[KR155E]

A problem often encountered by Virtual Boy users are glitchy displays, leading to horizontal lines, reversed or generally distorted images, or even complete loss of display activity.

All those symptoms are usually caused by the ribbon cables connecting the LEDs to the motherboard becoming loose, or peeling away from the display PCB.

Fixing your Diplay: Oven method

DogP has come up with a way to fix the problem by opening the system up, removing the display, sticking it in the oven to re-melt the adhesive, and reassemble. It’s not a difficult procedure, except that the typical security bit can’t get to the deepest screws on the VB, so you either need a special screwdiver, a modified bit, or a modified screwdriver.

You can find a guide to fix your displays on DogP’s Project:VB.

Fixing your Diplay: Bypass method

Another way has been proposed by DanB. To permanently fix the problem, his idea was to replace the loosening ribbon cables with some better wires, which he soldered to the PCB. This solution requires much more skill, though, and should only be performed by solder experienced people with a steady hand and a huge portion of patience.

The complete guide can be found here.

Fixing your Diplay: New methods (RECOMMENDED)

Some more methods have recently been developed by DogP to permanently fix the cable problem (contrary to the probably non-permanent oven method): Thread.

• This topic was modified 16 years, 5 months ago by KR155E.

I wouldn’t risk heating up the whole system, as the case (among other parts) probably can’t take the heat. Wrapping it in a towel won’t work because there aren’t any parts inside the Virtual Boy that produce excessive heat. (Note that there aren’t any vents on the case that a towel would block.) All the fixes for the ribbon cables have to be applied directly to the ribbon cables themselves, so if I were you, I would just go without Virtual Boy for a few days until your bits get there. 🙁

Thanks for the replies. I guess I’ll just leave the IPD to the left for a while and see if that changes anything :-P. I can’t wait for my gamebit to arrive so I can fix this.

Definitely do not try to heat up your entire VB in an oven or anything like that. There is a reason why the xbox 360 “towel trick” does not work, or only works temporarily. You definitely need to wait until you can open up the system.

Back again. I seem to be able to temporarily fix the glitchy display by leaving the Virtual Boy on the ground with the eyepieces facing upwards. I don’t know why this works, but it seems to do the trick for now. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to accidentally knock the cables out of place again while playing.

I Hope This Trick With The IPD Nob Works,But This Means No Virtual Boy For A Few Days 🙁

Boneriver wrote:
Back again. I seem to be able to temporarily fix the glitchy display by leaving the Virtual Boy on the ground with the eyepieces facing upwards. I don’t know why this works, but it seems to do the trick for now. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to accidentally knock the cables out of place again while playing.

It’s not so much “knocking them out of place”, as the cables are really light, and although the glue is bad, they’re still securely fastened at either end. Although I have no idea why leaving the system face up would make it work…

Hey guys, I’m new here, and I posted at topic about my display problem already but I can’t find a way to delete it. Mods can if they want, I just made my own because my problem didn’t line up with the common cause of display issues.

On my Virtual Boy the right lens (that my left eye looks into) shows absolutely nothing. If I close my right eye, it’s just black. Through the left, the display’s fine often, not blurry, but I sometimes have a vertical line problem that distorts the display, not the common horizontal one I’ve seen fixes for. Last time I tried it (with Galactic Pinball), the vertical lines seemed to inch up the screen like weeds when action started happening.

The startup screen only shows two of the corner squares, the top right and bottom left squares, suggesting to me that the right lens generates the missing squares. When I ran the Left-B-Down-A-Up code for the alignment screen, it only showed the vertical lines, no horizontal line of any kind. Again, I believe the horizontal line is generated with the right lens, but I’m not a techie to 100% prove that.

Is my problem fixable with the oven or soldering techniques, or is something else, like a loose wire or dust buildup? Thanks for any advance help!

