Hi, I recently bought a virtual boy that was said to be working at one point, but now it’s not. When turned on with something like galactic pinball, the startup music plays, but there’s no picture (and it’s not the eyes, which I swapped with soldered ones) the mirrors don’t oscilate, and it doesn’t take any controller input to continue to the title screen. I’m guessing the issue lies in the main motherboard of the console, I was just wondering if anyone knew where it might be hanging up on the board? If anyone has any info about these kind of issues, I’d love to look into fixing this problem. And thank you so much in advance to anyone who posts here, I’d love to learn more about this.

Ah, it is strange.. Does this happen with other games?

Yep, every game I try this happens to, and the ones without startup sounds just don’t do anything. It’s not in the controller since it works perfect with my other VB, and I’m guessing it isn’t in the game since it appears to read it just fine, it just hangs up when trying to display the graphics, and won’t allow for input of commands. All the wires check out in the system, and the fuses still appear soldered down good. Maybe it’s a problem in one of the chips? On the outside this thing is in almost perfect condition too, So that makes me think it wasn’t dropped a bunch or anything, it’s just odd it doesn’t attempt to ocsilate the mirrors or display the LED’s.

Over the years, I’ve had a bunch of cartridges that will have issues because of a cold solder joint on a surface mount chip. Matter of fact… I had a strange one last night. The game would read, but then wouldn’t start because it couldn’t make a save file. Went down to the shop… touched each pin of the RAM chip with a fine point soldering iron… and I was playing Zelda Oracle of Ages on my Gameboy player. (Gamecube)

Anyway… since it’s starting, and making sound… I’m guessing there is a cold joint on the servo driver board. Or… the cable going from the servo board to the main board has a bad connection.

Thanks for the suggestions! I was guessing it’s either the main board or the servo boardwith a loose connection. I’m working on it this week, we’ll see if a little solder fixes the issue on those chip-joints.

You normally don’t even need any new solder. BUT… if you have some no-clean flux… put a little around each of the chips on the servo board, and just touch each pin. I set my iron around 325, and it just takes a second. You will see each pin turn bright.

Needless to say… if you have a hot air re-work station… that would be the preferred method.

Good luck, and let us know what you find.