I booted up two launch year GameBoy Colors only to find that both had scratchy, tinny sound with very low volume. Sounded just fine through the headphone jack so I cracked them open today and swapped out three capacitors that I found inside. Worked like a charm, sound is back but now I've got a problem: Best picture I can get. You can barely see it there but the graphics get pulled a bit forming bars across the screen where they're being displayed. You can see it best where it reads "Blue Version". These are the three caps I replaced and the values written on them: C32 - 100;6S;8M8 C35 - 22;16S;8H9 C38 - 100;4S;8B8 I have no idea what that code means for voltage but I replaced them with 100uF and 22uF caps at 25v and 16v hoping the fact it takes 2 AAs would mean nothing more than 16v would really be necessary. One of the pads I partially lifted by accident but part of it is still connected but I can't quite make out where the trace is to the pad. I removed C35 (whose pad was partially lifted) and the screen remained the same. Upon visual inspection there is a small trace going off to the side and back towards the top of the GBC. Scratched away some of the solder resist, fitted a wire and bam, she is back to factory fresh. Lesson for you kiddos: don't lift your pads! Addendum: I did the same as above (sans lifting the pad) to a teal CGB-CPU-004 (the above is CGB-CPU-001) and the sound has remained exactly as it was before I swapped out the capacitors. There is either more that needs to be swapped out or the speaker is shot. Leaning towards the speaker being shot as sound comes out of the headphone jack just fine with a bit less buzz now.
Back in the day I bought a GBC (around 1998) and the speaker died after I flew to japan in 2002. I have no idea why. I think they are just crappy speakers.
Brother's Pikachu(?) edition GBC had its speaker damaged at some point by no apparent source. Sounded a bit like this teal one does now that I think about it.
A few of my gameboy colors have dead speakers. I think its pretty common for the speakers to die because Nintendo was pretty cheap on the speakers.
