No power? Turn on, my little Game Boy Advance

Why did I start buying stuff described as more or less broken in order to fix it? Because fixing things is fun, gives a good feeling and is much better than buying new stuff.

But why did I not start with trying to fix broken stuff already in my possession? Good question. I don't know the answer. About two years ago my father gave me his Game Boy Advance. "Does not turn on. Throw it away!" he said. He always says this.
  • If a thing is old: "Throw it away!"
  • If a thing is damaged: "Throw it away!"
  • If a thing has not been in use for some months: "Throw it away!"
I got really lucky that he gave the AGB-001 to me (and did not yet throw it away himself). It did nothing. Then I turned it on and off some times and after a while the power light briefly flashed red. "Power switch?" I mumbled to myself and took out the batteries. After moving the switch back and forth a hundred times or so and reinserting the batteries… the GBA finally booted with it's power light in weak red while the batteries were fully charged.

Some days after that it did not turn on again → Moving the switch back and forth again and it turned on. Yep: Seemed like corrosion in the power switch. I opened that GBA, looked at the solder points and… closed it. No confidence: "I can't do that."

Then I forgot about that GBA. Today I remembered it for no reason. It did not turn on. No surprise. There was nothing to loose. This GBA did nothing. Time to get out the soldering iron and desolder that corroded switch!

GBA.JPG
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@alexander1970 I am not a soldering master and you know that. I'm making a little progress but I will never master soldering. This is impossible with movement disorders.

@ntcc45 The best time to buy consoles is when they are considered to be "old junk". If a console is new it is obviously pretty expensive. The older it gets the cheaper -- until some point when it is considered to be "cool retro" rather than "old junk".
My feeling is that GBA is already past the point where it was cheap junk for quite a while.
At least here in Germany GBA consoles in good condition are pretty expensive compared to some years ago.

I would also say that buying used consoles at the moment is not the best idea. Even the Wii, dirt cheap some weeks/months ago, has become more expensive since the one-and-only public topic appeared.

Good luck finding a GBA for a reasonable price anyway.
 
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KleinesSinchen
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