I know, I know, my mom is a trash wizard. She's actually stopped checking the building dumpster because the vagrants are using it as a toilet, but a while back she found a game boy color with Pokemon Silver in the laundry room garbage.
The start and select buttons did not work, so I see why someone discarded it.
Today I was bored, so I took out my toolset and got it open. The Game Boy Color is surprisingly simple in it's construction. It's got those annoying Tri-wing screws, but the smallest flat head on my leatherman manages to lodge in one of the "arms" of the screw and can be removed.
So it's six tri-wings, and the thing opens up like a clamshell. To get at the front, you have to pop a ribbon cable out, but unlike the PSP, this one is easy peasy.
Then it's three small philips screws that hold the board down, and you've pretty much disassembled the unit, assuming no soldering work is to take place.
There was an absolutely massive dust bunny in there. I tweezered it out, rubbed down the works with Isopropyl, and reassembled the unit. The contacts for start and select were absolutely grimy.
So now I've got a Tetris machine that takes half the AA batteries of my old one!
I understand modern hardware is a lot more self-repair hostile, with glues and sprues that render units dead if you're not surgical. That makes me sad. There is an elegance to the internals of the Game Boy Color.
Next item on the covet list is an AGS-101, but I've been waiting quite a while to purchase that one. Back when they were $50, there was something wrong with every unit I checked, and I refused to buy online and end up with a paperweight.
They're now in the $120-$170 range.
