I just recently got a Popeye from Ebay. Display said it was OK, and when I got it, immediately when I opened the screen up, a piece of the plank, brutus (minus his hand) and the swordfish won't display unless the screen is in it's fully opened position.

Should I return this or should I keep it and fix it?

I've read that some Panorama units run into this problem.
I have some contact cleaner, would that help?

Edit:
Here's a crude edit of a simulator to show what happens




Basically this happens when opening the screen to be displayed. During the point where it's not snapped fully open it'll disappear for a bit until I snap it all the way open. It usually stops after one time opening it up all the way. Sometimes it gets more sever and won't stop after a few times. Worst was when it would be 5 and above.

Hi

Cleaning all contacts would be my first guess.

I remember having a Pano with the same problem. By gently pressing the outer case of the game in the middle on the back side (the part with the serial number!) did make the missing sprite appear.

So it looks like a contact problem. I fixed the problem by disassembling the game, cleaning all contacts and then make sure everything sits nice and tight inside and after I did assembling the game.
I did make sure to (gently) tighten the screws. But be very careful by tightening the screws, or you may destroy the thread inside of the hole, where the screws are in.

Gawaleus schrieb: Hi

Cleaning all contacts would be my first guess.

I remember having a Pano with the same problem. By gently pressing the outer case of the game in the middle on the back side (the part with the serial number!) did make the missing sprite appear.

So it looks like a contact problem. I fixed the problem by disassembling the game, cleaning all contacts and then make sure everything sits nice and tight inside and after I did assembling the game.
I did make sure to (gently) tighten the screws. But be very careful by tightening the screws, or you may destroy the thread inside of the hole, where the screws are in.

I have a can of contact cleaner that should really help out with any problems with corroded contacts.
The problem is I need to know what part I would need to clean.

I know there's a clear ribbon cable in the back, but is that for the display?

Also, about pressing on the back, I have that problem with it too, however it'll make it disappear before it reappears. It's more near the crack and is the part with the mirror, not the part with the controls, but it's most likely the same scenario with the case pushing the internals.

This problem would be something I could live with if I didn't have to fear it getting more severe over time. I just got this and this wasn't mentioned in the description, but I'm not sure if it's worth sending back if I can fix it.

What exactly did you clean when you did yours? What parts did you disassemble?
It's most likely I'm having the exact same problem as you did so I must need to do what you did.

If worse comes to worst I could always try soldering a wire between the weak connections.

It's a long time ago when I did solve this problem. I don't remember what contacts I did clean. But I remember disassembling everything. When assembling everything I did make sure to tighten all screws.

Too bad I did not take any pictures.
But we have a fix here in the forum:
www.gameandwatch.ch/de/game-and-watch-fo...rama-screen-fix.html

It's in German. I don't know if you understand German or if the Google translator will help?

Gawaleus schrieb: It's a long time ago when I did solve this problem. I don't remember what contacts I did clean. But I remember disassembling everything. When assembling everything I did make sure to tighten all screws.

Too bad I did not take any pictures.
But we have a fix here in the forum:
www.gameandwatch.ch/de/game-and-watch-fo...rama-screen-fix.html

It's in German. I don't know if you understand German or if the Google translator will help?

I sprayed a bit of contact cleaner through the crack a while ago. What happened was that the display faded out for a few minutes (contact cleaner is non conductive so it probably cut off the connection before it dried). After a while it dried and then the display went back to normal.

I noticed huge improvement and no pressure on the back would make those characters on the display disappear.

1 day later, it went back at it again, not as bad as before, but still concerning.

I opened up the unit, took both rails off, took the back of the middle section off, then took out the motherboard with the CPU to discover the ribbon cable is actually the same as the white cable that connects the middle part to the top part with the LCD screen.

I sprayed more contact cleaner. It's been a while now, it's doing good so far, but I wouldn't be surprised if it started doing it again.

However, like the thread you posted stated, from what I can gather from a translator, the contact relies a lot on the case assembly pressing down the ribbon cable onto the contacts. I've notice the top parts of the display don't show up when the mirror part is disassembled.

Like the thread states, I was thinking, if it happens again, I will put a shim on the back of the motherboard to help press the contact onto the rubber pad that goes to the ribbon cable. While contact cleaner will dissolve a lot of rust and residue, it won't help if the ribbon is physically having trouble pressing against the contact.

I really appreciate the response. You've been very helpful. Hopefully I can get this fixed. It's really fun to play and look at, and it's my first Panorama. Cheers.

Just reporting in: Day 2 after spraying with contact cleaner with the back open.

No pressure on the back is making those characters disappear, which is a good sign. There was the ship disappearing a bit though, so I pressed the bottom to make it disappear and then held the top down.

Basically that means the top was becoming loose each time I pressed the bottom.

I found one top screw and one bottom screw has been stripped. I super glue some plastic on the sides of the those screw holes and screwed it in. That should fix any problems with the case being too loose. All good for now. The ship no longer disappears even if I press against the back.

