GBA Backlight! (AGB-001)

This picture, the yellow dot is next to the "A" on the right side.
It's really really tiny

When you say "different ground" do you mean different source of power for the back light connection?

And if that's not what you meant, what should the yellow dot be connected with?

 

YES! Thank you very much, i will try that

My fault i haven't seen last picture, my adblock just blocked it.

So, i see the "new" GND is at point above the "R11" inscrption, but where it should be soldered? To the LCD ribbon i guess?

edit//
I tracked this point, cable can be easily soldered to one of the transistor's pins, here is the picture


I also tried to connect this "new GND" to a cable that is connected to "P1" on a ribbon, nothing has changed, only screen is not that bright.

Any other solution? I'm uploading another picture with my problem.

 

I have a similar bug and i have fixed it by connected one pin to GND!

My pic:

Fixit by dragonhk2005, on Flickr

 

Ok, i have another problem: my version is "1" not "0"
I connected the 2nd pin of the CPU with GND - it didnt help.

 

THIS POINT IS R11.(GROUND)

 

Nothing changed :| thanks for your time tho

 

Everything looks normal with the old display right?
If so, you should try with a new LCD and try to get some kynar wire instead, try size AWG 28 and while you are at it get some flux to get a nice smooth solder job done.

*EDIT*

Are there any sharp bends on the lcd ribbon? Upload a photo.

 

Old display works 100% as new.
I would have to wait another month to get new LCD from china... And spend another cash on it while im not sure it's the LCD issue
Ribbon has been bent, but not too sharp. Paths aren't broken as far as i see. Here is pic

Do you think that LCD could be damaged? They sent me it by normal mail

 

Let's try to use LCD creen with original GBA SP backlight mainboard. I don't think LCD damaged because I have a similar problem and I had fixed it by the way above picture. I don't have a diagram of 32 type pinouts but I think you need connect random a some pin to GND, you will see to change of color tone or power turn off. Try again!

 

You fixed it by connecting some pin with GND in your GBA, right? How this pin is called? I'll find it in pinout diagram and i will try to connect it.

I don't have access to another LCD, none of my friends use GBA(SP) anymore. Maybe i will buy broken one to check. Does it have to be AGS-101 or it could be 001 as well?

I tried connecting GND with some LCD pins for short period, and some causes high brightness, some low brighness, some makes glitches on the screen, some resets the GBA, some do nothing. I haven't seen this LCD displaying right colors thought.

I was looking at other boards in the web for this or similar problem and i didn't found any. Weird. :|

 

My similar problem is occur on the GBA mainboard 40 pins. This label name is P2-VEE but I couldnot found on the mainboard 32 pins. The only way you need to get another SP mainboard to test LCD screen....You do not it but I have a lot of GBA SP...Sad!

 

OK on the Ribbon cable adapter use P1 and see if it helps.

 

Guys, I FIXED IT!!!

I connected pins: COM + REVC + GND
AND IT WORKED! I'm very happy. My girlfriend didn't believe i will make it ;D

Thank you all for your help! You tracked me to trial and error with GND!

 

A nice shot!!!

I throught you didnot believe me

 

YunGBA and Dragonhk2005 - thank you both so much!

I installed an AGS-101 screen in my 32-pin GBA but the screen had streaks, was washed out and adjusting the pot did not help. Searching for answers led me to this thread.

Although my screen problem was not as severe as YunGBA, the solution of soldering a wire between points REVC and GND instantly fixed my problem. Now when adjusting the pot, I get a proper blend of brightness and color saturation.

Thank you both for sharing your knowledge and experience as it helped resolve my problem and will surely help others!

 

Wow, im happy im not the only one who resolved this problem.
I think that connecting the GND disables the pot (im not sure about it), and you still can use it because you only connected REVC and COM.
I will check it and post result, for now im not disassembling my GBA because im using it all the time since i got the LCD working.
Happy night-playing!

 

No need to disassemble as the pot works fine with REVC and GND connected. I did not connect COM to REVC as everything seems to work OK.

Prior to connecting REVC to GND, adjusting the pot resulted in a washed out screen with streaks. Only the brightness seemed to change when turning the pot. After connecting REVC to GND, adjusting the pot results in nice color saturation and display brightness without streaks. Basically, the pot now functions completely normal and the screen performance matches my GBA SP with AGS-101.

I left the system on for a couple of hours running on rechargeable Sanyo Eneloop batteries and everything is working fine

 

As this is my first post on this forum, I'd like to say hello to everyone.
Using some of the information from this thread I recently completed the installation of mine backlit screen I ordered from Aliexpress

As you all can see my workspace is on a kitchen counter, but still i managed to complete my goal. I installed the AGS-101 screen without the ribbon cable kit and here is how i did it. First of all I wouldn't have done that without a great makro from my phone using a simple piece of equipment i made recently :-)

I used the ribbon cable from my original no backlight screen and set it where it supposed to be, then I scored the lines to mark the position.
Then I scrubbed some of the capton tape from the ribbon with a scalpel and soldered the coil wires to it, all 32 of them to be exact. I also checked them for any shorts using my makro lens :-)

After that i needed to trace all the test pins onto the original ribbon in order to know how to connect it to the screen's ribbon, because I couldn't find the pinout for the 32 pins mainboard anywhere. It turns out that pins 1-32 match exactly AGS-101's pinout. Pins 32 and 33 on screens ribbon are soldered to pin 32(GND) on the mainboard's side and pin 34 is soldered to the transistor leg on the mainboard (33 and 34 are the backlight pins) Here are some pictures my completed work and some first tests (the screen reqired pot adjustment, because the picture faded away after a few seconds)
Thanks to my makro lens I've found three shorts which i cut with a scalpel, in order not to desolder the wires. Thanks to that it worked on the very first try "yay" :-)

Faded picture:
After making sure everything works correctly, I started to assemble the console. The original ribbon, as well as the screens ribbon, are sticked to the back of the screen with double sided tape only without any other isolation. On top of that I used the padding from the original screen.

The end effect are beautiful saturated colors and great visibility of what is going on in the games. I'm quite proud of my work so i decided to spend last 40 minutes of my life sharing it with you. I hope that you'll appreciate it and that this post will be useful to some of the people like me, who don't want to spent 15-20 USD or don't have access to the ribbon kits ;-P. (I also took this effort to keep the mainboard as intact as possible)

 

Amazing soldering skills there! Well done.

 

That's very nice work