[KR155E]

A problem often encountered by Virtual Boy users are glitchy displays, leading to horizontal lines, reversed or generally distorted images, or even complete loss of display activity.

All those symptoms are usually caused by the ribbon cables connecting the LEDs to the motherboard becoming loose, or peeling away from the display PCB.

Fixing your Diplay: Oven method

DogP has come up with a way to fix the problem by opening the system up, removing the display, sticking it in the oven to re-melt the adhesive, and reassemble. It’s not a difficult procedure, except that the typical security bit can’t get to the deepest screws on the VB, so you either need a special screwdiver, a modified bit, or a modified screwdriver.

You can find a guide to fix your displays on DogP’s Project:VB.

Fixing your Diplay: Bypass method

Another way has been proposed by DanB. To permanently fix the problem, his idea was to replace the loosening ribbon cables with some better wires, which he soldered to the PCB. This solution requires much more skill, though, and should only be performed by solder experienced people with a steady hand and a huge portion of patience.

The complete guide can be found here.

Fixing your Diplay: New methods (RECOMMENDED)

Some more methods have recently been developed by DogP to permanently fix the cable problem (contrary to the probably non-permanent oven method): Thread.

• This topic was modified 16 years, 6 months ago by KR155E.

I also found this useful by myself, the photographs are detailed and of high quality. You can clearly see the components:

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nintendo+Virtual+Boy+Teardown/3540/1

VirtualMan! wrote:
Hi. I’m new to this forum, and I have a virtual boy with the horizontal line glitch in both sides of the eyepiece. I’ve tried opening up my virtual boy but when I do, there seems to be a part connected to the black plastic casing. I’ve taken out all the 6 required screws so that is not the issue. I was wondering if this happens to all virtual boys or if I just really messed mine up. If it’s messed up, then I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix it? Oh, and the part the seems to be connected to the black plastic is at about the same spot as the cartridge slot. I don’t know if that helps.

Hey there, welcome to this great community.
You say you unscrewed six screws, that is two too few. You need to unscrew at least eight of them. Four screws at the cartridge bay are not necessary, while the two somewhat deeper ones there need to be removed including all other ones.

Good luck!

TheForce81 wrote:

VirtualMan! wrote:
Hi. I’m new to this forum, and I have a virtual boy with the horizontal line glitch in both sides of the eyepiece. I’ve tried opening up my virtual boy but when I do, there seems to be a part connected to the black plastic casing. I’ve taken out all the 6 required screws so that is not the issue. I was wondering if this happens to all virtual boys or if I just really messed mine up. If it’s messed up, then I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix it? Oh, and the part the seems to be connected to the black plastic is at about the same spot as the cartridge slot. I don’t know if that helps.

Hey there, welcome to this great community.
You say you unscrewed six screws, that is two too few. You need to unscrew at least eight of them. Four screws at the cartridge bay are not necessary, while the two somewhat deeper ones there need to be removed including all other ones.

Good luck!

Thanks everybody for the help, this seemed to be the issue. Now on to the scarier part.

Thanks everybody for the help, this seemed to be the issue. Now on to the scarier part.

Don´t worry…its not that complicated. Try to leave the 3D component in the VB. I always unscrew the 2 displays leaving the whole unit in it. If you take out both rubber parts holding the speakers on the side, then you can easily access the screens.

Be sure to only unscrew the display itself, don´t loosen the big screws above and below the display itself.

Hi I’ve had my VB for about 6 months now and when I bought it it worked fine. Now its starting to have those vertical lines fade in and out at random. I’m not very handy so taking the system apart makes me nervous as I don’t want to ruin the system. Plus I don’t have any type of bit to unscrew with. My questions is that I’ve heard somewhere that if you leave the system on for a while it will heat itself and then melt the wires back into place. Is this true at all or will that end up just damaging the system more?

I left it in the oven for about 2 minutes at 200 farenheit. The right one was working fine after that, but not so much the left. I rebaked the left and put it back in, and it worked fine for a bit, but now they both glitch up occasionally, like random portions of the screen either going dark or entirely lighting up, although the left still glitches a bit more than the right. Oddly enough, this issue seems to only occur occasionally at the Wario Land title screen and often when I go through doors (I’ve only tested Wario Land so far). It’s not a big issue, but if someone knew a fix I would gladly appreciate if they told me.

@3DSJunkie:
The story you heard is complete nonsense! It will never help even one bit, that is impossible, don’t know where you heard it, but it is bad info.
You cannot really screw up opening the VB unless you go at it with a hammer and an ax.

@VirtualMan!:
The only piece of advise I can give you to solve your problem is to solder it. If you cannot do it yourself, I can do it for you as well for a €30,- fee for the pair excluding shipping (though since you have already opened up your VB you only have to ship the displays which is fairly cheap).

hi, I just joined, and my VB was showing no display on the left eye whatsoever. i opened it up, baked it it at 255 degrees f and now it only shows scan lines and glitches up the other eye. it may be that i didnt line it up perfectly, because this was an extreme case where the cable had completely disconnected from the chip. Any ideas for a better fix? i also am thinking of just buying another cable, if anyone has one.

hi, I just joined, and my VB was showing no display on the left eye whatsoever. i opened it up, baked it it at 255 degrees f and now it only shows scan lines and glitches up the other eye. it may be that i didnt line it up perfectly, because this was an extreme case where the cable had completely disconnected from the chip. Any ideas for a better fix? i also am thinking of just buying another cable, if anyone has one.

