Handheld Hijinx Vol 9 - Oh Look...it's an Oh LED!

Inviere

I wasn't really planning on picking one of these popular Game Boy Color OLED kits up any time soon (as I've a myriad of consoles here waiting on work/repairs first), but then I read these are repurposed screens from a Blackberry Q10….so these screens are not being produced as a new product, and are instead, being harvested from a dwindling number of said devices. That means they'll run out in terms of supply, and begun, the scalping wars will have. So I decided I'll just grab one while they're available & tick it off of the list!

^^ If I've ever seen a perfect candidate for a screen mod, this is it. A heavily battered original Game Boy Color I grabbed from eBay. The screen is destroyed, but the unit powers on seemingly. As an aside, the prices of Game Boy Color's seem to have gone a bit bananas since I last bought one! Even broken/junk ones from Japan are creeping in value.

^^ There's signs of minor battery leakage, but as the unit is still working, it shouldn't be too bad.

^^ x4 of the x6 screws in the back shell are missing….never a good sign…

^^ We're in. No signs of any concerning corrosion from battery acid anyway, that's good.

^^ Main board out, and again it's looking in decent shape.

^^ This screen is toast whatever happened to it.

^^ Just what the Retro Doctor ordered….a brand new grey shell, buttons, silicone pads, and a brand new screen.

^^ The contents of the screen kit….OLED screen, driver board, x2 strands of wire, kapton tape strips, and an insulating cover.

^^ First step is to fit the screen into the new shell. The adhesive pads are peeled off, and the screen is supposed to slide into place from the front.

^^ Screen in place. The fit was very tight, not a drop in by any stretch, so I needed to be careful not to put too much pressure on the screen while seating it.

^^ x1 of the x2 soldering jobs required with this mod….the power wire is soldered to the driver board 'BAT' pad.

^^ Step 2 is to install the driver board now, on top of the new screen.

^^ Done. The small push-fit ribbon connector can be a little fiddly to lock into place, and it's important again not to put any downward pressure on the screen while seating the smaller ribbon (the OLED can become cracked/damaged.)

^^ New buttons in place…

^^ Silicon pads were next…

^^ Then the insulating sheet is put in place to keep everything nicely insulated from the Game Boy mainboard.

^^ Before continuing, I noticed the pads on this capacitor were very dull. I'm not sure if the cap itself has leaked, or if there was previous battery acid that creeped onto the pad, but for the sake of completion I should prob change this out while it's all out and disassembled.

^^ Cap removed, and pads had new solder added to them. I then wicked that solder away, but forgot to take a picture of it. The pads cleaned up perfectly, no damage underneath.

^^ The only replacement cap I had was a bit bigger than the original….not ideal, but it did fit the pads and was soldered into place.

^^ Mainboard screwed down into place now…

^^ Driver board ribbon then connects to the Game Boy mainboard.

^^ The last of the soldering then, is to solder the other end of the power cable to the C pin on the power switch, and then route the wiring nicely/secure it with a piece of the supplied kapton tape.

^^ Finishing touches, the label on the rear…

^^ Time to test!

^^ The pictures don't show how sharp and pixel perfect the image is. It's x4 times integer scaled, and obviously being OLED, the whole image pops.

^^ There's a touch screen based menu where the screen can be configured. I drop the brightness down a tad, to be a little kinder to the OLED itself.

^^ I explore the scanline settings (there's x4 presets I think, and I ended up disabling them as the screen/image itself is gorgeous.) The light to display the Game Boy Color logo is then enabled (tons of different colours & brightness levels….I chose a dim white as it matches the grey shell nicely.)

^^ Trash to Treasure really.

Inviere

The only thing I'd add to the above, is the shell doesn't seem superb. Sitting the mainboard into place was more finnicky than it ever should be, among a few other little niggles. I'd prob recommend going with a Funny Playing shell for these, rather than the ones available from the screen seller.

o1s1n

That screen really is something else! Are you ever tempted to keep the likes of these handheld upgrades in their original shell?

I always think there's something quite nice about an old handheld shell that's taken a bit of a beating. Especially when it contains a crystal clear screen/refreshed controls.

I do really like the colour of that new shell though, it's lovely.

Inviere

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122273304#Comment_122273304

Yeah I couldn't really grab decent pics to show the screen in it's OLED glory tbh, it's very pretty in person. The blacks are perfect as you'd expect, and the colours really pop.

Re original shells, there's a few considerations. Typically, the modern shells are built for lcd panels, and as a result, they're drop in parts with zero alignment concerns. They also need no internal modifications. Contrary to an original shell, which will need notable destructive cutting/trimming internally, along with manual screen alignment....I tend to gravitate towards modern shells where possible. Plus, when looking for donor/candidate handhelds, I tend to go for ones that have been really battered and need a new shell anyway...as I'm not really fond of new shells where the original shell is in great shape.

Indeed the grey is nice. I needed another colour to differentiate this one from my regular IPS GBC and then the recent FPGBC (white and black respectively), so I took a chance on grey. The shell quality isn't great though, so I may pick up a grey Funnyplaying one next time I'm ordering from them.

Steve X2

When I did this OLED mod I got a few shells from AliExpress(as well as one included with the OLED kit). For some reason the clear/translucent ones all have better build quality. The opaque ones are a mix of bad to usable.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122273804#Comment_122273804

Ah I see! Didn't realise the new shells were created with this kind of thing in mind, I was thinking they were 1:1 with the originals.