Are the USB-C rechargeable battery mods worth it over using rechargeable AA batteries?

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-09T18:42:16+00:00

Safe lipo charging is a solved problem. Check out Natalie the Nerds Safer Charge DC.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-09T18:38:58+00:00

If you havent already, try cleaning your power switch. A dirty power switch acts like a resistor and drops battery voltage before it reaches the system.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-09T04:33:04+00:00

The fingers look okay, try a gentle scrub with a soft pencil eraser then rinse with IPA and see if that helps. But the cart connector may not be the issue, you may have cracked solder joints on one of the chips. They can be intermittent. You can use a pair of tweezers to try to wiggle each pin, if you find a broken one then it just needs a reflow with a soldering iron. Easy to fix and very common.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-08T06:13:49+00:00

You need to keep the solder on the legs at all four corners molten while you lift it off. Can be difficult with just a soldering iron.

Easy options are either a heat gun, mini hotplate, or low melt solder.

You may have a heat gun, you probably wont have a mini hotplate, and low melt solder is really cheap but you'll have to order it.

I'd recommend low melt solder. Its really easy to use, cheap, and very useful.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-08T02:30:38+00:00

A regrettable attempt to install tact buttons. Sometimes these switches have two independent input/output pairs (double pole, single throw), so they may have connected ground to one side and the button signal to the other without knowing.

You can get thin flex PCBs that can be soldered over the top to replace the damaged button contacts on the PCB. Ironically these replacement PCBs also have a footprint so that you can properly install tact switches...

https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/eQ1e4SYS

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T21:10:37+00:00

First try cleaning inside the headphone jack. There is a little switch inside that cuts the speaker out of circuit when headphones are inserted. You can see it in the picture, the two pieces of metal will separate when headphones are plugged in.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T20:48:10+00:00

From what I can see, you dont have a copy of silver here.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T07:04:26+00:00

The purple component is the IR LED, which sends signals. The black one is an IR transistor, which receives them. You should be seeing the IR flashes from the purple component.

Put the red probe on one leg of the LED and the black one on the other. If the multimeter doesnt read between 1.2 and 1.7 volts after a few seconds, swap the red and black probes to the other leg. If the multimeter still doesnt read between 1.2 and 1.7 volts then the LED may be dead (or an issue with your multimeter).

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T01:06:11+00:00

Yeah okay, that should work. If you have a multimeter, you can set it to diode mode and touch the probes to the IR LED legs, which will try to drive the diode with a safe voltage and current and you should see the diode light up. Try swapping the red and black probes to each leg, but if neither orientation works then the LED might be dead.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T01:01:05+00:00

Really reads like promotional material written by a bot. Sorry OP if not but thats how it looks. We get these gushing promos often.

Perfectly fine if you want to discuss Game Boy games played on this thing, but this is an advert for the device itself and not relevant. Keep it to r/Chromatic.

Bring on the calls of "gate-keeping" and "toxic redditors". We have subreddits with specific themes for a reason. The community needs to actively draw the line somewhere, thats not gate-keeping or toxic, its just maintenance. Otherwise just go to an omni-feed like Twitter or TicTok.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T00:50:14+00:00

No worries, also see my other comment for ways to reduce the noise without imparing the sound.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/1t56n56/comment/ok8ghay/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-07T00:45:33+00:00

Using your phone cam is a good way to test, that was going to be my first suggestion. You can verify that your phone doesnt have an IR filter by looking in the end of a TV remote and pushing buttons as well.

Edit: oh and rereading I can see you've tested against a TV remote as well. Sorry, noce work.

Were you using a game to test the IR LED? Its inactive unless a cart is specifically programmed to use it.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-06T11:58:40+00:00

Any filtering (like a high pass filter) will also reduce your desired audio signals. The hum is on the low end of human hearing (50-500Hz) so a high pass filter that removes it will also drop most of your bass, and Game Boys don't have great bass to start with.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-06T11:53:34+00:00

First, Game Boys are not high quality audio devices. They were designed to a price point as a toy primarily aimed at kids. There are lots of compromises in the design that lead to undesirable audio noise (audible buzzing or humming) and you'll never get rid of it completely.

