sound through the speaker.

As you can see above, red and yellow need to make full contact to send the sound to the speaker. Once a headphone input is submitted, the dark grey bit (above red and to the left of yellow) breaks the connection and sends all the sound through the headphone input instead. As you may also see, the metal is quite dirty and tarnished, as are the connection points inside.

This connection is absolutely minuscule, making it almost impossible to properly clean between the two bits of metal. I tried to slide a tiny flat screwdriver down between the two and scrape away anything I could, without success. Finally what I did was press the one piece (highlighted in red) down with one screwdriver, while pressing up toward the other piece from a small hole on the side of the headphone jack, located just below the connection point.

After a little more tinkering around I finally got sound. Just to be sure it would work I plugged in my headphones, but once I unplugged them the sound was gone again. After a few more attempts of bending the one piece of metal, I finally got a fairly decent connection that would allow me to use headphones as well as the speaker once they were disconnected.

It's not perfect, but it's not something I've ever read online as being a fix for a GBC with no speaker sound. I get tired of the knee-jerk reaction of people on forums just regurgitating things they've seen said, and have possibly been correct, before just to be the first to answer a question. But just because someone has said something is the answer, even with conviction, it's not always the right answer. Test the answer like a theory, don't accept it as fact and keep poking, testing and find the answer yourself.

Gameboy Color Fuse Repair

Of all the Gameboy Colors that I own only one of them gives me any real trouble. The problem child happens to be a green one that I bought from a Salvation Army about 4 years ago. I only paid 59 cents for the damn thing, so even if it never worked at all it was well worth the price I paid if only for use as parts.

Straight away I noticed the GBC would only come to life under battery power, so I quickly went to the internet for a little research. I found that the GBC has two fuses, one for battery power and another for the adapter plug. After bridging the fuse for the adapter port with tweezers the console came to life. All I had to do now was find a fuse. How hard could that be? Well, that happens to be almost impossible.

F1 and F2 (the last being the adapter) fuses marked.
This is how it should look.

Fast forward to when I acquired the GBC board from the outlet store. By this time the original guts from the green unit had been moved to an aftermarket yellow shell and the green shell was about to house the new GBC board. After some testing the board that I bought from the outlet store worked perfectly fine, it just needed a new power switch, which I later "repaired". As time went on the speaker in the yellow GBC stopped working completely! Now not only did this GBC only work off batteries, I could only hear it through headphones!

In an attempt to see why this thing was slowly decaying I swapped the speaker over into the green GBC, where it worked perfectly fine, so I'm assuming it needs the capacitor changed. I quickly became fed up with having two broken units and decided to just make one work completely. I figured it's best to have one completely working and I could figure out the problems with the green one later, or worst case use it for parts only.

After all was said and done the yellow one worked perfectly, yet the poor green one still has the old DMG-esque power switch, no sound and won't work off the DC adapter. What a sad, sad situation this little GBC has become. While I'm not too worried about the state of the switch, I do need this thing to at least make sound, and I surely would prefer it to work off both power options! With hope quickly slipping away I decided to take this thing apart one more time and see if there was any engineering I could do for it.

I had previous removed the blown fuse and decided I would just move the good fuse over so that I could use the adapter and bridge the connection to use batteries, as I feel using batteries would have a much lower likelihood to blow up the GBC without a fuse than a power adapter. After doing so I noticed the GBC wouldn't work at all. I checked the continuity and everything seemed to be fine, but for some reason the system still refuses to work off a power adapter. I knew it would work, like it did with the tweezers, so I was completely stumped and returned the fuse back to it's battery space and made sure it worked there, which it did.

After a bit of thinking I just decided I would err on the side of caution and not bridge the gap for the power adapter, instead I would piggyback off the battery fuse by soldering wires from the correct spots where the adapter fuse was and onto the sides of the battery fuse. After painstakingly, and half-heartedly, setting up the wires I plugged in the power adapter, hit the switch and hoped for the best. The GBC came to life! It was alive through the power adapter once more!

Not the most beautiful, but it works!

Now I know this isn't an ideal repair, but it does work. Ideally I would love to find a perfect replacement fuse to solder in and be perfectly safe, but if the power adapter has any issue now at least there is some form of fuse to stop it from killing the system. I do know, through a few other sets of GBC boards, that the fuse is a 1 amp, other than that I have no clue what else to search for, so I have no clue how to acquire another fuse like it needs.

Again, it's not an ideal repair, but it works. In the end this Gameboy Color has been repaired in so many different ways, but it keeps on ticking. I would love to get it fully repaired, but the fuse, and especially an OEM switch, just aren't anywhere on the market, that I can find. Worst case I'll use it until it pops, but until that day I'll keep patching it together like an old, forlorn teddy bear.

Birthday Week Finds!

After sitting in the house for over a year, thanks to the lovely anxiety disorder, I happened to venture out and finally pick up some stuff. Although they may not be very exciting items to some, they are for me! There are a handful of items I truly wish I hadn't passed up, but that's the way hunting goes, sadly. So, without further ado I present to you my meager, yet very exciting finds!

