Hardware GBA Micro charging issue

[idsblake]

I bought a GBA Micro off someone and everything looked great on it. Screen vibrant, sound was working but the battery looked to have just enough juice to show me the system wasn't a dud. I got it home tossed it on charge and woke up the following morning and blue lights were still on which I thought was weird. Unplugged it red lights showed and flashed then it died shortly after. I bought a new battery and the console worked great until it needed to be charged and did the same thing on a different battery. So I bought another charger, let it charge overnight and woke up to the same issue. Blue lights while plugged in unplugged turned on red lights died shortly after. I even re-flowed the solder to the charging port just to ensure no lose connections and still in the same boat.

Anyone have any suggestions on what might be going on with my Micro?

 

[Razor83]

I bought a GBA Micro off someone and everything looked great on it. Screen vibrant, sound was working but the battery looked to have just enough juice to show me the system wasn't a dud. I got it home tossed it on charge and woke up the following morning and blue lights were still on which I thought was weird. Unplugged it red lights showed and flashed then it died shortly after. I bought a new battery and the console worked great until it needed to be charged and did the same thing on a different battery. So I bought another charger, let it charge overnight and woke up to the same issue. Blue lights while plugged in unplugged turned on red lights died shortly after. I even re-flowed the solder to the charging port just to ensure no lose connections and still in the same boat.

Anyone have any suggestions on what might be going on with my Micro?

If all the port pins are undamaged have you checked the two small surface mount fuses with a multimeter? (Labelled F1 and F2 on the motherboard) They are located on different sides of the board (One is near the charge port, the other is near a trigger button) I forget which is which but one is for power from the battery to the motherboard (which obviously is still working on your console) and the other is for power from the charge port to the battery (which sounds like it might have blown/failed) If that is the case reply here and I can help suggest a suitable replacement (Each fuse is a different value)

 

[idsblake]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. Sorry it took so long for me to respond I moved shortly after writing this and just got a hold of my micro since moving. I did test both fuses using a multimeter and both seem to still be working according to the multimeter. I was really hoping that would be the fix for this but it seems the mystery continues.

 

[HellsAttack]

Any updates on the issue?

I've got the same problem. Trying to refurbish Gameboy Micros, works totally fine except blue charging lights never turn off indicating it's not charging.

 

[FAST6191]

works totally fine except blue charging lights never turn off indicating it's not charging.

What are the batteries like?
Depending upon the state of the battery (and they can be 13 years old at this point) then the battery may never reach the state ( http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries , ones of this age and type can use all manner of detection methods as well) at which the controller reckons it has finished charging.

Such a thing might also explain the OP's issue if it was cooked when being charged.

 

[HellsAttack]

I was able to charge them to completion (lights turn off) using my personal, working Gameboy Micro.

 

[FAST6191]

If the batteries work in an otherwise fine GBM then that changes things.

In my case I would probably rip apart the working GBM and start doing tests on everything in the working model's charge path and then comparing it back -- far easier to find problems like this if you have a working example you can pull reference values from.

If you need a battery there to test something then make sure it is at the same charge level (or near as you) as comparing a drained battery to a full one might throw some results. In practice this mainly means you use one battery, probe fairly quickly and swap as necessary.

If that is not for you (and I would not blame you if so) then we are back to basic electronics repair type methods, which is to say the usual visual inspection, some probing, building up a model of the charge routines and so forth. Sadly I doubt you will even have a nice repair schematic to look at to help in this.

 

[HellsAttack]

I think I'm going to try reflowing the legs of the EM8 module. I've seen videos and posts about it on GBAtemp and Youtube. The Micro also has an EM8 module.

I don't know too much about using my multimeter. Could you point me to a resource for learning to trace the charge path back?

Thanks.

 

[FAST6191]

Not really sure what to cover there.

I can link you something like

if you want (it is a great video series).
Or
https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup/videos

Probably won't do much here though.

The idea would be you start at the power connector in and end up at the battery terminal. In the middle though will be all sorts of things to change the voltage and regulate it, or account for oddities it might encounter.
If you understand how chargers work (see both that video series and that horror I linked earlier about what lithium ion batteries expect) then you can start to figure out what each stage is, what it is doing and eventually land at the battery terminal. Figure out what along the chain there went pop and you can solder a new one in (or delete it/bypass it if you are happy that it is not going to cause you any troubles you can't live with). You will tend to want to start with that (and a visual inspection) for if you wander off and start probing... the left dpad button or something you will be wasting your time, probably*.


*there are strange and exotic ways boards can fail where completely unrelated circuits tank things but you start with the basics. 9 times out of 10 it is a fuse, switch, capacitor or something has gone open circuit.

 

[HellsAttack]

The original battery would charge in a working Micro and the battery from the working Micro would charge in the "broken" Micro, so I just replaced the battery and it seems to be fine.

Some wacky interaction between that particular battery and that particular charging circuit.

 

[Qinti]

I have this same problem. The fuse to the battery is working, but the fuse to the charging port is not working. Could you pass me the specs for a siotable replacement please?