I am happy to be able to say that I am another satisfied user of the Oven Method for fixing basically ANY kind of Virtual Boy display problem, such method being described in detail by DogP here:

http://home.comcast.net/~virtual.boy/projectvb/displayfix.html

If you are new to this site and are having any kind of display problems with your Virtual Boy… any kind at all… don’t get discouraged and don’t go buying another Virtual Boy before you’ve at least tried the Oven Method for fixing your Virtual Boy. As far as I know, there are only 2 methods that have been given for fixing any kind of Virtual Boy display problem at all, which should work in just about any case, unless you truly have a Virtual Boy that was ever ripped apart and smashed or somehow internally damaged by something more than just a good drop. The Oven Method is said to be a temporary fix, but it is very easy, and just about anyone should be able to do it and repeat it if and when it is necessary, in order to keep one’s Virtual Boy gaming going for the long run. I can’t attest to the Solder Method yet, but others can, and they also say that it is a permanent fix, but it looks a lot more difficult for the average person/gamer.

One thing that I can definitely say with regard to the Oven Method is that the motto: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” works here. I got to the point in the instructions where it reads “Immediately after removing the displays from the oven, flip them over and rub the back of the cables to the PCB to ensure a good bond.” I had preheated my oven to 200 degrees F and waited until the cables on both displays were lying flat, removed them from the oven, and then firmly pressed the back of the cables to the PCBs with my thumb for probably a good minute and a half or so. To the naked eye, it looked like everything was bonded well, so I reinforced the cables with a thin strip of clear packing tape and then put the displays back into the proper spots in the Virtual Boy.

Here is where I make a suggestion: do not put any of the 12 screws back into the Virtual Boy before testing your Virtual Boy to see if any glitches still appear in the faulty display(s). I simply put the large black bottom half of the Virtual Boy back on (without the bottom plate that attaches to the stand) and held everything in place with one hand, while plugging in my controller and AC adapter, and then I inserted a game into the open game slot and turned the system on. Prior to this, I had been having problems where my right screen would sometimes go all crazy and get distorted and sometimes go out entirely. Now, such problems were gone, but I had the new problem of the horizontal lines. I closed my right eye and saw with my left eye that the left screen was perfect, closed my left eye and saw with my right eye that it was the right screen alone that was now giving me horizontal lines, so I simply repeated the Oven Method for the right display only. It was only about 5 minutes after I had done the Oven Method on both displays initially, and I simply took the packing tape off of the right display and put the right display back into the 200 degree F oven and waited for another 2 minutes (waiting for the cables to lie flat no longer applied, since they were still soft from before). After the 2 minutes were up, I took the display out and, once again, pressed the back of the cables to the PCB for probably a good minute or two. Again, everything looked good and well-bonded to the naked eye, and I put another piece of packing tape around the cable. I put the large, bottom half piece of the Virtual Boy back on and held everything in place with one hand again, plugged the controller/adapter back in, inserted the game into the open slot, turned it on and… again… there were horizontal lines in the right display, but only about half as many this time. Seeing that I was getting somewhere, I repeated the same process once again, and after this 3rd time of putting the right display in the 200 degree F oven for about 2 minutes (after I had taken the packing tape off again), firmly pressing the back of the cables to the PCB for a minute or so, tightly placing another piece of packing tape around the cable, and reinstalling the display, I now have a Virtual Boy that gives me no display problems.

I don’t expect that this will last forever, but it is now something very simple and quick that I can always repeat if and when my Virtual Boy gives me problems in the future, and I strongly suggest to anyone who has never tried something like this before to just go ahead and give it a shot before buying another Virtual Boy, because in time (assuming you are a dedicated Virtual Boy fan), you will, more likely than not, have to do the same thing to whatever additional Virtual Boy you receive.

Now, I just have to see how long this method’s fix will last and how long it will take before I decide that I just have to attempt the Solder Method for a permanent fix.

Glad you fixed it for now, but do it too many times and you might permanently screw up the displays. You can always buy a cheap non working one from Ebay or something and use those displays, but that is not the way I would like to repair mine lol.

It is an easy choice for me, since I am able to do the solder permanent fix myself and have done so for quite a few PVB members.
The biggest thing about the permanent fix is that you never have to worry about the displays ever again and can do whatever you want to do with the IPD settings.

The biggest trick of the solder fix is to have your soldering iron hot enough. Have it too hot can burn the copper, but having it too cold will mess it up a whole other way, it will move the copper threads instead of soldering them on the board, thus give you more problems than you had before. I normally go at about 380-420 centigrade.

Yeah… the biggest thing that worries me about the Solder Method is the possibility of messing up the alignment of the copper threads, which one doesn’t really have to worry about with the Oven Method, if one performs the Oven Method carefully.

