Game gear after using AC power

[biglam]

Hi

I recently bought a non-working game gear with the aim of recapping it. When it arrived, I wanted to test it and stupidly used the AC adaptor from a NES, not realising that this is AC. When I did this, the lights came on and it made a buzzing noise from the speaker.

After realising my mistake, I've tested it again using both a DC adaptor, and on batteries, but all I can see is a white screen with some black bars on it (picture attached). I can only see this from a very specific angle, which I assume is the capacitors, but it doesn't seem to do anything with any games.

Is it likely that using the AC power will have damaged the console? Is it something that can be repaired? Just trying to decide if it's worthwhile replacing the caps, or if I've fried the system and would be as well getting a new one.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

[kendrick]

Hi biglam, welcome to the forum. When you say that the Game Gear unit was non-working, do you know what was broken or what wasn't happening originally? My guess is connecting the AC power to the Game Gear didn't really hurt anything, since there is a small rudimentary diode bridge in there to protect from reverse polarity. Best case scenario here is that the Game Gear was already broken and you didn't break it any further.

Now usually Game Gears that haven't had any other repair attention have one of two basic things gone wrong in them. The florescent backlight tube has gone pop and the screen won't come on, or any number of electrolytic capacitors have gone bad inside. You already konw that the Game Gear comes from that era where manufacturers globally bought bad caps without knowing it, and so there were component failures after a few years of use. In your shoes, I'd proceed with a cap replacement and then go from there to see if the Game Gear can be further repaired. It's relatively cheap and it doesn't take long. Good luck.