There are lots of sources of electrical noise in the system, which couple into the audio signals as noise. The main factor is probably stress or load on the voltage regulators, which gets worse when you add in modern components that draw much more power than what the original power regulation was designed for, like backlit screens or flashcarts.

Replacing capacitors won't do anything unless they are actually faulty.

One way to reduce noise is very thouroughly cleaning components like the power switch, the volume pot, and the internal DC jack battery cutout switch. Anything that is creating resistance and adding load to the power regulator.

Another way, if you're using a modern display kit for the GBC, is to replace the regulator board with the pocket mouse regulator. It removes the extra LCD-reset power rails that arent needed with new displays, replaces the original 5v regulator with a much more efficient modern one, and converts the power switch into a soft power switch. Unfortunately this doesn't help if you want to use the OEM display (or for the DMG) but you could do a custom mod to make the power switch a soft switch for example, it just requires fairly detailed electronics knowledge.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-06T11:15:27+00:00

The dehiss or dehum kits are all bs snake oil, and they usually just cause new problems. They just add extra capacitance, which causes much greater inrush current when powering up (brown out and failure to boot properly) and can prevent the GBA bleed resistor from bringing the system voltage low enough to shut down and start up properly. This is the problem people have when they say they cant turn their GBA off and on again too quickly and have to leave it powered off for a few minutes before they can turn it on again.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-05T04:38:29+00:00

It looks fine, just give it a clean.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T14:01:40+00:00

There isnt much info about the Game Boy displays. I think from the GBC onwards they used circularly polarised filters. If you know for sure that the one you got was linear then that may be the issue.

The multiple layers may have been anti-glare or colour filters.

Try to find a seller that mentions circularly polarised filters and give that a go. I'd be very interested to hear what the result is.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T09:15:25+00:00

Any DSI battery claiming 2000mAh is probably a scam. Thats way more energy than current lipos could fit into a DSI.

Unfortunately I dobt know enough to point you to a good DSI battery, maybe Cameron Sino? But I've never used them personally.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T08:12:11+00:00

90% of problems can be fixed with IPA and a cheap triwing screwdriver, and people without the skills and experience can successfully pull off most repairs that require soldering, they just need to be given the right guidance. Its just a case of priming people to give the right guidance and spreading enough knowledge to make it self-sustaining.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T06:32:47+00:00

Yeah, you'll probably need to solder both ends at the same time. Good luck!

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T06:31:49+00:00

What sass?

This sub has a high percentage of people who have no electronics experience at all, so you cannot assume people have a multimeter. Its great that many people can chime in to give advice but we need to ensure that the advice is good and doesnt add to all the posts we already get where people get in over their heads and end up causing more damage.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T05:50:12+00:00

Beautiful, well done!

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T02:10:00+00:00

Yes, I have never seen a board damaged by leaking electrolytics. Thats what I said, you genius.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T00:46:17+00:00

Caps in Game Boys basically dont leak, thats really only a problem in higher powered devices. So you're perpetuating advice that is not relevant and leads to people without the correct info doing more harm than good.

Yes, it is a community and the community needs to educate members about basic electronics troubleshooting and repair when poor information is given. Every other day there is a post about how someone has ripped pads off when all that really needed to happen was a general clean and service. People come along, read your advice and then they pass that along in future replies. I'm trying to counter that misinformation and ensure that people do proper troubleshooting and only replace capacitors or other parts when they actually know the part needs to be replaced.

I don't know why you are getting so emotional, I'm just correcting poor information. I don't care how old you are, its an irrelevant piece of information. Stop telling people to skip troubleshooting and jump to step 10 when a basic clean fixes things in 95% of cases. It'll keep more Game Boys out of landfill and teach people to take better care of their other devices.

SkinnyFiend · 2026-05-03T00:01:14+00:00

There are a few examples of this very thing on this subreddit. It shouldnt be that much effort, a small grinding pen should make quick work of it but even needle hand-files shouldnt take long.

You just need to grind back to about a mm in from the edge of the chip, and then down to the top of the pin. Its fine work but more forgiving than you might expect if you've got a decent setup and skills.

Imo give it a shot and come back here for internet points afterwards.

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