Any ideas on repairing a Gameboy Color game?

I have a pokemon yellow version gameboy game that won't boot up. When i turn it on, the word gameboy shows up correctly, but the word nintendo has black dots all over it and it looks like a jumbled mess. I took it apart yesterday and cleaned all of the contacts with alcohol and cotton qtips, but it still does the same thing. I tried the game in 3 different gameboys, all of which work with other games, and they all showed the same error.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

Dirty contact? Really clean it. If it still doesn't work, check for bad solder around ROM chip.

 

They aren't dirty, I was just trying that because I read about other people doing it. The first cleaning took off a very small amount of "residue" that I am 99% sure you would find on almost any other old game. There are no signs of any other damage that I can see. I also couldn't find any bad solder joints either. Same problem persists after an even thorougher cleaning.

 

I fixed a pirate copy of fifa 05 on GBA (I think it was 05, doesn't really matter) by reflowing the solder on each leg of the ROM chip, didn't take long and I didn't even really want the game, just seeing if it would work haha

 

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]I cleaned again and I did an even more thorough job this time, but it is still dead [/FONT]

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Is that just melting and then re-soldering each leg back onto the board?

 

Yes, that is what you need to do, do it to the maskrom AND the MBC3, I just fixed 4 of these this morning. Look for joints that are corroded or damaged as those are more likely to be bad.

 

I had the Zelda GBC game wouldn't boot at all wouldn't even get to the gameboy screen in a GBA, So I took it apart used a pencil eraser as seen in some random youtube video wasn't sure if it was gonna damage it or not didn't really care just wanted to see if it'd work.

So after using the eraser, melting a few pens because I didn't have the gamebits yet... it wound up working fine.

 

Ok thank you. I will try this. Are the chips labeled with MBC3 and maskrom? If they are not, can you tell me how I can figure out which ones are which? I am a noob with cartridge repairs, I'm just getting into it.

 

Maskrom is the large rectangle on the lower right of the board, MBC3 is the small square on the upper left. In your case it is probably the Maskrom, usually the MBC3 creates errors like freezing at the title screen but the opening animation working. Ignore the SRAM (lower left) or MM1134 (upper middle), both of those are for the save data and cant be tested until the cart actually boots.

 

Thank you!! I will try this sometime this week and let you know if it worked. I will be forever grateful if it does :triumphant:

 

I suggest getting a solder sucker first, it'll be much easier.

 

I've got one :encouragement: Thanks for the heads up

 

I'd suggest this as well, I revived a couple of GB carts this way.

 

This seems impossible:dejection:. I've been trying to remove the maskrom for 30minuntes and I haven't even detached one leg. I must be doing something wrong here. I have a solder sucker and a copper solder wick but even those aren't picking anything up. I know the iron is hot enough because I was able to detach the battery successfully. Do I just need to get a pin-point head for my iron?

 

Don't try to desolder the ROM chip, just reflow the solder on the pins. You don't need to remove the ROM chip at all unless it's obviously busted.

 

It worked!! Thank you so much :applause::applause::applause: I really appreciate you helping me. Thank you