Sega Game Gear

Sega Game Gear, VA5

Capacitor Replacement 🎮🐥🔧

Hello Flock! 🐥💾

The last two weeks I have been working on this project to restore a Sega Game Gear, VA5 model. 

Background:

I bought this Game Gear at a thrift store about 10 years ago. I bought three Game Boy DMG-01 from them that day, the Game Gear one was with them too. It was very cheap at the time, like $2-$5, and I thought it looked neat so I picked it up as well. It would power on and I have a few Sonic games for it, but I never really played it. 

Recently, I heard that all Game Gears pretty much don't work unless they had the capacitors replaced. This is due to Sega's selection of parts for the Game Gear, it seems as though they went with cheap parts to create it. Since I had just replaced the capacitors on my Mac Classic, I thought I would try replacing them for the Game Gear as well.

Problem:

The Game Gear's issue is that it will flash the power light on when switched, but the handheld will not remain on to boot up.

 

So I opened it up to remove the caps.

There are some weird capacitors, they are placed sideways and enclosed in plastic. 

 

I removed the capacitors with some pliers. Now I know people debate that this is not the best way of removing them but it did the job. I had to be careful not to rip out the pads.

  

 

 

Here are the capacitors I ordered from Console5:

 Installing the capacitors:

 I burnt a little bit of the plastic to the connector trying to solder the SMD cap, but it still connected so it should be okay.

 

So after replacing all the capacitors, the screen lights up briefly now but immediately shuts off. 

I happened to be exhausted the day I installed the capacitors. I soldered some of the capacitors in the wrong places. With help of my friends, we found the correct places for them and moved them. Still no luck though. I learned a valuable lesson, I need to stop when I get too tired, otherwise I will make mistakes. 

I will research as to why it is not powering on, but I won't look into it too much because I didn't have plans for it if I did complete it. 

If I finish it, great! I will get to play those Sonic the Hedgehog games I have.

If not, it was a fantastic learning experience.

Thank you and stay tuned! 

-Pico

 *UPDATE* 2018.10.05

Two of my friends checked my work and it was actually correct. We tested the power and audio boards from a different Game Gear with no re-capping and it powered on. Apparently, sometimes other components go bad on Game Gear boards and cause it to malfunction regardless of the capacitor replacement being done correctly.

Yay!

  

I may change the screen cover to a glass one. I will definitely replace the capacitors on the new power and audio boards. Great learning experience!

-Pico