Hardware NONE of the face buttons work?

[suparnemo]

Hi all, I'm having a very odd issue. I recently hardmodded my N3DS Non-XL and it went well. The only issue is that A and X stopped working. I thought it was just the flex, so I ordered that. Now I went in and swapped it easy enough. No need to pull the board or unplug much, but now NONE of the face buttons work. The only ones that work are ZL and ZL and home. Even the circle pad doesn't work!

Any ideas on what this could be?

 

[suparnemo]

Quick update,

The device believes Y to be held down causing other buttons to not function. Wiggling cpad fully around makes it stop doing that temporarily.
I was able to verify that the only buttons not working are AX and Y. I believe the rest to be functioning.

Any ideas on a repair for this? I tried a new ABXY board and that also does not allow AXY to work. I also tested several new flex cables for ABXY. I'm guessing the connector is what is broken on the mobo?

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Does anyone know a reliable source for motherboard repairs?

My best guess here is that the connector on the board is damaged. Seems to be the only thing left.

 

[JacksonS]

I guess it could be damaged, or just defective. I've used a lot of FFC connectors and I've never seen one stop working, but it sounds like that must be your issue. You could test continuity with a multimeter while pressing buttons to see if there is any connection between the ABXY board and the motherboard. With very fine soldering, you could also attach some wires to the pins of the FFC connector on the motherboard to test if there is a response when using wires to mimic the buttons (as in putting a wire on the A signal data line and tapping it to ground to signal a button press). I don't have a pinout for that connector though.

 

[Eruandou]

I've actually had this problem. The problem is on the motherboard. You should clean it the best you can. Small traces of solder are scattered through the mobo and are causing those problems.
Try using a small brush first to remove them (even if you actually don't see anything in particular) and then reassemble and try again!
This worked for me.