About a week ago I noticed that my old 3DS started having some issues with the A button, it required a lot more force to register a press. I've had enough of it today, so I decided to take it apart once again to try doing something about it. Had some trouble getting some of the screws out initially and had to use a hammer a few times, but at least nothing had to go into the trash...
View attachment 269399
Got it open, the first you do after that is disconnecting the cables for the L and R buttons, and immediately a bad thing happened:
View attachment 269398
The cable flew off by itself and left its side of the actual connector in the other part of the connector... "Great, I'll have to order a replacement again" I thought to myself, I replaced both of these buttons a few years ago so I wasn't too surprised that it broke if it was some cheap unofficial replacement.
View attachment 269400
I continued disassembling the system, after all I was here primarily to fix the A button and give it all a good clean from the inside after years of rough usage. Motherboard removed:
View attachment 269401
The A button directly on the motherboard felt a little bit lower and less clicky than the other buttons, I guess it did get "a bit used" after all those years. I gave it all a good clean with alcohol and decided to cut out some pieces of paper to make the button a bit taller and hopefully easier to click. I don't like buttons like this, they don't even seem to be separate microswitch elements soldered to the motherboard, I definitely prefer the simpler design of the soft buttons on a 2DS or DS Lite. I went back to the shoulder button cable problem, the connector is extremely tiny but I looked at it and thought that maybe I could attempt soldering it back on, after all this is just a small part and I can't make the situation any worse by ruining this little cable. I got out the cheap soldering station and tried for a bit...
View attachment 269402
It didn't look that bad and seemed to be attached for good, but I still doubted that it's contacting properly and actually going to work. I connected the cable by itself to the connector on the motherboard just to test, it took a bit of force to get in and didn't give any satisfying click, but it seemed to be in and attached.
View attachment 269403
With the A button issue hopefully figured out and everything cleaned up at this point, I started putting it back together, and while doing that I tried connecting that button and turning it on by holding the battery in, and to my surprise it actually worked!
View attachment 269404
The R button presses and registers just fine as if nothing ever happened to it. Well, that's great, not wasting any money on replacement parts today. So I just finished putting it back together without worrying about having to open it up again to put in a new R button cable in a few days.
View attachment 269405
The A button seems to be working much better now as well, I hope it won't start being problematic again anytime soon. And I hope the 3DS will keep working for many more years...
Thanks for reading, I hope this wasn't too much of a nightmare to read. Please take care of your 3DS systems.
View attachment 269399
Got it open, the first you do after that is disconnecting the cables for the L and R buttons, and immediately a bad thing happened:
View attachment 269398
The cable flew off by itself and left its side of the actual connector in the other part of the connector... "Great, I'll have to order a replacement again" I thought to myself, I replaced both of these buttons a few years ago so I wasn't too surprised that it broke if it was some cheap unofficial replacement.
View attachment 269400
I continued disassembling the system, after all I was here primarily to fix the A button and give it all a good clean from the inside after years of rough usage. Motherboard removed:
View attachment 269401
The A button directly on the motherboard felt a little bit lower and less clicky than the other buttons, I guess it did get "a bit used" after all those years. I gave it all a good clean with alcohol and decided to cut out some pieces of paper to make the button a bit taller and hopefully easier to click. I don't like buttons like this, they don't even seem to be separate microswitch elements soldered to the motherboard, I definitely prefer the simpler design of the soft buttons on a 2DS or DS Lite. I went back to the shoulder button cable problem, the connector is extremely tiny but I looked at it and thought that maybe I could attempt soldering it back on, after all this is just a small part and I can't make the situation any worse by ruining this little cable. I got out the cheap soldering station and tried for a bit...
View attachment 269402
It didn't look that bad and seemed to be attached for good, but I still doubted that it's contacting properly and actually going to work. I connected the cable by itself to the connector on the motherboard just to test, it took a bit of force to get in and didn't give any satisfying click, but it seemed to be in and attached.
View attachment 269403
With the A button issue hopefully figured out and everything cleaned up at this point, I started putting it back together, and while doing that I tried connecting that button and turning it on by holding the battery in, and to my surprise it actually worked!
View attachment 269404
The R button presses and registers just fine as if nothing ever happened to it. Well, that's great, not wasting any money on replacement parts today. So I just finished putting it back together without worrying about having to open it up again to put in a new R button cable in a few days.
View attachment 269405
The A button seems to be working much better now as well, I hope it won't start being problematic again anytime soon. And I hope the 3DS will keep working for many more years...
Thanks for reading, I hope this wasn't too much of a nightmare to read. Please take care of your 3DS systems.
