Modding the Sega Game Gear with McWill Screen, New Caps

The classic gaming industry seems to be enjoying the same explosion of popularity as the revitalized vinyl album market. With various catalysts such the low cost of production for small, single-board computer systems and the proliferation of cheap LCD panels, we've seen many interesting solutions hit the market in the past couple of years. Some of my favorites have been the NES and SNES Classic, the SNK Mini, the C64 Mini. Many fun new home-brew options are also now available such as 3D printed cases wrapped around Raspberry Pi boards housing thousands of classic games. Technology these days is incredible.

An example of a mini console with Raspberry Pi inside

One of the things about emulation is sometimes a game works well, and sometimes it can run a little funky. Situations like this can leave you yearning for that original hardware… back when times were simple and you could slap a big plastic cartridge in an over sized toaster-like device and everything worked perfectly. You might even dust off your old systems to see how they've held up over the decades. That’s when you realize hmmn… some have not aged as well as others.

If you showed any youngster a Sega Game Gear today, they’d think it was a piece of junk, and I suppose they’d be half right. I was a huge fan of the Sega Game Gear back in the day, and for days when you’re getting shuttled around in the family van, it was like living in the lap of luxury. Having a color screen on the go was revolutionary, and you had to save your allowance for quite a long time to get not only the Game Gear, but a $50 rechargeable battery pack to boot.

The jumbo-sized Game Gear PowerBack

Why was the battery pack necessary? That puppy would eat six AA batteries in four hours flat. It was as inefficient on juice as a Hummer is on gas. Much of that was being drawn from the 160x144 pixel color screen with back-light. Compared to LCD screens today, the screen looked like someone took several layers of Saran wrap and window tint and covered it up. Everything is faded looking and slightly blurry… and this is even on the newer, better Majesco screens.

As you can see, he doesn't like it very much

Not only is the screen lackluster by today’s standards, but the capacitors in the unit are also ready to give up the ghost. Capacitors are little tubular parts that store energy in a circuit, you’ll find plenty of them from the earliest circuits in existence to your cell phone today. Electrolytic capacitors tend to be one of the first things to die in old electronics. These are typically the first items to be replaced in most older electronics which are being refurbished, such as popular amplifiers from the 1960s. The Game Gear caps are getting to be three decades old, so they’re on the way out if they haven’t started leaking already. It doesn't help that caps during this time were especially poor quality either. If you're curious about capacitor degradation, Quora has a nice article about it.   

The innards of a typical capacitor

So what is one left to do with a poor old Game Gear that no one loves anymore? Fortunately, you have options. Many sellers on eBay will sell you a batch of capacitors to replace all the caps in your system for $5-10. They come with directions too. If you’re handy with an iron, this is a pretty easy task and will take 1-2 hours to replace them on all three internal boards (the power board and sound board are mounted separately). At the end of the day though, you’re still stuck with that crappy screen.

An example of a Game Gear Capacitor Kit from eBay seller GeekTronics

Fortunately, a gent named McWill offers a mod so that you can install a fresh new LCD screen in your game gear. It’s not a cheap mod, $120 as of this writing, but given the niche market for something like this, it seems reasonable. It also comes with a VGA output, so that’s a value-add right there. The difference of this screen is amazing… bright and crisp. Night and day compared with the old screen, and the new screen uses much less power to boot. So where’s the fly in the ointment?

McWill Game Gear mod available from Console5.com

I’m a hobbyist and I like to tinker with things and enjoy soldering PCBs with through holes parts. This, however, is not a fun mod… it’s more like work. There are minuscule SMD resistors which need to be moved/bridged and soldered to, and there are very small traces underneath, which if damaged would be difficult to find a trace on the board to fix… you’d be digging around for a schematic, and I don’t know if one is out there for the Game Gear… especially since there were 5-6 versions over the years.

My suggestion: unless you are very confident with your solder skills, I recommend you have someone else handle this mod for you. Your first time through will likely take 5-6 hours if you like to check your work, and the prices people charge on eBay for the install are a bargain (assuming they do good work, I can’t vouch for that).  

While you're in there (or someone else is), another nice cheap upgrade is replacing the stock plastic screen with a new glass one. They can be found on ebay for around $7 and offer make the image even clearer. They are flat though, compared to the bulbous plastic screens, so they change the look of the game gear slightly. The glass screens can also be installed without opening the game gear, but it is a bear to get it off and you can damage the surrounding plastic. 

On another Game Gear, I tried using the typical plastic tools to get under the lip without success. I ended up epoxying a wooden dowel to the screen which I slowly leveraged up to get the plastic screen separated from the unit. 

Below you can get a looksie at the internal mod on a Magic Knight Rayearth red Game Gear using 24-gauge silver plated copper in PTFE hookup wire.

Adjusting the white balance so you can see the screen quality better

Given the McWill Atari Lynx installation is quite similar, I wanted to include photos of that as well:

I hope you enjoyed the write-up. Please keep those wonderful handheld systems alive! 

Modding the Atari Lynx Portable with McWill Screen, New Caps

The Atari Lynx is a relatively obscure system that was released during the burst of hand-held gaming systems between 1989 and 1991. This included the Lynx, as well as Nintendo’s Game Boy, Sega’s Game Gear, and NEC’s TurboExpress. While the Game Boy was the value champ and the TurboExpress was the top performer for kids whose parents belonged to country clubs, the Lynx and Game Gear were both middle players which had similar orientations, screens and gaming performance.