First up is a Game Boy Color game that I found at Goodwill for $4. Not only is it complete, not only does the cartridge show very little signs of any usage, but it's also European! Again, maybe not a very exciting detail for most people but for me I'm very excited to have a European GBC game. Lucky for me Nintendo never made handhelds region locked, so I can play this game, if I really wanted to.

Next up is a guilty pleasure! I already own a handful of these things, yet if I find a color I don't already have I still have to pick it up. I had found a trashed out charcoal Super Joy at the outlet store years ago, which I picked up anyway to use for parts. It was my birthday and it was only $4, how could I say no?

Next is a game that I already had loose, but this was so cheap (75 cents) at the flea market, I had to pick it up just to own it complete. Deathtrap Dungeon is an early Playstation RPG that interested me when I first played it. It felt, to me, like a poor man's Elder Scrolls.

Last, but certainly not least, I picked up a Player's Edge Game Boy cleaning kit! Yes, I fear I have a problem with cleaning kits. If you saw my collection you would agree with me. Although these really serve no practical purpose, because I've found far better methods to keep my games and consoles clean, I still find myself throwing cash at old cleaning kits. The story behind this is that I found it for 99 cents at Salvation Army. The manager was the only person trained to run the register, but he was in his office "talking to corporate", resulting in a few minutes in line waiting. As a result, the manager gave us all a discount, and I only paid 33 cents.

Picking up these things really gave me a boost to get out and keep hunting! This weekend comes the half off sales at Goodwill. I'm hoping I can go back and pick up a few of the things I didn't get last week.

Gameboy Color Switch Repair

Last year I spent the better part of an hour digging through a bin at the local Goodwill Outlet store searching for every last bit and piece of a shattered Nintendo Game Boy Color. I even wrote an article about it (here). For over a year the parts that I found sat inside a spare green GBC shell that I had. Everything needed to rebuild a functioning Game Boy Color was present, with the exception of the IR cover on the top and the fact that the tip of the power switch had snapped off.

The beige part within the little cut out area is what was left of the switch.

After some testing I found that the system worked, yet some parts would need to be replaced. The screen was in great shape, it worked with both AC and battery power, the headphones worked but the speaker was rusty and weak. The speaker was a simple fix, because I had found the top screen portion of a DS Lite a few years prior, which was just a quick desolder and swap. The problem being, that didn't fix the weak audio coming from the speaker, the problem lies deeper, and still has yet to be addressed.

My main issue was that the system could never be a working Game Boy Color without figuring out a way to fix the power switch. The switch Nintendo used was a very thin slider switch, that obviously connected the correct points to turn the power off or on. The weird fact being it had to connect points C and 3 (referencing pic below) for the unit to turn on. A simple on/off mechanism would have worked, Nintendo! In fact, that's exactly how I repaired it.

Normal GBC switch outlined in Red. What an unnecessary mess.

After a year of trying to track down a replacement, I decided it was time to just bite the bullet and modify the thing to get it back into working condition. I have a small collection of on/off switches, which only require 2 points to be connected, as per any usual circuit. The trouble was actually finding out which 2 of the 4 points needed to be connected, which I found out were C and 3 by using tweezers and connecting the different points together.

After attempting to carefully remove the original switch, I end up just using a small pair of end snips and removed the switch in haste, which worked out better than I thought. After the switch was removed I tinned two small wires and soldered them to the correct points on the board. Lucky for my poor soldering skills, the other side of the neighboring chip didn't have any pins on the same side as the power switch.

After the wires were soldered to the correct points, I tinned the other ends, added a little solder to pins on the switch and made the needed connections. A quick test showed that everything was a success, the Game Boy Color came to life and was now completely functional again.

Soldering up the switch was probably the easiest part of the whole project, what really took the most planning was figuring out where the new switch would go. I originally attempted to sandwich the shell together with the new switch where the old one used to be, but that didn't work. Then I remembered that I didn't have the IR cover for the very top of the shell, which gave me an idea.

The Infrared connection ports, from what I understand, was meant to be a wireless connection between 2 Game Boy Colors, much the same as the wired connector on the old DMG. The fact is, Nintendo also integrated an option to connect a wire, thus I don't need to keep the IR connection. So I desoldered the IR diodes and went to work clearing out space in the shell to make the new switch fit.

What the IR port looks like normally.

It didn't take much to desolder the IR diodes and set the switch in place. With a few snips of plastic here, a little double sided tape there, everything went into place quite well. Although I can screw the shell back together, it doesn't fit together as tightly as it originally did, but that doesn't bother me at all.

Switch in it's new home

Gives it a bit of an old DMG power switch feel.

I wish I could have tracked down an original GBC power switch, but that would require me to cannibalize another GBC. This project sat far too long in my closet, so I'm pretty happy to have finally just taken control and thrown in a switch I had laying around. It's not perfect, the screen is scratched, the IR connection no longer functions and it has a weird switch, but otherwise it works perfectly and is a Game Boy Color I won't mind accidentally taking a tumble or getting scratched up.

