Hardware (possibly) damaged top screen o3ds XL

[jmanugget]

I LOVE my 3ds. I have put so many hours into it and have done the best I could to take care of it over the past 5-ish years. However today I was surprised to find that the top screen seemed broken. The top half was somewhat legible but it seemed really off color and washed out the rest of the screen was either black or white with red and blue lines separating them. The bottom screen was fine, it powered off fine. When I had time to investigate I powered it back on. Same result, but a few seconds later I see the top screen become more distorted and the bottom screen begin to darken. I turned it off, but it shut down with a popping sound.. I do some research and fine out that it may be a loose ribbon cable. I know my way inside a 3ds Xl as my brother had broken two of his and let me take them apart to see if I could fix them. So off I go taking apart my little friend and everything seems normal. I re-seat all the connectors, put it back together and then It wouldn't start. I got the classic popping before starting issue. A little more research later I decide to try swapping the battery as the current one was a bit swollen. Yay it turns on again but now the top screen is even worse. It has a solid white line across 1/3 of the display and the rest is black, the bottom lcd is even darker. So here I am trying to decide if this is a damaged lcd, broken motherboard, or some stupid easy to fix reason. I am fine with having to buy a new system (N2DSXL) if I have to. Here is a photo of the system, sorry its so bad my camera had trouble with the low light.

EDIT: So being the curious little shit I am, I decided to dig deeper into it and I broke the plastic. Oh well, guess I'll just buy a new ds. Would still like to know what was wrong though

 

[TurdPooCharger]

It's probably a hard bricked or dying GPU.

If you can get another fully function o3DSXL, swap in this one's motherboard in the other's body. That will show if it's bad LCD connections or GPU failure.

Reflow the motherboard in case it's the latter case.

 

[jmanugget]

It's probably a hard bricked or dying GPU.

If you can get another fully function o3DSXL, swap in this one's motherboard in the other's body. That will show if it's bad LCD connections or GPU failure.

Reflow the motherboard in case it's the latter case.

well I doubt its bricked, yes I had cfw but I don't see why it would suddenly brick after 2-3 years. I was betting on the GPU failure because I kept this thing in my pocket all day and it would see quite the amount of pressure so I suspect some sort of bending or a short in the LCD damaged the LCD driver circuitry

 

[lone_wolf323]

You can doubt it all you want. But its the same way as SD cards. They can simply crap out the next day after its been used just fine. Electronics are no where near perfect yet. and with the way the worlds been. they probably never will. The same can easily happen with the console itself. Ive seen enough where the console aswell as the sd card have stopped working the next morning. Those steps simply are to help make sure the correct troubleshooting steps are done and there's not needless ones that waste time when it was the other all along.