There may actually be a 3rd way to fix the VB, but you’ll need an AC adapter.

Some people say that if you leave the system on for a whole day, this itself heats up the glue, and the problem is fixed.

I’ve never tried it myself, but that may be your best fix. 🙂

I can verify that if you just started getting glitchy lines on your Virtual Boy screen, leaving the system on for a whole day will, in fact, heat up the glue and possibly cause the glitchy lines to go away for the next time or two that you play your Virtual Boy. However, do not consider this to be a fix at all. At best, this might work for a month or so, and after that, it will not give you any good results at all, so either use the oven method to get a nice fix that will last you several months to maybe over a year or else use or get someone else to perform the soldering method which should give you a permanent fix so that you’ll never have to worry about it ever again.

I have left my Virtual Boy on for days at a time, as many as 3 days at a time, in order to obtain ridiculously high scores in some modes of games for the high score contest. It seems that the Virtual Boy can handle being on for a long time rather well, but I still wouldn’t test your luck too much.

thx but i already tried heating it but the entire cable is disconnected from the actual chip. the right eye works fine, but the left showed nothing. i heated it and put it back, and all i got were lotss of scan lines on the left eye. the transistors cant properly read the completly unhooked cable that was reconnected. any other ideas?

The only real solution is to solder the screens. Every other option is temporary, for some people the oven trick has worked for up to two years, but it always comes back that way.

I fixed six displays with a other different heat method,an air solder heat gun.
It work only three months and the conections problems come back.
As TheForce81 say:
The only real solution is to solder the screens

alright well sice my ribbon cables kaput, does anybody have an extra for sale?

Do you know how to solder? If not, have you talked to TheForce81 about sending your displays to him to solder? I think he was sort of hinting that he could fix the problem for you for the price that he already mentioned on this thread. Even though the cables have come completely off of the chip, he can probably still line them up properly and solder them to the chip anyway.

ill have to kindly put down the offer, my grandpa is an expert at soldering, as he worked for Northrop Grumman, and he said that he could do it but it would take about a week. im just looking for another ribbon cable.

So, I just had a go at the NaOH + solder method. Which I started ABOUT NINE HOURS AGO??

I have no idea what was going on, but for some reason the film on the ribbon cable just wouldn’t dissolve. When I opened up the tub of caustic soda I found up in the laundry, it was kind of gooey and sludgey (though still mostly solid), I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. But yeah, it took forever to even look like it was doing anything. Maybe after three hours or so I started to notice a difference, I forget when I noticed I could see a bit of bare copper appearing, but either way it took ages. For some reason it seemed to start in a thin strip across the lower edge of where the solution ended, while everything above it was normal. Weird.

Anyway, after about seven hours it was all gone and out of the way, so I went on to soldering. And… it all just went on like magic? I mean I’m a total novice, I’ve only done a bit of soldering for an assignment a good decade ago in school, then another little project around five years or so where I had a few electrical things that needed to go together. But it just seemed really easy, despite the tiny size of everything. Pretty damn happy with how it went, really 😛

Got out the multimeter and tested all the ends to make sure they were ok, then threw it in my unit to give it a proper test. Yay, right display’s all clear! Wait a minute, the left side has a second mirrored image of everything now. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF~

I hope the next one doesn’t take as long. I think I’ll leave it for later today though, since it’s now nearly 10am and I should sleep. Goodnight, gents.

Good job there Gookanheimer, seems a bit tedious, but it did the job!
I just love it when VB’s are saved from this problem. I remember it when I fixed my first two displays, I was so disappointed when I first noticed the glitches in my VB. The displays are just what makes the VB so special to me.
I still think this is the worst mistake Nintendo made with the VB to be honest.
It is quite an unacceptable one even! If the VB would have been a successful device with sales of around the millions, then millions of people would have complained. I really am wondering what Nintendo would have done if such a situation would have presented itself.

Just dropping a note here that the cable connection on the display’s PCB is not the only possible source of display issues.

I recently purchased two units with display defects, and to my surprise, one of them still had a strong bond on the rubber adhesive on both displays. The cause of the graphical problems on that unit was twofold: 1) the IPD setting had been in the fully expanded position for a long time, which caused the cables to pinch over the top of the PCBs, and 2) somehow or other the slot on the mainboard was no longer forming a clean contact with the cable.

Between all three units that I’ve worked with, I’ve found that most of the graphical anomalies in fact result from warping of the thin copper within the flexible cable, and NOT from a poor connection to the PCB. This manifests itself in a number of ways, including cross-talk and brightness issues.

What I’ve taken to doing seems to have done the trick for any displays that weren’t outright dead:

* Buy a roll of Super Mario print Duck Tape. This provides emotional support to the Virtual Boy.
* Place a thin strip around the top of the display unit, such that both the PCB and the bottom of the cable are in contact with the tape. This will help prevent the cable from coming un-done.
* Place a second strip along the top edge of the cable (the side with the stiff, white plastic square. This aids in retaining the copper’s shape, keeping it from getting kinked or warped.
* When inserting the cable into the slot on the mainboard, you might want to gently re-insert it three or four times to make sure any gunk or corrosion is scraped off. This will ensure a good connection between the slot and the cable.

This is not a through-and-through permanent solution, but then again, damaged or deformed cables may not be fully reparable without replacement. However, when I do notice some glitchy artifacts in a display, which rarely happens anymore, I’m able to “massage” the cable back into its original shape and re-press the tape to hold it that way.