Tremendously tantalizing tales of timing!

When that feeling strikes, I sometimes lose my mind. I don't know when, all I know its for sure. But even for something that is assured, I am not a man of patience!

This story begins about 5 months ago when I saw a Game Boy Color (atomic purple) at a local Goodwill for $3.99. At the time I thought the price was too high, it wasn't in the best shape and it was missing the battery cover. Knowing at any time I could find one at the outlet store for mere change, I decided to pass it by and hope that when its 50% off week came around I would snatch it up for slightly cheaper, this never came to be.

I already own 2 Lime (one of them being the system I resurrected from the outlet store bins with no shell), 2 Teal and 1 in a cheap Chinese made yellow shell (that was originally lime), so I'm mainly only trying to collect the other colors, to complete the set of 6. The memory of passing up a magenta GBC about 3 years ago for $2 at the Salvation Army haunts me to this day, the only magenta GBCs I find now are $14.99 at Disc Replay (or were $14.99 last I checked). And now that feeling sunk in again as I found myself struggling to find an atomic purple GBC.

The main factor in me passing up both the magenta and atomic purple GBCs was the fact they were both missing the battery covers, yet I clearly forgot that I currently own a spare atomic purple battery cover! As I posted in another article, when I found the bare boards of the GBC in the bin I also found a teal battery cover, which took the place of the spare atomic purple cover that I had no system for.

With the one at Goodwill long since gone and none of them to be found at the outlet store, I began to wonder if I would have to purchase one on Craigslist for more than I wanted to, or perhaps ask Disc Replay if they had one missing the battery cover I could purchase for slightly cheaper. The outlet store has admittedly spoiled me and made me think twice about buying retail, in favor of just waiting it out. But it all came to a head last Sunday.

Previously in the day I had been playing around with my Game Boy Color project, seeing what switch I could use to get it back to working again. When I pulled the project from the box the purple battery cover came tumbling out and I had this feeling that soon I would find a console that needed that very battery cover, and within hours I found the answer on Craigslist.

There is was, an atomic purple Game Boy Color with 4 games: Little Mermaid, Deer Hunter, Pokemon Blue and Dragon Warrior III, missing the battery cover and they only wanted $25 for the lot. I quickly shot them an email asking of they would take $20 and the seller agreed. I rationalized the price, even though it was already cheap enough, by telling myself I could sell Pokemon blue for $15 and only have paid $5 for the lot and got to keep Dragon Warrior III! But sadly couldn't, because I have the manual for Pokemon Blue, and its one of the few Pokemon games I actively sought out.

Overall everything is in ok condition; the games have the common grubby paw marks at the top of the labels from removing them from the system, the GBC itself has some scratches on the screen, but everything is in working order. For $20 I couldn't argue, the GBC alone was $15 at Disc Replay last time I saw one in stock, and I know Pokemon games are worth close to $20 no matter what condition they are on ebay. Dragon Warrior III had a $7.99 price tag from Disc Replay on it when I got it as well. A great buy, no doubt!

And what became of the lonely little battery cover that had to cling to the butt of a teal GBC for months until it was tossed aside for one that was the same color as the teal GBC? Well, as you can see above and below it was united with its color matched system and they're doing quite well together.

If I get the urge to change the screen protector I may, but its not an issue. What really concerns me more is the lack of the Game Boy Color sticker on the back of the actual system, but even that doesn't really matter all that much. What really matters is that I now have an atomic purple Game Boy Color, the atomic purple battery cover has a good home and I got some games to add to my collection, if even 2 of them aren't exactly something I would buy or ever play.

How far is a tech-nerd, gamer willing to go?

Well I am willing to go pretty damn far, to be honest. The story starts with me at the outlet store today, digging through a random bin when I happen upon a broken Game Boy Color back. Shortly after I found the main board, with everything attached, and the front of the shell, which was in absolutely shit condition.

I spent a good 15 minutes, or more, hunting down the tiny little buttons, silicone pads and anything else I thought I would need to rebuild the system. I managed to find everything except the IR cover, which really isn't that big of a deal. Short of the IR cover, and the broken shell that I decided to leave behind, I found everything I would need to make a whole other GBC.

Lucky for my teal GBC, which I happened to purchase from the same outlet store a year ago, this one was the same color and still had the battery cover. The original battery cover for my teal GBC snapped at the clip part that goes into the system, for some unknown reason. I had been keeping an eye out for a battery door for it, sadly I only managed to find a atomic purple one, which was a place holder until today.

After getting everything home, I test fitted it in a spare lime shell that I have and found out there were two issues I had to overcome before having a fully functional GBC. Short of needing a brand new shell and all the screws that come with it, I need to replace the speaker, because this one just doesn't make much noise. Secondly, the power switch had snapped off, which seems to be a major issue, but I'm sure I'll figure out how to fix that.

I already own a handful of Nintendo Game Boy Colors, so when I pick a shell it will be the first one of that color I'll own. I'm hoping for something cool, custom and non OEM. I'll just have to see what I can find, and hopefully keep it updated here.