DS

I was recently presented with a unique opportunity to find out what’s inside the broken Nintendo DS that I had laying around. I was given another DS to look at because the directional pad and buttons had become worn down and input was not being processed when pressed. With luck on my side (my broken DS and the DS I was given to fix were both the same colour), I decide to swap out the keypads and get the worn out DS working again.

The steps used to disassemble can be found in detail on the “Pimp My Console” website. The site has 2 tutorials that are quite in depth: one is a video tutorial, the other is a picture by picture walk through. I will only document my experience here.

Image 1. Two Nintendo DS’s waiting to be cracked open

Image 2. The DS on the left is the patient, the DS on the right is the donor.

Image 3. The batteries and rubber pads were the easiest parts to remove.

Image 4. Back of the DS housing removed.

Image 6. Removing the connected wires.

Although the video makes this part look pretty simple, re-attaching the black wire takes some finesse (because it has to be passed under the silver metal casing in the center of the DS). Solution: I tied thread to the end of the black wire and passed the thread under the silver unit instead. The circuitry under the unit made it slightly more difficult to pass the actual wire back under without snagging it on parts of the circuitry. The thread was met with less resistance and once it was through, I simply (and gently) pulled the black wire through.

Image 7. Left – DS with replaced directional pad and buttons. Right – scrapped DS.

Next up: I’ll consider changing out the screens. Which means I’ll have to test the screen on the broken DS first to make sure it works.