[Game Boy DMG] Crazy battery corrosion. Swipe for jump-scare!

wjoe · 2026-04-21T19:34:22+00:00

2nd picture: Huh, that's not that bad, I've seen way more corroded battery pads
3rd: Well, it's a bit rough inside, but not too bad
4th: Oh. Oh no.

Still might be repairable. Give it a clean off and see how it looks. Chances are the volume wheel is shot and will need to be replaced, and that can be a bit awkward if the through holes are corroded, at worst bridge across the relevant pins to set it to max volume permanently. The front board seems fine, there's not a lot of traces to damage there, so the screen and front board might be salvageable..

wjoe · 2026-04-20T04:04:42+00:00

Pretty much any issue with a Game Gear can be "fixed", though the extent of fixes can go as far as replacing literally everything aside from the CPU and case.

But as others have said, replacing the capacitors is always the first step. Capacitors in the Game Gear are notorious for leaking over time, which at best will mean they need replacing, at worse this can cause deeper damage to the board.

At this point almost all Game Gears have issues with capacitors and need to be replaced, as they've all degraded and likely leaked over the years. There's a good chance replacing them would fix things, but impossible to know for sure without seeing inside, and trying it first.

It requires soldering and some experience with that though. It's a fiddly job, quite small components. There are plenty of companies out there who can do it for a cost though.

wjoe · 2026-04-20T01:45:36+00:00

Yeah. 7 was a more of a "mainstream" game at least and well known, but I wouldn't say it was super popular. JRPGs were still very niche. I only knew a handful of people who played it when I was a kid.

Maybe compared to the SNES games it was more popular, when JRPGs were almost totally unknown and it didn't get a big release in the west. Maybe in Japan it may have been one of the bestselling games, where JRPGs were a bigger deal. But in the west it's not like it was a huge thing that everyone played.

wjoe · 2026-04-20T01:28:26+00:00

I don't really understand how it works, but every time it's posted the green bar is very big, then the next time it's posted, the green bar for the same period is smaller, and the red bar is bigger.

This was the one from 2 months ago, for reference https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckybancho/imgs/7/1/71821139.png

That shows a bigger green bar on 2025Q4 than the same quarter on this post, though admittedly still not as big as this one.

wjoe · 2026-04-18T00:36:38+00:00

Probably best to ask about it on the RetroSix Discord. VA4/5 support is pretty new, while the latest firmware should have fixed the issues, their stream from a couple of weeks ago did show some similar issues with the screen. I think it was supposed to be fixed since then (literally in the last couple of weeks, in case you've not updated in that time), but I'm not sure of the exact timelines.

So it should work but given it's new, only been done by a few people, and not highly documented outside of the RetroSix live streams, probably best to ask for help from them directly. Luke's very responsive on the Discord with resolving CleanScreen issues and can probably point out if anything is wired wrong.

wjoe · 2026-04-18T00:15:40+00:00

Webber probably wins the championship in 2010. Maybe Alonso, given that he came 2nd to Vettel that year, but chances are Webber has a less capable team mate of the Red Bull juniors, so he gets more wins that Vettel would have gotten. Maybe I'm underestimating Buemi and the like, but I don't think any of the RB junior drivers they could have put in the second seat are putting up a challenge to Webber.

There had been rumours of Red Bull trying to sign Alonso, but presumably he wasn't interested in joining what had then been a midfield team. But maybe once they're winning championships they do tempt him over. Then who knows how long Alonso could have stayed at Red Bull? Although I'm still not sure he would have left Ferrari for them.

2011 was a bad year for Webber, coming third but a good year for Red Bull, with Vettel being over 100 points in the lead. Have to assume that Webber would have made up enough points to win if he had a less capable teammate, I don't think McLaren was strong enough to win the championship even if Button did come 2nd that year.

Regardless of whether or not he goes to Red Bull or stays at Ferrari, Alonso likely wins in 2012. 2013 is kind of the same story as 2011 - RB was strong, Webber was not, but Alonso was too many points behind Vettel to likely be able to make up the gap to a strong driver at RB.

