What's wrong with this Game Gear (messed up screen)

Old age more than likely.. My Powerbook has something similar often called screen rot..
This looks like the pixels are stuck or plain dead..

 

Something rather interesting here:

 

One of my Atari Lynx had similar looking issue. The crystal inside can rot if there's contamination or poor seal, or just from old age.

 

Hmmmm, seems like that heating up the crystal isn't a permanent solution though...

 

I doubt heating it would do anything honestly.....
if you can find a small LCD that has a zoom function, you could replace it fairly cheap or MCWill has something simmilar iirc

 

True, but I'm looking to get a screen that has the correct native resolution so it doesn't get blurry when zoomed in. From what I've seen, that's an issue with the screen replacement mods.

Okay, I picked up a second GG and swapped over the capacitors. The screen now works!


I've still got issues with the audio though. The speaker is REALLY quiet. Headphone is loud, but there's an issue where if you insert the headphone jack all the way you only get audio from the right and if you partially insert it, you get audio from the left. Halfway gets you audio on both. Any idea why? I've replaced the capacitors on the audio board.

 

Tim Worthington sells a replacement part on his site for audio. It claims it fixes the issues you described so maybe it would work for you.

McWill's screen isn't using upscaling or zooming so don't worry about that. His screen is 320x240 which I think is close to the original Game Gear screen or is the same resolution of the GG screen. His screen is the best way to go. You can also add filters and scanlines to make it look like the original screen. His thread is here.

 

The volume wheel might be bad? I have seen this issue with other handhelds, when they get dirty, the sound crackles when you turn it up and down or the audio cuts out. But I'm not seeing this with this GG, the volume increases and decreases the way it should when I turn it. I'm also getting loud sound via headphones. They both use the same volume wheel, so an issue with the wheel should affect both shouldn't it?

Everything I've read about this mod say the results are a little bit blurrier compared to the stock screen. The original resolution of the GG is 160x144, so I can see why...

 

Ah so maybe it isn't the wheel.

Everything I've seen on McWill's screen doesn't show blurriness. Are you sure you're not confusing his screen for the generic ones that use a composite video mod? Those cause blurriness but his doesn't from what I've seen. His uses an FPGA and digital video signals instead of a composite video mod and a generic car LCD. So the image should be much sharper with McWill's screen.

If you want it to look like the original screen, there are some settings on it that make it look just like the original screen. It even has scanlines in that mode. Another plus with his screen is you get VGA output as well as a better screen.

 

McWill's screen is definitely not blurry. I'm pretty sure however that it is upscaling the image based on artefacts that are more or less visible depending on title.

 

Hmmmm, I found a big zoomed-in image OVER HERE. It looks like the pixels the console is putting out is lining up pretty neatly with the actual pixels on the screen. Maybe it's the lack of scanlines that makes it look blurry (though I'm not normally a fan of scanlines)? If it weren't for the fact that there's so few GG games I'm interested in, I might have looked to get the kit. As it stands now, I'm not sure it's worth the cost considering I won't be using it a whole lot.

I've tried taking the audio board from the new GG and putting it into the repaired one. No issues with the headphone jack, and I'm getting audio from the headphones. No audio from the speaker though. Probably due to the capacitors, guess all I can try is swapping them over from the old board.

 

Hmmm, I've tried putting the repaired soundboard into the second GG and the speaker is much louder on this system. Might there be some kind of issue with the speaker?

 

Swapped over the speaker which improved on the loudness. Sega made the bone-headed decision to melt the plastic to hold the speaker in places. No way to avoid it, I had to Dremel the plastic to remove the speakers. A bit of hot glue seems to be enough to hold the cover back in place.

Audio is still kinda quiet, but maybe that's just how the GG was. It's quiet compared to the Game Boy anyway. The screen had this weird issue were there were a large column of pixels in the center of the screen that were lighter than the rest. This problem then suddenly went away for some reason.

 

No amount of scanlines will ever make that look alright. The scaling is absolutely terrible, I would prefer the original screen any day :/

 

If you did a cap job and it didn't fix the screen, then swapped the caps with another Game Gear and it worked, it sounds as though there was something wrong with your initial cap job. Not necessarily the workmanship (although it could be), but perhaps capacitor selection?

I would persevere and make sure you're using the right capacitors and aligning them correctly! I go for the original type in the audio board, personally.

 

Really? It isn't that far off from OAR, and the original screen's display quality is rather distractingly bad.

There are some options for the scaling, though. Pressing 1+2+Start cycles the following modes:

 

Okay great That would solve the scaling problems just fine

 

I installed it in mine, and I am doing a bit of a "case by case basis" for which scaling I use for each game. I like having the options!

 

Hmmmm, I think I agree with the other posters who have said it was the screen itself that was the issue. Replacing the caps did improve the screen, but there was still the issues you can see in my previous photos. Which line up exactly with the weird lines in the screen you can see even when the console is off. The fact you can see lines on the screen even when it's off is also a bit of a red flag.

No idea what could have caused it though, any damage to the screen would totally have cracked the glass. I'm more interested in why the speaker in the original system was so quiet. Do the type of speakers used in older handhelds wear out and get quieter over time?

 

Believe it or not, but I think that I remember having a PSP screen with the same issue.