So I was playing my VB the other day when I notice that the right side is starting to get glitchy. That made me sad!! But upon reading http://projectvb.vze.com/ I see the instructions on how to fix the problem.

My question…

Instead of taking out the LED bar displays and cooking them in the oven, is it possible just to hot glue the cables to the PCB instead??

I feel a little nervous about putting part of my VB in the oven because if something goes wrong then my VB is pretty much screwed to fix. I know I can get them from ebay but they run up around $50 now!!

Is it also possible to just tape the cables to the PCB also?

BTW, I recently dusted off the Virtual Boy and started buying more games for it. Sucks that it died so fast. Count me in with the crowd of gamers that appreciate the machine for its revolutionary design and concept.

Actually, the old glue would need to be removed completely before that would work. At least with my one vb (I got 2 by now *happy*) it was like that. Cooking them in the oven was really safe, although I was nervous, too. I think it really depends on how your cables look. It really needs to be tightly fixed though. I fixed my one halfassedly and after two weeks of intensive gameplay it became glitchy again. So I had to redo it and now I just use the other one, although my “original” is fixed 🙂

cYa,

Tauwasser

Taping the cables definitely doesn’t work… you may be able to use hot glue, which will melt the glue on the cable, but it’d probably be pretty messy. As long as you don’t turn the oven on too high, there’s no problem. I’ve also had good luck using a clamp to squeeze the cable to the board while in the oven, since you really need to apply pressure to the cable/board while the glue is still hot. I just happened to have a perfect size clamp, but if you don’t, you could probably use clothespins or something similar.

DogP

If you’re really really scared (or really really lazy 😉 ) you could try what I did although this method has’nt really stood the test of time (I did it with a bad one I bought off ebay a while back and it’s been fine for about a week so far…). I Placed the unit on a table with the viewing side down (image on mine was less distorted in this position), plugged it in and left it on for about three hours in this position figuring just maybe it would get warm enough inside so that the glue might “refresh” a little. after that it seemed to work fine. I turned it on a couple times since and it worked without distortion. Could be a coincidence but you really have nothing to lose by trying it.

There’s a couple problems with that method… one is that the VB runs very cool, so I doubt it would have gotten hot enough to melt the glue… the other is that if the glue did melt, the pressure of the cable is actually pressing outward (which is why it unglues itself in the first place)… so it would have gotten worse (which is why you should apply pressure to the cable while it’s hot, and not just heat it up).

DogP

It’s probably not a permanant fix by any means. But I figured I’d throw in my two cents since it worked for me (so far) he’s really got nothing to lose by trying it (unless he’s using batteries :P). Although your method seems the best for fixng it.

How about for instance if instead of putting it in the oven you take a hair dryer and just point it specifically to the rubber part. Does anyone think that will do the job of providing heat to that section in order to reattach?

I hair dryer could probably work, but make sure you apply pressure to the cable while it’s still hot. And you’re not really looking to melt the rubber part, there’s glue holding the cable to the board, that’s what you want to melt. The rubber along the edge is sometimes attached, sometimes detached, but it doesn’t really make a difference.

DogP