Hardware Right Joy-Con not responding after swapping motherboard and R button module broke off.

Ysg7

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Let me take you from the top:

Two weeks ago, my R Joy-Con fell and broke some of its parts (Zr button, SL / SR, and motherboard). I assumed this because the Joy-Stick would move in screen, even though the module was disconnected from the motherboard, and it would continously disconnect/reconnect to my switch in wireless mode.

So I thought It would be a good idea to buy a second hand functional Joy-Con, and replace the faulty parts in mine.

At this point you may be thinking that just buying another one would be enough and, you may be right. I should've stopped at this point.

The "donor" joy-con arrived. I tested it before opening it up to make sure everything was functioning allright. Once I checked every part of it I opened it apart, and found that the R button module was partially unsoldered, but still functional, so I decided to continue with caution. However, after trying to put it in place in the "recipient" Joy-Con, I noticed that it wouldn't connect to my switch on handheld mode, but it would work wirelessly. This was solved by swapping the rail connectors aswell (they may be specific to the donnor's motherboard ???).

After this, I noticed that the R button module finally broke off, and the joy con wouldn't work at all (no SL/SR lateral lights would turn on while keeping some buttons pressed, and not recognised by the switch while connected to it, even after swapping the rail connectors aswell).

I inspected the R module and saw that some of the PCB under it was teared up, so there's no way of soldering it again to the motherboard. I googled this and found a GBAtemp thread that showed it can be fixed by wiring the module pins to certain points in the motherboard. I suppose I could give it a try.

The thing I'm most concerned about is why the motherboard just stopped working at all? At this point I've taked for granted that I will end up buying an official joy con, but I can't assume why the motherboard from the new Joy-Con just "died"?. Before you ask: I didn't hit it / forced it in any way.

At this point I should thank you for reading this all.

Some lessons I've learned that I would like to leave:

-Treat your Joy-Cons carefully.

-Don't rely too much on second handed products or overlook faults in them, you'll end up finding some. Sometimes going "cheap" doesn't necessarily mean "spending less".

-Most important of these: If something works, don't touch it!
 

Waicol

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Joycons have a fuse that would "kill" the motherboard if you short it with the battery connected, this usually happens while disconnecting the battery because the pins are exposed.

Here is a reddit thread detailing the issue and how to solve it

You can replace it with a new 0 ohm resistor or just make a blob to connect both ends directly (not recommended)

The left joycon also has the same protection.
 
Last edited by Waicol,

Ysg7

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Thank you!

Shortly after uploading the original post I discovered that fuse might be the root of the problem.

It’s incredible how little information about this there is on the internet.

I’ll try to solve the issue and document the case, just in case anybody has the same issue.
 

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