EZ-Flash USA Forum

I bought a GBA SP Cobalt Blue from a kid who thinks the light was broken and sold it to me for around $10. Fortunately, after I bought it, I managed to fix the light, well particularly the side light because it's front lit version or the old GBA SP version.

And to my surprise, my fingerprints are all over the place and dust here and there. On the screen that is.. Bad news is, I don't mind the prints because I manages to clean that off. The problem is the light, it's too dim and it really bugs me when ever I play on my first GBA old version still that has a brighter light.

So, tweaking the light again until I broke it... Darn small things, Can you believe I'm using a solder gun rather than Hot air on this? What should I do to replace this light, well... I'm not going to send it to Nintendo or a Shop for repair that's for sure. I wonder what light they use on this thing. Can someone lighten things up for me? Thanks

It is a custom light as far as I am aware. I have heard of a few people doing some custom stuff (those flat LED cable strips being the main thing) but I have no references for voltages or current draw limits (should not be too hard to get voltage and I doubt the LEDs Nintendo use are any different to anything you can get).
http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#pinoutsvarious might be worth a look (at the end of the section).

What exactly was wrong with the backlight in the first place and how did you mess up the repair (looking towards asking is it something that you can fix with a desoldering wick/braid) or maybe with a poor mans hot air gun (I have bastardised paint strippers, desoldering irons and various other similar devices over the years which usually work quite well until you need to get into serious electronics)?

For the record replacement cases are not so hard (dealextreme does them for lunch money) but replacement screens are quite expensive and I know of no straight up light replacements (usually come with the screen).

Yep, it's in a bad shape alright. And actually, it's not a back light but a front lit. You know, the first version of GBA SP, that has a light toggle on/off. Anyway, I'd messed the light up because of too much heat on the solder gun, and to make things worse it worked on the first try but on the second it melted all way, I mean all of it, the LED.

Man, if I can only find a suitable LED to fit on it, it might do the job and make me happy.

The story is, It's a used up GBA SP. A little difference on the light though with my first GBA SP old one too, that has a better front lit that the blue one, so that made me open it up, ad blew it all. And yes, I've been through the Dealextreme or other replacements, but their selling the whole LCD thing, that I have that is not damaged in the first place, it's only the light I'm after.

Oh, and by the way the voltage used for the LED is 5volts. And yes I tried a few LED's myself but it made things worse, and the more dimmer it is, the more it annoys me. Now what i need is a nice bright white LED that will scatters perfectly on the screen to show the game.