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Handheld Hijinks Vol 4 - A Lynx to the Past
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22-03-2023 3:18pm#1
The Atari Lynx is a handheld that I'd only ever seen once as a youngling, it was a rare cat back then (and even now it's not entirely common.) I was half on the lookout for one, trying to convince myself not to bother, and failing as usual. A nice looking example popped up on eBay, sold as not working or powering on, so I said I'd take a chance on it. Capacitors are often a common point of failure with these, as are the power stage components too.
I was able to grab a capacitor kit from the ever helpful Mark over on the Digital Delights eBay store - https://www.ebay.ie/str/digitaldelights (properly nice guy. I've bought from Mark before, and will continue to do so, so if you're looking for a few repair parts etc, give the store a look.) Unfortunately he was out of stock of the Power Stage Repair kit for the Lynx, but I was able to grab one of those from another seller on eBay.
Anyway, on with the work!
^^ The Lynx is a Model II Lynx, and is in overall quite nice condition with the small exception of a scuff on the upper left of the screen lens. I'll keep my eye out for a replacement lens, as they seem easy enough to change.
^^ Battery cover is present. To open the unit, you need to remove the rubber grips, then the screws are exposed.
^^ Patient on the table, ready for surgery. It's a small little board, and initially seems in very nice condition.
^^ First signs of age, a capacitor had begun to leak.
^^ All caps removed, pads wicked where necessary, and cleaned with IPA.
^^ The Digital Delights cap kits always come with this handy cap map. Saves time just ticking them off as you go, it's a nice touch/little detail.
^^ This cap necessitates de-soldering of the RF shield, in order to bend it back and expose the via's.
^^ Once done, the shield can be soldered back into place (being sure to insulate the capacitor solder points as they'd short on it.)
^^ All caps done, soldered, clipped, and board cleaned down with IPA.
^^ These are the power stage components that need to be changed. It's a shotgun approach just swapping them out like this, but they're known points of failure, so in my opinion, while in here working on the board they may as well all be changed at the same time. It's a Mosfet, x2 transistors, a resistor, and a diode.
^^ Mosfet removed, and pads de-soldered and cleaned.
^^ Kapton tape as a heat mask, because these components come off fairly easily using the heat gun method. I've added some flux here to aid re-flowing the old solder.
^^ Components removed. They're pretty small, so an anti-static tweezers comes in handy here.
^^ Power stage repair kit (Mosfet, x2 transistors, x1 resistor, and x1 diode.)
^^ Resistor soldered in. The proximity to the shield doesn't help here, but if you tin one pad, and use a tweezers to feed the resistor onto that pad while flowing the solder, that tends to work well.
^^ Transistors soldered in. It looks like there's tons of solder on them here, but there isn't in person, the legs are absolutely tiny. Sorry for the blurry pic!
^^ Mosfet soldered in.
^^ Diode cut down in size, shaped to fit, and soldered in. These kits all supply a through hole diode, not an SMD one...so a little bit of bending is needed here!
That's all of the components changed out, time to re-assemble and test.
^^ Back together and ready for testing.
^^ 9v center negative PSU needed here. I don't have a Lynx one, so my multi-psu will have to suffice for testing.
AAAAANNNNNDDDD......nothing. Black screen. Balls. The system powers up to a red light, and I can hear the game running though, which is at least one good thing. So I decide to disassemble again, and check things over.
^^ Aahhhh, a broken solder joint on the screen backlight. That explains while I only see a black screen. The pad is gone by the looks of it though.
^^ PCB Mask removed with a fibre glass pen, just enough to expose some copper for the solder to bond to. All soldered up now, and ready for testing (again.)
^^ Lovely, it lives! Ok the 90's lcd screen isn't exactly lovely, but I'm glad I've saved it. There's quite a few dead pixels as can be seen here, all those white dots aren't supposed to be there!
There is a problem with the controls though. Right on the dpad triggers down, for example. I'll need to disassemble (again) and check it out.
^^ Screen and mainboard removed in order to release the cover for the controls.
^^ The membrane is quite filthy, and has signs of ageing/cracking in a few places, so I'll likely replace this as a later stage.
^^ All done for today, not a bad few hours work.
So left to do with this Lynx are a new/replacement screen lens, a control ribbon/membrane, and I think I'll go the whole hog and replace the screen with the modern IPS one. I would have left it stock if not for the dead pixels, but they'll likely continue to die and degrade over time, so it seems a good candidate for a modern screen replacement.
Post edited by CiDeRmAn on6
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Bit of a bump with this thread, but a small update just to finish things off.
^^ Back out of storage, and ready to work. It's got a scuff on the lens as you can see, so I'll keep an eye out for affordable replacements (in the meantime, this will do fine.)
^^ I had already replaced the main power components shown earlier in the thread, but the RetroSix power stage rebuild kit is a bit more comprehensive and protective incase of failures, so I decided to fit that. The three orange diodes near the top here are up for the chop! I've covered the brightness wheel with some kapton tape here, as I'll be just hot air'ing these off and the proximity to the plastic wheel is notable.
^^ All relevant power components removed, board cleaned, wicked, and cleaned again. Ready for the replacements to be fit. You can see here the RetroSix kit includes the three diodes from the previous pic, a new U6 invertor, a proper smd D13 diode, and a modern diode for D12 - along with the regular components the old kit had. Naturally I forgot to take pictures of the finished job, but it's all very clean and boring.
^^ Replacing the old power jack while I'm at it…
^^ Shiny new one ready to go in.
^^ A brand new Lynx Clean Screen to replace that worn out 90's relic that was failing.
^^ The ever so nice Lynx Game Drive, which is the Atari version of an Everdrive really. Bought from Dragonshop.de
^^ Empty….
^^ Full…
^^ STUN Runner - I enjoyed playing this on Quiggs Lynx there lately, so spun it up for a quick go here.
^^ Road Blasters - another Atari classic. The Lynx conversion is quite decent actually, I enjoyed a few mins of this before I had to go.
So that's it….with its new power stage kit, new button rubbers, new control membrane, and brand new lcd screen….it really is a Lynx Between Worlds now….both retro, yet fresh and new at the same time!
I'll throw a thanks out to @Quigs Snr for the kind donation of the new button membrane. I did buy one, but what RetroSix fails to advertise is that the membrane they sell is NOT compatible with their Clean Screen board….the pin pitch is different, and you get missing conntrols. I was able to get the one on Quigs machine working, but can't for the life of me get it to work on this one - I needed to bypass the clean screen board and plug the membrane directly into the Lynx itself, meaning I've got no way to enter the screen menu etc. It's no problem really as the screen is so nice that the pixel effects are superfluous anyway, but very unnecessary and annoying at the same time (seems a trend for me with RetroSix products tbh.) It should be advertised as such. I had bought one, but broke it with all the faffing about with it, so thanks to Quig for saving the day here.
Peace out.
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