Early Challenges
I will admit I jumped in quickly without any formal didactic attempts to really understand electronics. I did watch some very brief videos to brush up on the basics — they stirred up some memories of Ohm’s law from high school physics — but admittedly I did not spend much time before wanting to move on to more practical applications and just executing mods. And of course there were many times that I felt frustrated since I could not troubleshoot issues, read schematics, or solve problems without searching Google, YouTube, or asking AI bots specific questions hoping for specific answers. The issue was I also was not sure if I was asking the questions properly. Also, don’t depend on your “Google abilities” or AI bots, because they will likely be wrong and lead you astray. A lot.
One of the earliest and most frequent problems I came across was power issues — losing ground, shorts and multiple shorts, GND continuity with VOUT, torn/ripped pads. Tons of head-scratching problems for a newbie like me with no experience. I do as much as I can using a multimeter, comparing between a working unit and my faulty unit. And of course, searching and slowly reading through all the layers and depths of available documentation that this deep community has shared has been helpful too.
These resources and videos below were very helpful, and I refer to them often.
Game Boy resources
- Modded Gameboy Club — super helpful bunch of people; many of the links below come from here.
- Game Boy Wiki — Common Issues
- NatalieTheNerd’s Game Boy Wiki — board scans
- NatalieTheNerd’s CGB reverse schematics
- Gekkio’s Game Boy schematics — DMG, MGB, MGL, AGS-001, SGB
- rorosaurus’ GBA SP headphone jack mod list
- BucketMouse’s PSA: keep using aluminum capacitors
Helpful practical videos
- olDirdey — Removing GBC cartridge slot safely using a hollow needle (if you fail, grab a replacement here)
- RetroSix — GBC power circuit and power regulator schematic
- RetroStashRepairs — Fix lifted solder pads, broken vias and traces
- Bob Kalpon — Finding bad / shorted SMD capacitors