UPDATE a surprising amount of people keeps mailing me about this. I just wanted to save everybody trouble by pointing out that
ALL GAMEBOYS IN THIS POST HAVE ALREADY BEEN SOLD. I DO NOT HAVE ANY MORE. I DO NOT PLAN TO MAKE MORE. I AM NOT GOING TO REPAIR YOUR GAMEBOY. IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU PAY ME.
So do not mail me about it. Instead, I’d suggest to Google around and look for GameBoy enthusiast forums.

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Some weeks ago, I decided to build the perfect GameBoy. You see, when you order a used classic GameBoy on eBay or so, the quality of the devices you get varies a lot. The term “used but in good condition” is extremely subjective. To add insult to injury, most sellers don’t even bother testing the devices or putting in high-rez images. So the first GameBoy I ordered this way was in a disheartening condition. The case was yellowish from the sun, the buttons felt flabby and didn’t connect properly.

How do I get battery acid corrosion of the board? Then clean the board with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol to displace all the water. Looking at the schematic, your GameBoy should work with just an AC adapter. If you post some images of your circuit board and the damage, I am sure we. Ross, the very first thing you want to do is to clean the battery contacts. Make sure they have not corroded to badly. If those are okay, you will have to disassemble your GB and take a look at the components. You could try and clean it with some isopropyl alcohol and carefully check to.

So I decided to take the case in my own hands. I noticed that every now and then, there would be an entire collection of damaged GameBoys on eBay for sale. The sellers usually didn’t bother testing them. Or they would just simply put the batteries in, the GameBoy wouldn’t turn on and they would leave it at that. I bought a few of those collections and ended up with 11 devices, 10 damaged ones and the one I bought previously. And thus started a lengthy process of refurbishing the GameBoys by salvaging the best parts.

Here is what happened:

The reason why the GameBoy classics are relatively repair-friendly is that their innards consist of two separate pieces: front and back. The front part contains the LCD screen, the speaker and the button contacts. The back part contains the batteries and the CPU. If one of the parts is damaged, you can still use the second part for spare parts. This was my initial plan.

The insides of a GameBoy classic are pleasantly repair-friendly. But note the gunk on the inside of the case. Eeew!

But of course the first step was to clean the cases. They were in a terrible condition. There was gunk and grime in every corner. There were Pokémon stickers on some devices. After simply getting all the electronics out and washing them, they started too look less aged already.

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Especially the slits over the speaker are good places for gunk to get stuck. I found that a toothbrush is a actually a good tool to take care of such problems.

Exploring the Venn Diagram of gaming and dental hygiene.

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I put all the electronics aside with a short note on what was presumably broken. About half of the devices didn’t even turn on.

Avert you eyes! So many GameBoys, they are all NAKED!

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After the cases were dry, I removed any glue residue with alcohol. Almost every GameBoy had it’s screen lens missing. If the screen lens was still attached it was scratched well beyond repair. That’s not a big deal since you can still buy replacement screen lenses nowadays. The old screen lenses are usually glued to the case with a thick layer of adhesive. Before attaching a new screen lens, it makes sense to remove the adhesive so the new screens sit more flush.

Remving old adhesive. Um… so how did YOU spent your Weekend?

GameBoys are resilient has hell. I noticed that the most common damage is when the batteries spill. The residue usually cakes the contacts of the batteries. This is a relative trivial repair and it’s a shame to discard the entire device because of it. I bought some Battery Cleaner spray for car batteries. It was somewhat effective. But nothing beats simply using sandpaper to clean up the contacts.

Battery residue on contacts – surprisingly the most common cause for defunct GameBoys.

Sometimes the battery acid gets onto the electronics. This will usually kill the GameBoy. In one case, the spill wasn’t too severe. One capacitor (??) fell off due to corroded contacts. It was a good opportunity to whip out the soldering iron and to attempt an emergency operation. I used the resistor from a broken model. It was my first successful soldering job and even though it’s not perfect, I’m pleased to report that it worked!

I don’t care if it’s a capacitor or a resistor. I fix’d it ok?

A common, tricky defect is a damaged rubber pad below the buttons. Especially the d-pad is likely to wear out. The rubber pad below sometimes tears and causes that direction of the d-pad to feel flabby. This is what happened in the first GameBoy I got. It’s a tricky defect since it’s subtle and not really apparent at first sight, even if you disassemble the device. I collected all of the pads from all of the GameBoys and made sure to always use the undamaged ones.

Hidden damage is hidden! Pay attention to this if you try this at home.

Another common defect are entire dead pixel columns on the LCD the screen. I noticed that this is usually how a GameBoy dies of old age. Especially the other columns are likely to fail. This is due to the adhesive that attatches the LCD screen to the contacts. It fails eventually. But if the failure is not severe, there is a way to keep the GameBoy going. You can add some padding on top of the contact. I my case I used strips of thick adhesive tape. When the GameBoy is screwed back together, the case will push the contacts down and can potentially fix some columns. This worked for two screens. But there were also two screens simply beyond repair.

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One final step is to add the replacement screen lens. As I said, there are plenty of ways to get those. I bough an entire pack of 14 screens at once to save money on shipment. There is one tricky part to this: the colored “Play it Loud” GameBoys have a screen lens with a darker grey. You have to order those separately. Sadly, I noticed that in general, the replacement screen sometimes don’t fit so well anymore and I think they scratch easier.

Surprisingly difficult – do this without getting dust on the INSIDE of the screen.

Ad then there are some details such as replacements for missing battery covers and so on. But you get the idea. I was able to save 8 GameBoys this way. 3 didn’t make it. It worked out well since I had exactly 3 cases where there was some severe yellowing to exposure to sunlight. From the electronics I have left almost every individual piece is broken.

And so now I’m left with 8 GameBoys to sell of give away. Of course, I will keep two of them. I will keep a transparent one because it’s so cool. I will also keep a vanilla white one, just because of the nostalgia.

Oh hey! I found this cute GameBoy on my Workbench! Can I keep it?

I probably overdid it a little. The entire project took a bit more work than I initially thought it would. And it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to get a mint condition GameBoy if I was ready to pay enough money. On the other hand, it was a fascinating experience. There is something about restoring an old artifact to it’s former glory. It’s what drives car enthusiast to restore oldtimers. It’s incredibly rewarding and you learn a lot about the the engineering and product design of the machine at hand. It certainly made me appreciate the GameBoy classic a lot more. It’s probably not the most efficient way to get a mint GameBoy classis. But it certainly is a scenic route to get there.

UPDATEI have put up the last 4 GameBoys from the Projec