I’ve been giving a Nintendo Game Boy Color a bit of a cleanup for Mum, although there are a couple of problems to sort out before it’s much use for anything. Switch it on, the power light flickers briefly and then everything goes dead. Bit of a showstopper!

After having a look inside, I decided to replace the three surface-mounted electrolytic capacitors with some nice miniature Rubycon radial capacitors. There are two 100 uF capacitors and one 22 uF capacitor, and I’ve used 16 V replacements for all three.

They fit rather nicely inside the case, and best of all, the Game Boy is now powering up properly. I did actually have some surface-mounted replacements I could have used, but I’ve got old Mega Drives running quite happily with radial Rubycons, so I thought I’d give them a go here too.

Now, I couldn’t tell you the exact ESR of these particular capacitors, but they’re fitted and the Game Boy works. That’s a pretty good result in my book!

The second problem was the speaker, which had also seen better days. The replacement I’ve found is considerably thinner than the original, and I was a little concerned it might move around inside the case. Fortunately, once everything is back together it seems to stay in place nicely.

One thing I do like about the Game Boy Color is how straightforward the motherboard is to remove. Disconnect the LCD ribbon cable, undo three screws and out it comes, leaving the screen sitting in the front housing. Very nice!

This particular board is a CGB-CPU-03 revision, and with the new capacitors and speaker fitted, it’s back to life. I’ve also got a turquoise Game Boy Color and a yellow one to investigate, so there may be a few more handheld adventures coming up.

For now, though, Mum has a working Game Boy Color. Not bad!

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