Adventure Vision Repair

[MrBland]

I recieved my Adventure Vision today (Edit:yesterday, wife pulled me to bed in the middle of my post ). It looks real nice on the outside, some wear shows on the stickers and some very slight yellowing of the sides, but over all very nice shape. The joystick and buttons all feel nice and no major scratches on the screen, just buff marks were previous owner wasn't careful when cleaning it.

So I popped Defender in and fired it up and got nice bright lines, as far as I can tell none of the LEDs are out. I played with it a few minutes but nothing but lines.

Next I took the Defender chip out of the casing then cleaned the cartridge contacts and the slot contact with an eraser this is when I found the first major problem. One of the pins in the cartridge slot was loose, I took some tweezers to see how bad it was and it fell out. I'm not quite sure how it was staying in there because it fell out when I touched it.

Next I opened her up hoping that it might be an easy fix. I couldn't tell how to take the black plastic casing off the pins making up the cartridge slot. Perhaps it is all one unit? Do I have to replace the whole slot or is there a easy way to get to the pins to try to solder the broken one back in place?

In any case I don't have a gun, and lack skill (I was going to hunt down a friend to help me... or maybe try it myself) so I crudely wired the stump if the slot pin to the chip and slipped the chip in. I get looping game sounds, random dots, steady "snow" screen, but can't get the game to start up. One thing I noticed was that the "images" were surprisingly steady, very little flickering and no warping like I've seen on the videos.

To me it looks like everything is in good shape except the pin. I am hoping I can't get the game started only because of the poor connection on the one pin. Does it sound like any other problems to you guys? Are there any quick easy fixes to the broken pin?

I found these sites dealing with repair, but they don't help much with my situation:
http://www.adventurevision.com/basicrepairs.html
http://www.adventurevision.com/tech.html
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/_Temp/AV/

Are there any others? And lastly if this is beyond my skill is there someone I can pay to get it working for me?

Thanks for your help, I look forward to hearing back from you all

Mr. Bland

[Rik]

If you want, you can send it to me. I can fix that... I had the same problem with one of mine. You have to desolder the cartridge socket completely, re-insert/replace the broken pin, and reinstall it.

Fortunately, the AV doesn't need every pin in the cartridge socket, so if the pin is broken, I can use another one from the socket to make the system work.

Let me know if you want to send it to me, I can PM you my address...

Rik

[MrBland]

That would be fantastic, I would probably make it worse trying to fix it lol. Pm sent.

[vcoleiro1]

So judging from your post in the wanted section, did it turn out that there was a non fixable issue with your AV?. Wasn't just an LED or so that needed replacing ?