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

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.