Fixing Some "Junk" GBA SP Consoles
Channel: makho
Date: 08/06/2019

One of my favorite "pastimes" is to pick up junk Game Boys and see if I can fix them up. Taking something that someone was going to otherwise junk and making it work as it should is very relaxing to me. It also gives me good consoles to mod that I don't feel bad about otherwise ruining (which, while rare, does happen occasionally). 

I picked up a few "junk" GBA SP Consoles from the ebay seller japan_4_you via their own website j4u.co.jp. Each SP was less than $20. I bought the black ones in particular because I wanted a black GBA SP, even if I couldn't fix either so I think I got a great deal regardless. Unfortunately, one of them did not come with a battery cover and the other battery cover seems to have been damaged by an apprentice who doesn't know how a screwdriver works. 

The pink SP and the black SP with no battery cover were both listed as tested not working. Per the description on both units: "The item does not work. We checked this item and it just couldn't power on"

The other black SP was shown to be booting and per the description: "The item works. The speaker does not work." so I figured it would just need some tweaking. 

Spoiler alert, the two "not working" SP consoles just need batteries but the speaker not working SP appears to have a bad potentiometer. I do not currently have the parts to try to fix it. 

Additionally, I did manage to fix the sound issue on that GBA SP. I did not film this as it took me a few hours and because I was watching some netflix simultaneously (partly why it took me a few hours). As I suspected, it was the potentiometer, but there was also a broken trace and a damaged trace due to liquid damage. As I did not have a spare SP pot, I replaced it with the pot from a GBC. I used VFB double-sided tape to hold it in place. It's wired opposite how it would be on a GBC but scrolling down turns the volume down and up turns it up, as it used to be on the SP. 

Here is an imgur album with some details on my fix: https://imgur.com/a/PtU4R4o

And here is a quick gif with sound (so another video, I guess): https://gfycat.com/fairacclaimeddog