Retrobox Diary: Nintendo GAMEBOY ADVANCE SP repair and screen mod

Released around 2003 this underwhelming little

unit sold around the world backed by a massive

catalogue of games. Pocket sized and with a

rechargeable battery, it was a winner for the mighty Nintendo.

Gamers in Japan and America where lucky enough to get the AGS101 model with a nice backlit screen. The rest of us in UK and Europe were mostly stocked with the AGS001 model, poorly lit screen, but we didn`t know any different.

I for one have had a few variations of this handheld, a silver as above and a black model. The silver one got a new shell, Red i chose for a different look. It looked ok but that screen definitely let it down. Apart from the screen it had a charging fault. The battery was changed, charger checked fine. Left in a box to gather dust like most broken things! Fast forward to today, a modification is available in the form of an IPS screen. Rumour has it these screens out perform the AGS101 and have 10 levels of brightness to boot.

Well this is exactly what I always wanted. Time to get the little flipper out of storage and see if I can`t get it fixed. A strip down to the motherboard was necessary.

Under the microscope i found the culprit EM8 charging coil. Fuses were fine so nothing else bar the connector could stop this charging. I had a donor board that never ever powered on so I used the EM8 from that. Zedlabz.com used to stock these coils but they are discontinued, I did read that an EM10 from a Nintendo DS Lite can be used.

I used plenty of gel flux and a hot air station, this thing is tiny. I reflowed the charging connector and cleaned everything with IPA thoroughly. ON/OFF switches are a slide switch and often get full of dirt and other gunk, i sprayed it and worked it to free it up. I had ordered a PIKACHU Shell and IPS V2 screen to replace the red shell. Also had a purple Kong shell as a donor for anything else missing i needed.

The spring hinges are by far the trickiest part of this operation. Plenty of YouTube videos exist to help on disassembly and assembly. I did watch a few specifically mentioning the hinges as incorrect fitting can crack your new shell housing.

I persevered and finally got the shell replacement finished. The screws provided with the case are far inferior to the original Nintendo screws, heads are soft so can be rounded easily when tightened. But It looked well I think, it was certainly different.

I added an EZ-FLASH OMEGA cartridge with a 16GB micro sd to make sure it held plenty of games. I had to flash the latest rom to the cart first and fortunately this version of cart patches the games on the fly when running, that used to be a pain on the older versions.

I have made another two SP`s since, an all black model and a Super Famicom version, both with EZ-Flash Carts, new batteries and of course IPS V2 screens. Heres the original screen Vs the IPS screen at full brightness. The difference is amazing, like the SP has been dragged into the future.