In what ways, however, can using the Oven Method too many times permanently screw up the displays? Does simply heating the displays to 200 degrees F too many times eventually cause permanent damage to the displays? If so, what in particular gets damaged and can never be fixed? Also, is there a “dangerous” temperature that one should never reach when using the Oven Method. If so, what temp would that be?

Well, if you heat it up too much/many times the plastic can curl up and be misaligned because of that. Then soldering will become next to impossible unless you want to replace every thread by single threads and that is something only one person has done and everyone called him crazy/incredible ;).

That makes sense. I can understand why the heating might warp the plastic and cause the threads to be misaligned. I didn’t think that 200 degrees F for a couple of minutes every once and a while would permanently damage any of the other components of the displays, though.

TheForce81 wrote:

It is an easy choice for me, since I am able to do the solder permanent fix myself and have done so for quite a few PVB members.

Do you still do repairs / Glitch-Fixes for PVB Members?

Sent you a pm, to prevent the forum to clog up with info not meant for everyone.

My Virtual Boy have the glitchy display problem for a second time. A friend of mine works as a welder and he is able to do the solder method , but I think is better the oven method . Any suggestion?

Alfissta wrote:
My Virtual Boy have the glitchy display problem for a second time. A friend of mine works as a welder and he is able to do the solder method , but I think is better the oven method . Any suggestion?

Get it soldered.

TheForce81 did mine for a small fee, and if your able to get him, or anyone in your neighborhood or friends can do it. Do it.

He did a great job on it. And if there are any questions about it, he is sure and fast to respond.

*dances around with nonblinking nonglitching VB*

that is easier said then done. i’ve called all over to find a video game repair shop who was willing to do the fix, i’ve yet to find one. finally found a guy out in vegas but he wasn’t to sure how to do it, said he would “look it up” and then when asked some specific questions about the VB he didn’t have the answers, so i didn’t mail my vb to him.

i’m in the US and as i recall theforce81 is in the Netherlands? USPS wanted something like $45 to ship one way.

i wish i had someone on my block, or even in my city, who could do the fix and who knew how to do it. i did start a dialogue with a planetVB member on IRC about it, but didn’t have the funds at the time to follow through. though, if he is reading this i’ve been thinking about it the past few months! =)

if you do know someone who can do it, and do it correctly, get it done. its the only way to permanently fix the problem.

[TheForce81]

Lester Knight wrote:
that is easier said then done. i’ve called all over to find a video game repair shop who was willing to do the fix, i’ve yet to find one. finally found a guy out in vegas but he wasn’t to sure how to do it, said he would “look it up” and then when asked some specific questions about the VB he didn’t have the answers, so i didn’t mail my vb to him.

i’m in the US and as i recall theforce81 is in the Netherlands? USPS wanted something like $45 to ship one way.

i wish i had someone on my block, or even in my city, who could do the fix and who knew how to do it. i did start a dialogue with a planetVB member on IRC about it, but didn’t have the funds at the time to follow through. though, if he is reading this i’ve been thinking about it the past few months! =)

if you do know someone who can do it, and do it correctly, get it done. its the only way to permanently fix the problem.

If you have a way to open up your VB you can send in the displays by themselves. I have done a few that way from your part of the world before. That way the costs are pretty low, about $6 back and forth. It is your call entirely of course, just trying to help out 😉

When you have opened it, it is really easy to take the displays out by the way, the challange is to get a good gamebit that reaches down the deep holes to unscrew them.

http://www.projectvb.com/tech/securitybit.html

• This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by TheForce81.
• This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by TheForce81.

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4221

i tried to order that screwdriver at one point but they wanted more than $20 just to ship it to me.

which is the correct size gamebit for the vb? i think i would like to grab one and grind it down to take out the displays. i would like to take you up on that offer to just fix the displays.

cheers!

Lester Knight wrote:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4221

i tried to order that screwdriver at one point but they wanted more than $20 just to ship it to me.

which is the correct size gamebit for the vb? i think i would like to grab one and grind it down to take out the displays. i would like to take you up on that offer to just fix the displays.

cheers!

You can buy one here:
http://www.newelectronx.com/proddetail.php?prod=gamebit
4.5mm is the right size. The costs are purely shipping costs, I do charge a fee for repairing the displays which is €30,-