After a very long time of not messing with any broken DS or 3DS consoles, I found a good deal recently, and decided to buy another Old 2DS... It was sold with the description of not turning on (turns on for a few seconds and shuts off with popping sound in the speaker) after replacing the touch screen.
It is a Japanese version and in a transparent black color, looks very nice, I haven't seen any like this here so this might be a Japanese-exclusive color.
View attachment 252306
Took it apart, and this was the first thing to see:
View attachment 252309
The ribbon cable for the rear cameras is just ripped off. Congratulations to the previous owner, I can understand accidentally ripping the fragile display cables in the other 3DS systems with hinges, but not this. How harsh would you have to be to rip this cable?? Fortunately the cameras are not required for the system to work though, so I didn't worry much about that.
Second thing that caught my eye (sorry about the bad light in this picture):
View attachment 252310
The circle pad cable is just held with some tape and the locking piece on the connector is missing. It's really easy to break off the locking pieces off those connectors, please be careful with them. But the circle pad is also not required for the system to boot, I removed that tape and just left it unplugged. I can easily replace that locking piece with the part extracted from some junk DS motherboards, I learned how to do that when fixing a different 2DS in 2018 which had the locking piece missing for the touch screen connector. At least this time it wasn't held with disgusting electrical tape that leaves sticky glue everywhere.
Next thing I decided to do was to disconnect all of the ribbons, clean them, re-insert them, and see if it makes any change. And while doing that, this happened:
View attachment 252312
The locking piece (which looks like it was already broken here) for the display backlight power connector just came off... That explains why the system is not powering on, the display backlight power is required to boot and I'm guessing it already wasn't making contact with that broken locking piece. So I got out some old trashed DS lite motherboard to get new locking pieces from:
View attachment 252315
View attachment 252317
Reinstalled into the display backlight connector:
View attachment 252318
A small part of one of the pins actually broke off there, but I didn't worry about that because the ribbon seems to actually contact on the other side and it's also only a 2-wire cable with duplicated pins. At this point I tried to hold the battery to the battery connectors and turning on the system, and yes, it booted to the home menu just fine.
Installed another locking piece into the circle pad connector:
View attachment 252319 View attachment 252320
In case anyone needs to know how to install these locking pieces, you bend the pins on the connector up with some knife, get the locking piece onto them through the holes in the locking piece, and push it back down into the right position. At least that's how I do it.
So at this point I just reassembled the system, and it is now working perfectly fine except for the rear cameras, which are not needed for most games anyway.
View attachment 252323
System version 11.9.0-42J
View attachment 252324
Playing a DS game
View attachment 252325
I'll be installing a custom firmware at some point later to hopefully remove the region locks for 3DS cartridges. But for now, other than the cameras and the 3DS region lock, I guess this is a perfectly usable system...
Thanks for reading.
It is a Japanese version and in a transparent black color, looks very nice, I haven't seen any like this here so this might be a Japanese-exclusive color.
View attachment 252306
Took it apart, and this was the first thing to see:
View attachment 252309
The ribbon cable for the rear cameras is just ripped off. Congratulations to the previous owner, I can understand accidentally ripping the fragile display cables in the other 3DS systems with hinges, but not this. How harsh would you have to be to rip this cable?? Fortunately the cameras are not required for the system to work though, so I didn't worry much about that.
Second thing that caught my eye (sorry about the bad light in this picture):
View attachment 252310
The circle pad cable is just held with some tape and the locking piece on the connector is missing. It's really easy to break off the locking pieces off those connectors, please be careful with them. But the circle pad is also not required for the system to boot, I removed that tape and just left it unplugged. I can easily replace that locking piece with the part extracted from some junk DS motherboards, I learned how to do that when fixing a different 2DS in 2018 which had the locking piece missing for the touch screen connector. At least this time it wasn't held with disgusting electrical tape that leaves sticky glue everywhere.
Next thing I decided to do was to disconnect all of the ribbons, clean them, re-insert them, and see if it makes any change. And while doing that, this happened:
View attachment 252312
The locking piece (which looks like it was already broken here) for the display backlight power connector just came off... That explains why the system is not powering on, the display backlight power is required to boot and I'm guessing it already wasn't making contact with that broken locking piece. So I got out some old trashed DS lite motherboard to get new locking pieces from:
View attachment 252315
View attachment 252317
Reinstalled into the display backlight connector:
View attachment 252318
A small part of one of the pins actually broke off there, but I didn't worry about that because the ribbon seems to actually contact on the other side and it's also only a 2-wire cable with duplicated pins. At this point I tried to hold the battery to the battery connectors and turning on the system, and yes, it booted to the home menu just fine.
Installed another locking piece into the circle pad connector:
View attachment 252319 View attachment 252320
In case anyone needs to know how to install these locking pieces, you bend the pins on the connector up with some knife, get the locking piece onto them through the holes in the locking piece, and push it back down into the right position. At least that's how I do it.
So at this point I just reassembled the system, and it is now working perfectly fine except for the rear cameras, which are not needed for most games anyway.
View attachment 252323
System version 11.9.0-42J
View attachment 252324
Playing a DS game
View attachment 252325
I'll be installing a custom firmware at some point later to hopefully remove the region locks for 3DS cartridges. But for now, other than the cameras and the 3DS region lock, I guess this is a perfectly usable system...
Thanks for reading.
