Finally, a repair where nothing caught fire! I’ve got a couple of original Game Boys on the workbench, and one of them has a rather unpleasant collection of missing vertical lines on the LCD. It’s difficult to enjoy Tetris when a sizeable chunk of the screen has decided it would rather not display anything.

The first job was getting the case apart, which means dealing with Nintendo’s wonderful tri-wing screws. I’ve got a couple of screwdrivers that are supposed to fit these things, although naturally one is slightly more useful than the other. Once the case was open, there were still more screws and the ribbon cable to contend with before I could get a proper look at the screen.

Inside, the original Game Boy is a lovely little piece of hardware. There are several circuit boards, the LCD assembly, speaker and everything else that made Nintendo’s early handhelds so much fun. I also had another Game Boy nearby for comparison, just in case my attempt at fixing this one turned into a much more interesting disaster!

The missing vertical lines seemed to be coming from the connection between the LCD ribbon and the display, rather than the entire screen being faulty. I’d read about carefully warming the bonded connection to restore contact, so I thought I’d give it a go.

Naturally, I started with the soldering iron far too hot. At around 350 degrees Celsius, I managed to soften some of the material more than I’d intended, and the lines actually became worse. Wonderful! That’s a rather convincing way to discover that a delicate LCD connection doesn’t appreciate being attacked with excessive heat.

After eventually working out how to adjust the temperature on the Hakko, I turned it down considerably and tried again. This time I used much gentler heat, carefully working along the affected area of the ribbon connection and watching what happened to the display.

And would you believe it? The missing columns started coming back! It was rather satisfying seeing the picture gradually fill in after I’d managed to make things worse during the first attempt. There was still some fiddling to do, but the screen was finally beginning to cooperate.

Once everything looked right, I gave it another test with Tetris. Excellent news! The missing lines were gone, and the game looked like Tetris again instead of some strange modern art experiment. Perhaps I’d finally appeased the pixel gods!

Getting the machine back together was another little adventure. I needed some thin double-sided tape to keep the LCD’s surrounding parts in place, and the thick foam-backed stuff I had wasn’t going to be suitable. So naturally that meant a trip to the shops before I could finish putting everything back together.

When I finally reassembled it, the display was still working beautifully. The picture wasn’t quite perfectly centred in the window, but that was down to my own reassembly efforts rather than the original fault. I’ll take a slightly crooked screen over a collection of missing columns any day!

I certainly wouldn’t want to repeat the part where I overheated the ribbon. The connection is delicate, and it would be very easy to make a permanent mess of things. Thankfully I caught the mistake, reduced the temperature and managed to get this particular Game Boy working again.

So there we have it. A successful repair, a working display and not a flame in sight. That’s a rather satisfying change from some of my other adventures!

…and I might also have uploaded an unboxing video of a camera that I’ve since sold, after coming to the realisation that my iPhone is just as capable for most of the things I actually do. Stick it on a Joby phone holder with a cheap stand and I’m ready to film another workbench disaster!

The camera was a Canon EOS M6 mirrorless model with the 15-45 mm kit lens. I’d picked it up for a fairly attractive price and was particularly interested in the flip-up screen, which looked rather handy for photographing console internals and filming repairs without having to guess whether everything was in focus.

Unfortunately, university and the rest of life left me with less time for photography than I’d imagined. I eventually decided I didn’t really need another dedicated camera, especially when my phone could handle most of the jobs I was using it for.

Perhaps the best camera is simply the one you actually end up using. At least that’s one less piece of hardware taking up room, which probably means I’ll find something else to put in its place!

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