Some notes on restoring consoles.

Modding, Restoration

O.G. Game Boys (DMG) refurbed

I managed to grab a job lot of 4 OG Game Boys from eBay, in various states of “broken.” You can see two of the plastic lenses have just peeled off with age:

Four Game Boys  ready for salvage.
Raw materials!

Let’s see what we can do with these suckers.

A Game Boy with a scuffed plastic display.

A Game Boy missing the plastic screen cover. It also has some LCD damage.

Initial impressions aren’t great. Some of the screens have damage, and the cases are scuffed and scratched. Let’s take a look at the insides.

An opened Game Boy sat on a work mat.
Guts!

The innards seem solid and clean-ish. With the parts we have, we can refurb one stock unit.

An opened Game Boy.

We can also harvest parts to make a modded unit with a larger backlit screen and a fresh shell amongst other things…

Electronics and Game Boy parts spread on a work mat.

Lots of new goodies! Let’s put them together.

More parts lying on a work mat.

We’ve got a pretty nice Nintendo-themed setup for the modded GB, with buttons and a new shell. Let’s start by preparing the new board in black.

A Game Boy main board with a replacement screen near it.

Let’s also get the screen controller hooked up to the IPS, ready for connection to the new board.

A replacement IPS screen for a Game Boy with cables attached.

Time to pack the board into the shell. (Not shown: moving the sound board from the original unit to the new one.)

The new main board for the Game Boy sat in the front of the shell.

And that’s it! A pretty straightforward job, not many pain points to speak of. And here are the finished articles:

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