How do you burn out the speaker in a Game Gear?

May 14, 2005 12:45 AM

Two of my three Sega Game Gears have no sound. Is this a known problem I might be able to fix with a soldering iron and the right resistor?
posted by krisjohn to computers & internet (7 comments total)

No idea about the Game Gear specificially, but in similar portable electronics, I've seen the audio jack get worn out over time, or the stresses of plugging/unplugging resulting in cracking the solder connections. Open one up and take a look :-)

Heating the solder points of the jack (and perhaps adding a tiny amount of fresh solder - more for the flux than the solder really) may fix it if the connections look stressed or the jack can wiggle on the circuit board. Another check would be to plug in a plug and see if there is a connection between each plug lead and the jack's matching solder points. This will detect any worn or broken contacts inside the jack. Failing that, it's not the jack, which is bad news, since the jack is likely to be the easist thing to fix/replace.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:01 AM on May 14, 2005

Wait - the game gear also has a built in speaker doesn't it? If the speaker makes no sound, then ignore everything I just said.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:03 AM on May 14, 2005

Consider it ignored ^_^
posted by krisjohn at 4:12 AM on May 14, 2005

Before it stopped working did it only work intermittently? Would it cut out from time to time? Most things that have internal speakers just have two very thin wires connected to the speaker and it's easy for them to become loose. Fixing it could be as simple as popping open the game gear and rear soldering the wires. If that doesn't work, the problem is something far more sinister.
posted by drezdn at 11:03 AM on May 14, 2005

A problem with the headphone jack could still cause the internal speaker to not work. This is because those jacks are switched to disconnect the internal speaker when the headphones are plugged in. I would check the solder joints at the jack first.
posted by 6550 at 12:01 PM on May 14, 2005

They were all bought secondhand. No sound on internal speaker or headphones. I think, briefly, one was *extremely* quiet.

There's one screw that's a sort of hex/star/nut thing that I can't get off. Anyone got any ideas?

The reason I ask is that on the two with no sound, the TV tuner cart I just bought shows a picture and on the one with sound it doesn't. Maybe a problem with the TV tuner picture is easier to fix?
posted by krisjohn at 4:10 AM on May 15, 2005

the screw is a security type. I think it's generally a good idea to have a set of security bits, because these days, so many products use them that not having them is almost becoming much like not having a screwdriver :-)

You can get sets that fit into standard multi-bit screwdrivers quite cheaply, but they're nowhere near the casting precision of good sets, which are more in the $30 range.

Re: the tuner card not working with the working game gear - that's a little odd, it makes me wonder if maybe there are slightly different versions of the game gear (some under-the-hood improvements/changes/corner-cutting made in subsequent production runs, though perhaps undocumented to the user)
posted by -harlequin- at 4:27 AM on May 15, 2005