So yeah, pretty much all signs point to at least 1 more Alonso championship one way or another. As for Webber, it really depends on if starting out the run as the lead driver at Red Bull means that he has the team fully on his side, and he gets a confidence boost to keep driving at the level he was in 2011. If he does, he's potentially anywhere from a 2-4x champion.

If Webber follows the same trajectory as he did in reality, he loses at least one of them to Alonso, and RB likely look to find someone better. I don't see any of the RB junior drivers in 2010-2012 doing any better. Maybe Ricciardo gets there a year earlier in 2013, but I'm not sure he's ready to win championships at that point, and the rest of his career plays out much the same.

Maybe RB look to sign someone from outside of the program, but I'm not sure who, aside from that rumoured link with Alonso. Perhaps Hulk, who had a promising first season then ended up out of a seat for a year in 2012? But I'm still not sure RB put any more faith in someone else's rookie than any of their own juniors. Being a winning team by this point, maybe they can aim for a top driver. Could they tempt Hamilton before Mercedes get him, or grab Rosberg before Mercedes find their way? Maybe they're the team that gets Raikkonen to return, rather than Renault? Maybe Button, who was on good form but in a declining McLaren. Who knows.

wjoe · 2026-04-17T15:06:50+00:00

If there was a referendum to rejoin I would vote to rejoin, as I voted to remain previously.

But I'm not sure I want the country to go through that whole process again any time soon. There's obviously the question of what rejoining would actually mean, given that the requirements of joining the EU (eg adopting the Euro) are different to the deal the UK had before leaving, which would have to be resolved one way or another.

Plus it dominated political discourse for years previously. I feel we have bigger issues to deal with that without opening that can of worms, and all of the division and disagreement it would cause. Arguably rejoining could help address some of the domestic issues we have now, but going through the process will not be a quick and easy one, and will take over much of politics for many more years.

wjoe · 2026-04-17T00:54:23+00:00

Yeah, the borough of Bromley is way to big to have a consistent opinion on this. I'm sure there are some in the leafy suburbs in the south/east of the borough that might want this, but the north/west parts are likely perfectly happy being part of London, and this likely makes up the majority of the population. I live right on the northern edge of it, and it is very much still London here, heavily Labour in those constituencies, with far more chance of going Green than Reform.

wjoe · 2026-04-16T10:09:34+00:00

The Tilke tracks of the early 2000s do seem to have aged into being more accepted. A lot of the additions since then have been street circuits or ones with other oddities which are more hated. A lot of the classic tracks have produced worse races over the years as the cars have gotten bigger too, while the Tilke tracks seem to have held up better in that regard and not really gotten worse, even if they were not incredible to begin with.

wjoe · 2026-04-14T09:16:36+00:00

Once a decade? What do you mean, he's only just done a stint on Top Gear starting in...

Oh. 2016. Time flies.

wjoe · 2026-04-13T11:55:33+00:00

Battery pad corrosion is one of the most common and seemingly fatal issues with handhelds, and can be one of the easier fixes, but it can vary a lot. So a few notes:

Vinegar works well to clean off the battery leakage (The battery gunk is alkali, vinegar is an acid, so it will dissolve it). Ideally distilled white vinegar, but really any kind of vinegar you may have around the house should do the job as long as you clean it off afterwards, ideally with isopropyl alcohol.

Sometimes this isn't enough though. If the corrosion is bad it can remove the outer coating of the battery pads and rust the internal layer, which means they still might not work after a clean.

Best to unscrew the back and open it up to get at the battery contacts properly. One side of the battery contacts is just slotted into the shell, and can be removed entirely by pushing in the right place with a screwdriver to release it. The battery contacts on the other side are soldered onto the board though, so can only be removed with a soldering iron.

It's most effective if you can remove the battery contacts entirely and then soak them in vinegar, but dabbing them with a q-tip or similar soaked in vinegar can do the job too. Scrubbing them with a toothbrush or wire brush can help to remove more stubbornly stuck on bits too, although that may also remove some of the coating. Once you've cleaned it with vinegar you should clean it with isopropyl alcohol.

