Nintendo Gameboy DMG Back Light Mod - The Execution

Alright so down to buisness. The first step was opening up the case, which had waaaay more screws than newer Nintendo systems that I have taken apart.

Here are the internals of a Nintendo DMG!

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Once opened I immediately went and started soldering the back light screen module to the power and ground. I really should have cut back on some of the resistor wiring but it doesn't really matter.

While doing this I managed to break one of the speaker wires which I fixed by soldering it to the backside of the board.

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Since the DMG was never meant to have a back light the screen can get washed out from the brightness. To get around this the next part of the mod was a biversion, in which the colors are inverted on the DMG screen itself. You just have to solder a couple of points using a 7404 Hex Inverter to the board.

So up to this point the screen was now back lit and inverted! Pretty sweet right?

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Next I replaced the red LED indicator light with a diffused blue LED to match the new screen. This was kind of tricky and I managed to burn my fingers a couple of times.

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After this I was pretty happy that everything seemed to be in working order.

I put on the new black buttons and new black plastic screen cover for the finishing touches.

With the screen on!

Even though this mod basically worked there are a couple of quirks.

While getting the screen ready for the backlight I was not able to take off all of the residue from the backside so the screen is kind of smudgy. Then the screen ribbon cable probably got a little damaged since there are dead pixel lines on the screen. I tried to fix this as well by reseating the solder in the cable but with little luck. Its kinda like when you have a phone that only charges when you hold the cable in a certain angle, except in this case it is the screen...

Anyways, while the whole process was not 100% successful I am extremely happy that I tried it out and learned a bunch! It was actually just as fun as it was stressful.