An old double-page magazine ad of the Atari Lynx

While they were a blast 30 years ago, by today’s standards, the backlit screens on these middle performers are dull and faded looking and not terribly efficient with batteries. Fortunately for fans of retro games, McWill offers a replacement screen mod for both systems which gives each unit a crisp and bright display. This is very helpful for those of use who grew up with these systems and who’s eyes are getting a little older.

A photo of the original LCD from Gametech.us

What else is getting older is the capacitors and power components in these units. Electrolytic capacitors from this time frame are not known for reliability and are likely ready to give up the ghost at a moment’s notice, bursting and oozing out onto the PCB and making restorations more involved. In addition, the Lynx has some silicon parts that handle the 9V to 5V regulation that need to be replaced too, otherwise if they fail, the motherboard can get fed 9V and that is enough to take it out of commission. Fortunately, these parts are available and cheap to replace, even with nice quality Japanese caps like Nichicon.

What’s not cheap is the McWill mod, at $120 as of this writing, but if you’re a fan of these old systems it is totally worth it. Not only is it on the pricey side, but it takes some effort. You need to know how to handle SMD soldering (use tweezers, a fine point iron and lots of liquid flux). If you are not sure about soldering skills, you should not be handling these mods. There are several people out there that do the mod for what I consider to be very reasonable.

As an example, I’m pretty methodical when soldering, but to replace the caps, power-related parts, and wire up the screen and VGA out takes a solid 8 hours. Granted if I did it again, I could get it down to 4-5, but there are people replacing screens on eBay for $200 with the $120 McWill mod included, and another $60 or so to replace the caps. I’d call that a solid deal if you’re not inclined to handle it yourself.

I picked up the McWill Screen mod, a set of caps, and the power parts for about $130 from Console5. They host the instructions PDF as well. The two-page instructions on the McWill is decent but has a couple of head-scratchers that you’ll have to Google around to figure out. They could be better, but I’m sure this mod is a labor of love and McWill’s not getting rich from it… so just grin and bear it. 

Before getting started, I placed a paper towel over the screen and then covered the front of the unit with painters’ tape to protect it. It doesn’t stick much so it won’t leave residue, and it protects the unit from getting scratched while you work on it.

Using painters tape to protect the Lynx

To get the unit open, there are five screws that need to come out, two under each of the rubber grips on the back, and one inside the battery compartment. To get the rubber grips off, wedging a thin screwdriver underneath on one of the corners and gently rocking back and forth will help the adhesive give way. I’d recommend using foam or painters’ tape to protect where the screwdriver’s shaft touches the unit to avoid marring.

Screw locations to get the unit open

Removing the back cover reveals the circuit board and all the little capacitors you will have to replace. 

Atari Lynx interior

Capacitor locations

These are pretty easy to handle, aside from the one sitting in the middle of the metal shield. For that one, the copper shielding behind it must be partially removed so you have access to the solder joints underneath. Once that cap is replaced, the joints need to be covered with dielectric (electrical tape / Kapton tape, etc.) so the copper shield doesn’t short it out. For the rest of the caps, simply heating the joints on the bottom of the PCB while pulling on the cap on the top of the PCB releases them fairly easily, then a solder sucker can be used to clear the eyelets on the board. One trick is you should NOT cut the leads until you try and reseat the back cover to confirm there is clearance. Some of the caps may touch the case or the speaker so they have to be leaned one way or another.

Based on the directions provided for the McWill, several parts which handled the old LCD need to be removed. You'll notice these are mostly on the right of the photo below. 

Fresh new capacitors installed and non-vital parts removed.

The next objective is to replace the voltage regulator parts. This includes a Zener diode, MOSFET, two 3906 transistors and the power jack. The MOSFET is the largest part. I trimmed off the legs, then heated the metal backing behind the chip to get it to release. The existing jack is superglued down next to a teeny transformer, so be very careful when removing that glue not to damage it. The remaining parts are quite small and require SMD tools to install (tweezers, liquid flux, small solder tip, etc.). 

The voltage regulator parts are tiny, so be sure you're up for the task

Below is the unit getting wired up. I like to use 24 gauge silver-clad copper wire with PTFE sleeving. It's nice high quality stuff and is pretty is to route. When wiring, you have to ensure you are considering how the screen will be oriented in relation to the main PCB so the wires aren't cut too short or too long. 

Wiring up the VGA output

The VGA output installs where the brightness potentiometer used to be (you do need to dremel out some of the plastic so it will fit). It's a nice added feature that adds value to the McWill package. HDMI would be preferable, but that would add cost and complexity which may not be welcome for many modders. 

Wired up and ready to re-assemble

Once all that work is complete, you'll have yourself a beautifully performing Lynx system that will hopefully last another thirty years.

The big question now... is all this worth the hassle? There are a number of us that like to play games on original hardware because emulators introduce annoyances like slowdown, sprite flickering, crashing, etc. If you want to play Lynx games on original hardware, you have to replace the voltage regulation immediately or you'll be playing Russian roulette with a valuable piece of vintage gear, and really the capacitors all need to be replaced too. If you're already going to that effort, the McWill screen is a no-brainer given the improvements... just keep in mind that if you're not sure of your solder slinger skills, get someone else to handle it. 

The Fine Print: Please remember that building/modifying circuits can be dangerous to you and/or your surroundings and should only be performed by a certified technician. The owner of this blog and all associated parties can not / will not be held responsible if you attempt a build or modification posted above and cause physical harm to yourself and/or your surroundings.