Hey everyone!
I am having problems with my VB and was directed to this forum from reddit, so I’ll just copy paste my question from there.

As the title says I am looking at fixing my VB. I recently got my VB back from my parents place after being away from home almost 15 years. It was missing the stand and the eye shield piece, which I ordered replacements for, but I have the controller and the battery pack. Alas, I also lost the ac adapter pack in this time frame, but I’m happy to just have the system and controller.

Anyhow, I can’t get the blasted thing to turn on at all. I can verify with all new batteries that there is 9V coming from the controller plug into the system. I also just got a gamebit screwdriver to open the system and can tell the mainboard is getting power as there is a red led light on U8 DC-DC-VUE that turns on when I slide the power switch on. With a game loaded in, the motors for the mirrors don’t seem to oscillate, I get no image, and also no sound from the system. A visual inspection of the boards showed a couple of loose cables, but I reseated them and got the same result. Additionally, all the caps appear to be intact and I cannot see any visible damage to the board or cables. Lastly, I have tried a few different games Mario Tennis, Wario Land, 3D Tetris, and Galactic Pinball.

If anyone has some suggestions as to what to inspect next it would be greatly appreciated!

I’ve actually seen consoles that didn’t start up at all until the display cables were fixed, so I assume there’s some sort of check that the system does to make sure the cables are installed, and maybe if the cables are bad enough, they fail the check. Someone more knowledgeable may be able to clarify that one.

Anyway, if it were me, I’d fix the displays and see if it starts up after that. VB’s don’t break easily. There are lots of folks on this site who can solder the cables for you if you’d rather outsource. If the VB really is dead, you can even resell the soldered cables to recoup the cost.