The Game Gear was notorious for bad capacitors, which means that there aren’t many working consoles that haven’t had a recap or power board repair.
Developed under the name “Project Mercury”, the Game Gear was first released in 1990 and shares much of its hardware with the Master System (it can play Master System games using an adapter). The Game Gear was discontinued in 1997.
Fortunately the components required to repair these consoles are still readily available. We carry both recap kits and power board IC/Transistor kits in stock.
If the normal recap fix does not solve your problem, you likely have a bad power board. You can test the output voltage of the power board by supplying it with 9V and testing your output pins get 34V, 9V and 5V outputs. If not, you will need to replace the IC and transistors.
We can supply a full repair kit that comes with all the capacitors needed to fix your Game Gear power board, as well as the main IC that generates the voltages, plus all 3 power transistors.
We have yet to come across a power board that has not been fully repaired using this kit.
Replacing the components is relatively simple, just remove the old components and solder in the new ones, making sure that you pay attention to the location of the dot on the main IC, and the polarity of the capacitors to ensure that they are installed the right way round.
For the transistors, the large one replaces the large transistor, and the two smaller ones that look identical come labelled in a bag A and B, and should be replaced correctly (on some power boards transistor B is located on the back of the board).
The kit comes complete with:-
- 3x Power Capacitors
- 1x Main IC
- 3x Power Transistors (A, B and C)
If you would rather not mess about with soldering irons, solder braid and heat sinks then we can carry out the work for you, just give us a call or drop us an email for a quote.