I'll report in tomorrow, which is the same time it took for the last attempt with contact cleaner for the original 3 characters to disappear again. Hopefully it won't this time. If it does, I'll put the back shim in like I planned, but for now, I'll see if it resolves without it.

Wish me luck!

About 5 days now, all is still good. No pressure or opening of the case will cause the characters to disappear.

There was only 1 minor adverse affect, which is the LCD characters are faded when you look at the screen tilted. All the characters display just fine when the screen is fully open though and there's no disconnection happening anymore, which was the problem in the first place.

Fixing stripped screw holes seemed to have helped too.

If any of you try this, I'm not sure if the rubber transfer pads that transfer the signal from the motherboard to the ribbon cable for the LCD can come off, but if you can disassemble it safely and are able to reassemble it, then I suggest taking it off first, hitting the contacts with a Qtip damped in contact cleaner or 99% isopropyl alcohol.
After that, use a Qtip very lightly dipped in contact cleaner/alcohol and then clean the rubber contacts a little bit.

I assume the reason why the screen is a bit faded now is because the rubber contacts absorbed the contact cleaner, and contact cleaner is non conductive.


Anyways, hopefully I won't run into more problems anymore. It seems like 5 days is good enough for all the contact cleaner to fully dry out of the device and it seems like it's good now.

Thank you for your help. The seller doesn't seem like they wanted to cooperate with taking it back anyways. 150 USD for a panorama is a pretty good deal, just not fond of them not listing that it had this problem.

Thank you so much for reporting the fix for the problem here!
:ok2: :ok2: :ok2:

Thank you!

I have 1 more report. Sorry for the redundancy.

So I've noticed when opening up the screen, I've mistaken subtly flickering as faded LCD characters. While it's miles better than the characters completely disappearing, it's still concerning enough to me.

I opened it up one more time. I've noticed, if you look at the back of the middle part, there are grooves. Behind that inside the case are lines of the case protruding to help press the ribbon cable rubber pad down. I put in a few pieces of tape onto where the lines were.

I screwed the motherboard back in and then put in a few layers of tape behind the mirror so the mirror helps press the motherboard down and give more pressure on the rubber pad contacts.

While it was open, characters tend to disappear since there's no pressure on the ribbon cable pads, so I pressed down on the motherboard to see which area the characters with display problems are at. I put a few more pieces of tape on that spot.

Assembled back up nice and tight. Flickering has disappeared now.

I could probably attempt to take off the rubber pads and clean it even more thoroughly but frankly I'm too scared of damaging the unit to do that. You know what they say, don't fix what's not broken.

Oh, also, when I saw the ribbon cable, it looked like it went back to normal, so thankfully the contact cleaner didn't do any huge damage. Still recommend getting some if you ever need to thoroughly clean electronics though, just don't spray it on any of those ribbon cables found in a panorama or multiscreen.

Ok, so I was having problems again with the images flashing on the screen again.

So there's 2 types of display problems.
1) My original problem, characters would disappear completely when opening the screen.
2) The problem I was getting after, the characters would dim and flicker while opening the screen.

Opening the middle section, taking off the ribbon cable (it is attached via adhesive) then cleaning the contacts helped get rid of that problem.

WARNING: Do NOT use contact cleaner on the ribbon cable itself. I cannot guarantee that isopropyl alcohol won't hurt it too, but just to be safe, don't do it. When cleaning the ribbon cable, use a dry Qtip. I believe the grey strips are conductive material, and after experience, contact cleaner has an alarming effect on it.
Contact cleaner is fine on the contacts on the PCB though, make sure to dry it by rubbing a dry Qtip over the contacts afterwards.

Ok. So I was wondering why the characters still flicker. This would happen from time to time, and I'd unscrew and rescrew the mirror compartment to try to fix it.

After a while I realized that the middle section is not the problem, it's the LCD part.
Rereading the topic you posted, I realized that person was actually referring to the ribbon cable going into the LCD screen.

Now, the problem here is that the ribbon cable is very, very loose.
Seeing a topic from another forums here nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=69135

" think when you close the game up, it is designed so that the ribbon actually loses contact with the pins inside.
I believe they did this to save battery power when the game was not in use. "

I'm not completely sure if it was intentionally designed like that, but it can end up doing this after time.

Basically following the instructions on the topic you linked me, it fixed it.

The ribbon cable is double sided, and in between it is a rubber piece to push the ribbon cable onto the LCD glass panels. Clean the LCD glass panels with contact cleaner/rubbing alcohol. Dry it with a dry qtip.

The hard part is putting tape onto the rubber pad and then reassembling the cable into the LCD panels. It's tricky but you can do it.

After doing this, The flickering problem seems to be gone. Hopefully I don't jinx myself and come back here on this topic again, but I think my game is fixed now.


Apologies for the numerous and long posts, but something I personally don't enjoy is trying to find help online and then the topic abruptly ends. Hopefully if anyone has this problem they can use this.

Cheers. Merry Christmas.