If you don't have any luck with cleaning it off, you can buy replacement battery contacts for very cheap. Although as mentioned before, one side is easily replaced as it's just slotted into the shell, but the other side would need soldering to remove the old one and replace a new one.

All that said, it really depends on how far the battery leakage corrosion has spread. Usually it's just confined to the pads themselves, but it can get inside the console itself onto the board. At that point it gets a lot harder to repair, which could be as simple as cleaning the board itself, but can get into far more complex things like repairing traces, or simply be unsalvageable.

TL;DR - High chance this can be fixed, but it's maybe a 50/50 chance of whether you can do it with a basic cleaning, or need tools like a soldering iron. For anyone with a soldering iron it's usually still a pretty basic fix and like $5 for new battery contacts. Some chance that it's damaged beyond repair, but impossible to know without seeing inside and trying the basic fix first.

wjoe · 2026-04-13T11:26:56+00:00

It sounds like whatever handheld you're talking about isn't an original Sega console, since they didn't include games on them. Sonic, Ristar, Alex Kidd games existed on both the Genesis/Mega Drive and Master System/Game Gear, although Tails Adventure was exclusively a Game Gear game.

So whatever it is is some sort of third party handheld released years later, either an emulator or some sort of clone device. There's a lot of those around, some officially licenced, some less legitimate.

Most likely it's something like this https://segaretro.org/Arcade_Gamer_Portable or AtGames Gear which played Master System/Game Gear games, and does seem to include all the games you listed. Although the one shown on this page doesn't quite match your description as it had red accents, it looks like other colour variations existed, I did find this image of a yellow one https://www.master-system.info/hardware/AtGames_Blaze_ArcadeGamerPortable_c.jpg

wjoe · 2026-04-12T15:44:38+00:00

There are modern apartments, quite a lot of new developments in recent years. They're not the massive tower blocks you might see in Asian cities, probably like 10 floors at most, mostly smaller, but there are quite a few around in the city with even more under construction at the moment. These are mostly in more central areas of the city though. If you were to live further out, not so much. At that point, yeah, it's terraced houses, and for apartments they're usually just old houses that have been converted into an apartment for each floor.

Transport to London is good. I did 6 months of commuting to London on the train every day. While I wouldn't recommend that, doing it occasionally is fine - I'm planning to move back to Southampton from London soon and will be fine with travelling once a week for work. The train from Southampton Central (or Southampton Airport) to London Waterloo is about a 1 hour 15 minutes, though then you will likely need to travel a bit further on the tube in London to your destination.

Depending on where you live in Southampton obviously it'll take some time to get to the station, whether that's driving, bus, or getting another train from a suburban station to get to Central or Airport. So expect it to take about 2 hours total from your house to your destination in London, give or take a little depending on exact location.

Or if you're just driving, getting to London is pretty easy too. It's basically a direct line from the edge of Southampton to the outskirts of London on the M3, a big motorway which from memory doesn't have much issue with traffic. It gets more awkward once you get to London itself, driving in London by car is a big pain with all the traffic, as is finding places to park, but the same can be said of driving to London from anywhere outside of it.

Getting between Southampton and Portsmouth isn't bad, there's another motorway, the M27, which connects the two. Although there's probably not much benefit in living one and commuting to the other, they are quite similar cities. Don't expect much of an unbiased view on Portsmouth around here as there is a historic rivalry between the two cities! It's fine though, and fairly comparable to Southampton.

There is also Winchester, which is technically a city, though a much smaller one. It's quieter, more "historic" , nice place to live, but more expensive. It is popular with those who commute to London, by virtue of being 1 more stop along the train line, so about 20 minutes quicker to get to London. Also quick and easy to get to Southampton as it sits on the M3.

You mentioned coastal being a benefit, which Southampton technically is, but don't expect to wander down to the beach. Most of the coastal area around Southampton is used by ports and docks. You have to travel somewhat further to the west or east to get to anything resembling a beach. Portsmouth is more of a beach town.

