This doesn’t sound like the normal vertical/horizontal lines problem, though maybe it is. I just got a VB on eBay, and the right eye is, instead of displaying the image, displaying random characters – sort of like NES games sometimes do if they’re a bit dirty. The left eye looks fine. The characters on the right eye still are in the general shape of what’s being displayed to the left eye – if it’s text on the left eye, the right eye displays characters in the right places. They’re just garbled gibberish.

I only got one game with the VB, and I can’t get that game to go past the game select screen (I can get through the intro screens – it’s just when I pick whether I want to play vs the computer or whatever that it won’t go), so my guess is that it’s a defective game and not a defective VB.

Am I likely correct here? Should I track down another game and try it, or contact the seller and complain of the defective VB?

clean the game connecters (on the game)

That sounds like a display problem to me (likely the cable, but possibly just a bad display). A game connector or bad ROM would almost certainly not cause a problem like that, since there’s just a single ROM that holds both graphics and code, and since the game runs fine, and looks fine on one eye, I’d say the system is reading the ROM just fine. The display doesn’t always have horizontal lines, that’s just the most common effect due to the way the data is sent to the display.

DogP

Indeed, after more testing it is probably the cable.

DogP – I saw in another thread that you do repairs. What are your prices, and how should I contact you about them?

i second this request. exact same problem. got mine out of storage today to fire up some wario land and afterr about 5 minutes of play,BAM, gibberish on the left eye.

or do you know of any repair guides?

tetrisgrammaton wrote:
i second this request. exact same problem. got mine out of storage today to fire up some wario land and afterr about 5 minutes of play,BAM, gibberish on the left eye.

or do you know of any repair guides?

There are a bunch of repair guides, actually, in a sticky at the top of the forum. I am just a coward and do not want to go cutting into my own Virtual Boy. 🙂

Unfortunately I don’t have time to do repairs right now.

DogP

i’m gonna try the ovens. just tracking down or modifying the screwdriver is a big obstacle 😕