Hey everybody have a question.

Picked up 2 Virtual Boys on eBay under the assumption that one of them works and one was for spare parts. Well of course neither of them are fully functional… here is what occurs:

Unit #1
Putting in any cartridge and powering up you can ‘feel’ the system powering up and doing something (the mirrors inside spinning I assume) but nothing ever appears on the screen. No sound, no image.

Unit #2
This one powers up and shows the warning screen, once a cartridge ‘loads’ (I tried 5 or 6 of them) the left screen ‘rolls up’ and you can only see the bottom of the screen displays at the top. The right screen functions as normal, but it is impossible to play without both sides functional.

Does anyone here offer repairs of the units? I honestly don’t have the know-how or the tools to do it myself, and figured someone here may be able to help me or point me to someone who can?

Thanks!

Chrissy

Well golly gosh gee wilikers… sorry don’t know where that came from. Hi Chrissy. You probably already have looked into it but this site here…

http://www.virtual-boy.org/projectvb/projects/DisplayFix.htm

“Awesome site by the way props to DogP” will help you on your quest to fix the unit’s yourself. I fixed mine with the help of a security bit I got on E-Bay here’s a link…

http://cgi.ebay.com/4-5-Security-Bit-Tool-For-Genesis-Nomad-Virtual-boy_W0QQitemZ130209591317QQihZ003QQcategoryZ3642QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Reading through this topic on the famous Planet Virtual Boy site will help too…

http://www.vr32.de/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3181&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0

Hope all that helps 🙂 Good luck!

Thanks Deadly!

I actually did do a search on the boards and found the links to DogP’s site (which, BTW is VERY informative and kick ass) but my issues appear to be different then the ‘horizontal line’ issue.

If it were that issue I may be daring enough to give it a shot, but I was curious if anyone here may do the repairs for an affordable price.

Thanks for the info!

While I was repairing my VB I did have similar problems to what you describe. I think it’s most definitely your ribbon cables. Flickering, Dimming, Horizontal lines, One or both screens are dead etc… I wish Nintendo themselves still repaired theses systems.

Well then I shall give it a shot!

Wish me luck!

Thanks!

Deadly-D wrote:
While I was repairing my VB I did have similar problems to what you describe. I think it’s most definitely your ribbon cables. Flickering, Dimming, Horizontal lines, One or both screens are dead etc… I wish Nintendo themselves still repaired theses systems.

I dont think you want nintendo to fix it.. They overprice their repair service.

edracon wrote:
I dont think you want nintendo to fix it.. They overprice their repair service.

True but at the very least it would be done right and give it another five to ten years of life “hopefully lol”

Deadly-D wrote:
True but at the very least it would be done right and give it another five to ten years of life “hopefully lol”

It won’t. When people first bought the VirtualBoy most brand new systems had the stupid anooying problems the used ones have, so it will have the same amount of life. I cant believe the VirtualBoy is technically an unfinished prototype product.