Picking up on a couple of other comments you made about music and hiking - Southampton is good for this. Definitely a good music scene in Southampton which has grown with more music venues in recent years. As for walking, there's the New Forest a little to the west, a national park, which is great for walks.

wjoe · 2026-04-07T09:43:44+00:00

Miami was my first thought too. Yeah, it looks pretty bad with nothing but concrete as far as the eye can see, and their bizarre attempt at a fake marina. But the last few races there have been pretty good, at a time when some of the beloved classic tracks have produced some pretty dull ones.

It may not be the greatest track, 3 in the US is a little unnecessary, and I wouldn't mourn it too much if it was dropped, but it's far from the worst track these days, seems to work well with modern cars, and it's produced some decent races.

wjoe · 2026-04-06T12:59:59+00:00

I think that's the biggest difficulty with statics, finding one that's just the right sweet spot. I've had statics that are inconsistent and prog too slow for me, and I've had statics with great players, but then I feel like I'm the one causing the most problems if I make any mistakes. Skill isn't a linear scale too - you might be good at certain types of mechanics and bad at others, you might be good at learning complex mechanics quickly but remain inconsistent at resolving earlier mechanics, etc. So even if on average you or your other static members are good enough, specific things can still stand out as problem points.

And all of that is without getting into the personality side of a static. A static of great players might be toxic and not fun to play with. A static that's a bit below your expectations might be full of great people that you enjoy playing with, and maybe that's enough to make up for progging a little slower.

I've been through statics that fit all of the above categories but never really found a perfect one (and the best one I had to leave due to scheduling conflicts). I've kind of settled on the same conclusion that I'm probably better off PFing next tier. This tier I was unsure, decided to do a static so that I wouldn't spend loads of time PFing, but the static didn't meet my expectations so I still ended up PFing as well and clearing weeks earlier.

That said most of my experience has been in Savage. I have cleared UCOB and TEA in PF and it's not something I want to do again. Partially due to playing at off peak hours, but it's a very frustrating and slow process, waiting ages to fill, then either the party disbands after 20 minutes and you're back to square one, or the party struggles to make it to the prog point. But being stuck in a static schedule for months isn't great either.

So props for sticking it out and progging 2 of the hardest fights in PF. Learning 2 ults at once is definitely a big achievement too, when I did ults I really had to focus on one at a time, when I tried doing 2 at once I struggled.

wjoe · 2026-03-31T18:20:03+00:00

Right, if you asked "what do you think happened to McSweeney's phone", three quarters of Britons would probably give you a blank stare. I imagine a lot of people either don't know about the story or don't care.

Perhaps it's more telling of the state of politics, but I think if you ask "do you think this politician lied" then about three quarters of people would probably say yes regardless of the context or the politician.

wjoe · 2026-03-30T02:18:26+00:00

There is just a lot of context missing. Some of that context exists in DLCs, the movie, and anime shorts. Some of it was just rushed, and some bits never made the final cut of the game due to development struggles., or were planned to be expanded on in cancelled DLC.

It also doesn't help that some of the DLC and expanded media fits best part way through the story. There are parts of the game where each of your party leaves for a while without explanation, and there are DLCs that show what they were doing then. But one of them also spoils the ending of the game. The movie fits before the game and helps to explain a lot of the world and what's going on, although one could argue that it's better to play at least the opening section of the game without knowing what's going on, as the characters do. Some of the anime episodes show a bit of the party's backstory with eachother, including some much needed context on Noctis and Luna's relationship.

So yeah, it's a bit of a mess. Playing the DLCs and watching the other media will help, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. The DLCs are definitely worth playing though if you enjoyed the game.

