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81 lines
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81 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: The Gameboy Mod My Younger Self Always Wanted
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description: The backlight LED mod on GBA's is literally so good
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date: 2026-06-21T20:32:08-07:00
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draft: false
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category: article
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image: /media/img/gba/opengraph.jpg
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---
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## The Starting Point
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A while back I decided I wanted to get back into some retro mobile games because
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it feels comfy and gives me an excuse to do some basic resto-modding.
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My first target in this case was the Gameboy Advance that I've had since I was
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just a lad :3
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/basic-off.jpg" "Close up of Gameboy" >}}
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As soon as I turned on the thing though I realized that the total lack of
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backlight completely sucks. For those that don't recall how bad, here's mine
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before doing any modifying and in the sunlight ;-;
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/saphire-save-closeup.jpg" "Saphire save closeup" >}}
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_Ignore the custom buttons, this pic was taken during my testing period :3_
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## Opening Up to Replacing the Old and Dull with New and Bright
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It seems weird in hindsight but I intiall ythought that a backlight mod would
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require soldering and modifying the original screen when in fact the "easier"
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way of doing this was just replacing the old screen with a newer more modern one.
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The one I picked was the {{< link "No Cut IPS Backlight Mod Kit" "https://retrogamerepairshop.com/collections/gba-displays/products/gba-game-boy-advance-drop-in-ips-backlight-mod-kit" >}}
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from {{< link "Retro Game Repair Shop" "https://retrogamerepairshop.com/" >}} which
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is an awesome kit and comes with nearly everything to do this mod.
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The only thing that it's missing is a tri-wing screw driver which makes doing
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this substantially easier. I didn't have one and **thought** that Harbor Freight
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would help me here but as you can see below the tri-wing that you can get
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required some..... sharpening to make it fit into the **tiny** screw heads.
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/hf-tri-hex-fixing.jpg" "Closeup of tri-wing" >}}
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I did manage to sharpen the bit by clamping some 80 grit sandpaper to my
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workbench and **slowly** removing material until I had a good enough fit.
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Luckily once the tri-wing screws holding the case are gone we are greeted with
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phillips head screws securing the motherboard to the front of the case which
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are easily removed.
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/internals.jpg" "Closeup of tri-wing" >}}
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/internals-close.jpg" "Another closeup of the internals" >}}
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I didn't get any pictures of the process for replacing the screen but I did get
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one of the testing phase. :warning: Testing ended up being super crucial because
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the first screen unit I bought was actually DOA. Luckily the second unit was fine
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and I was also able to get some nicer buttons becaue I ended up not really liking
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the clear button aesthetic.
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/testing-led-screen.jpg" "Testing the new screen" >}}
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Closing everything back up _should_ have been easy though one thing I had to do
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was shave down some of the after market buttons since they were **just barely**
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too big. Other than that however just going slow led to a very smooth re-assembly
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process. Turning it on I'm greeted with this :)
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{{< pic "/media/img/gba/gba-splash-led.jpg" "Closeup led splash screen" >}}
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Also going with black buttons was definitely the move I think because it just
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looks _so much cleaner_ :3
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But of course what good are pictures when you could _watch_ this lovely little
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thing in action.
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{{< youtube ENgrivaA4gY >}}
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conclusion: very nice and epic :3
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