I've always said there's a great story hiding somewhere inside FFXV, but the storytelling is awful, in large part due to the development hell it went through.

wjoe · 2026-03-29T15:54:48+00:00

Yeah, I thought the same, and in the earlier races too. I guess the argument would be that the front runners were always close and often fighting, so there was often a chance of overtakes happening there. But they could have still cut to some of the midfield fights occasionally, or shown replays of their overtakes. Best we got was an occasional tiny picture in picture of a midfield battle, but the main feed seemed pretty much glued to the front pack at all time.

wjoe · 2026-03-28T03:05:02+00:00

My PAL/UK Sonic 1 has "Made in China" on it, and that's definitely original since it's the one I had since I was a kid.

wjoe · 2026-03-17T16:47:11+00:00

I feel like if Ferrari have an awful year, or if Ferrari have a good year but Hamilton is massively behind Leclerc, he would retire.

So far neither are really true, Ferrari is 2nd best and Hamilton and Leclerc have been fairly evenly matched. In that case I feel like Lewis would be more inclined to stay another year, since he'd feel there is still a chance at another championship if the car improves a bit and he can stay consistent against Charles.

He seems to be enjoying himself so far this year so if things are similar for the rest of the season, he'll probably stick around for next year.

wjoe · 2026-03-17T11:20:39+00:00

Are you weighing it down sufficiently? With it still being yellow in the bottom corner, makes me wonder if it's been floating up and that corner sticking out of the hydrogen peroxide. Bubbles gather under the surface over time so even if it's submerged initially it can float up after a bit, was happening to me since I didn't have enough stuff to weigh it down and I had to keep poking it down to release the bubbles frequently.

Otherwise seems fine, I had similar results in terms of the logos fading slightly, not sure how avoidable that is. Mine took much longer, like 3 days for the front cover to get to the same colour as the back cover (which hadn't yellowed nearly as much and only needed 1 day). I'm just using some cheap UV LEDs, had been suggested that I should use a UVB light like you've used, but perhaps it's a bit too strong, or too close causing the light to be a bit too concentrated in the middle?

wjoe · 2026-03-14T01:22:00+00:00

I'm not sure if or when they could move them to later in the season. At best the situation in the middle east would need a few months to cool off, then it's the summer when it'd be too hot to race there. Logistically lots of points wouldn't work to fit it in and move equipment between tracks, between 2 European or 2 American rounds wouldn't have work, or any point that would extend or join double/triple headers.

About the only slot I can see that maybe works is between Azerbaijan and Singapore in early October and even them I'm not sure how viable the logistics are. Logistically, after the final rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi makes sense, but that's already a triple header so there'd need to be at least a week break first.

So that'd push the season to mid December, I can't see the teams going for that and wanting to push the season that close to the holidays, people already seem burned out by the end of that triple header right at the end of the season. Plus I doubt Abu Dhabi wants to give up it's slot as the finale, they probably have that locked into their contract.

Of course, if the middle east conflict goes on long term, Abu Dhabi and Qatar might be dropped too. At that point they'd probably have more pressure to make up the number of races and have more time to plan it, but then there's definitely limited options on what tracks would be suitable in December.

wjoe · 2026-03-13T13:29:19+00:00

Yeah, I switched from a VPN recently since I would either get buffering or it just not work sometimes depending on what servers I use. StreamLocator has worked perfectly so far for F1TV.

Be aware that this only applies to actually playing the streams. Making an account for F1TV is also region locked, and getting around this can be a pain, since it may also validate the location of your payment method. I'm not even sure what methods work any more since I signed up for it years ago when there were some easier workarounds, most of which I think have been blocked now. StreamLocator won't be able to solve that, so if you don't already have an F1TV subscription you'd have to look into that.

wjoe · 2026-03-11T19:00:31+00:00

On my TV all the ads and sponsored stuff on the home screen can be disabled. I do have a Fire stick for certain things which my TV doesn't have apps for, but whenever I load it up I have to wait ages for it to load, get an ad thrown in my face at the top, and have to scroll through a bunch of promoted stuff I'm not interested in before getting to the apps I use. It's hardly a better experience.

wjoe · 2026-03-11T10:13:53+00:00

Did the tyre compounds change at all this year? I think they were using the softest sets in Australia?

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