Charge light goes on then off

Bought a few GBA SP’s in a lot a few weeks back, I had this issue with 2 of them. The orange charge-light would come on briefly for about 1 second then turn off.

Over the last few years I’ve heard everything from “bridge/replace the F1 fuse” to “replace the charging port”, but I think I can safely safe 9 times out of 10 it’s just the battery that’s dead. I just finished fixing these 2 GBA’s and both of them work fine now that I put in good replacement batteries. The charge light stays on while charging.

Advice;

- Check the charge port contacts to make sure they’re clean and there’s no bent pins. If the power adapter charge-plug can’t touch the charge-port contacts of the GBA SP itself, it’s needs to be replaced. Sometimes if the connection is also loose you might need to “bend” the charging-cable while it’s plugged in to make full contact with the GBA SP’s charging port. If it still works then great, but you’ll probably need to replace it sooner or later if that’s the case. Give it a wiggle, see if that helps. That’ll tell you if it’s the charge port or something else on the board.

- Try a different charging cable.

- Check the connections of the GBA SP charge-port itself to the motherboard. Open it up and look. If it looks like the solder-points have cracked and they’re not making contact, use a soldering iron to lightly ‘touch-up’ the charge port contacts to the motherboard and re-melt the solder that’s available or add some solder, as well as touch up the 4 tiny legs of EM8 just below/near the charge-port itself. EM8 is a main power-regulator for the GBA SP boards from what I’ve figured out, sometimes if that has a bad contact it can disrupt the charging process too.

- Try putting in a new battery, or try with someone else’s battery first to see if their battery will work in your GBA SP. Then you’ll know for-sure that you just need a cheap battery replacement bought online.

New batteries are about 5-20$ depending where you buy them, I generally buy most of my little spare parts from Aliexpress. The shipping can be rough to wait for since most of the products are coming out of China, but the parts I get are generally good and work right. Out of 20 GBA SP batteries I bought in bulk for $1.38 (CAD) each, I had 2 that were a duds. It just happens when you buy something cheap in bulk, once in a while it ain’t gonna work right.

I’m not an expert, these are just nuggets of experience I’ve had in my years of fixing Gameboys, Gameboy colors, Gameboy Advance SP’s, and the odd DS/3DS. I do this as a hobby, so if anyone can provide a more clear response then please feel free to add more. Hope this helps!

try taking out the batteries and putting it back then charging it that worked for me

If it does that it means the battery is full :D I also didn't know that and thought it was broken but it isn't bad IT JUST MEANS THE BATTERY IS FULL

I bought this from another seller and it worked before, but I tested it now and it does not want to charge up (the light indicator would show but then quickly disappear).

Hey! I think I have an answer for most of you.

If the battery swap doesn’t works, open your GBA SP up and be assured that the screen ribbon cable is properly and fully plugged in the motherboard - and that the locks on both side of the ribbon port is properly pushed fully down (or up if it’s not plugged in a perpendicular position). Most of the time when I repair a GBA SP with that flickering thing going on, that’s what is happening.

Also, it sometimes can create a random restart on your GBA, so it’s kind of a sign that your GBA SP doesn’t receive properly the AC/Power from the battery to the screen.

There is not enough public info about flat batteries..if a battery sits long enough and discharges on it's own it will go flat.

sometimes, specially with newer batteries and lithium, you have to get some juice in them to get them started charging normally.

I sometimes can do this by plugging and unplugging the charger many times then leaving it plugged in for a while and doing it again.

power tools will seem to have bad batteries after sitting a winter etc. they just need a jump start

This happened to me too. Luckily, my brother has another Gameboy advance SP that didn't work except for the battery. I swapped batteries and it appears to be working again.

This also happens when you fry your charger, a bit. I've opened up my charger and can see that the capacitor (if not mistaken) was loose. The solder has melted and loosen up the foot of the capacitor on the circuitry of the charger. I re-soldered it and good to go.

#This should affect all the GBA charged with this particular charger.

It's most likely the battery is full or the battery is completely dead and you have to swap it with another one

This happened to me but turns out the charging port on my gba sp was loose. I Discovered this when I shoved the charger when I was frustrated, this could be the problem so try to shove the charger in or something like that.

Either the battery is already charged or it’s the battery that is not working.

I have this problem today… jan 12, 2019.. the unit has been stored and forgotten for years, and of course the Battery is dead for sure… I used the charger I originally use on my Brother’s SP and it charged normally. for some reason mine is not.. why is that? I’m sure that i never had this problem before…

Hi, i seem to have a problem with my gameboy advance sp ags 101. The original battery was dead and i decided to swap it with another gba battery that is working. The thing is the little orange light thats indicating that the gameboy is charging is always oppen even if the gameboy is shut down or not plugged in. what can i do ? I fear that theres an issue with the mother board that just suck all the batteries.

So I like just had this issue. What I do is move the head piece of the charger around in the outlet until the light flashes orange indicating that it’s charged. Don’t know if this is safe or if it’s efficient but I guess it works.

had this problem and i just moved the charger while plugged in and eventually it worked lol

I fixed the issue I was having. It was the EM8 Chip on the board that controls the charging regulation. I replaced the whole port (not easy haha) but think all I needed to actually do was reflow the 4 pins on EM8 to the board with a soldering iron. Hopefully, this helps someone before they replace the whole charge port like I did!!

If you are deciding to replace the port makho on youtube has a good guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnYxizt8...

I had this problem and I just got a q-tip with rubbing alcohol and cleaned up the charger and charging port, and then blew it out with a can of air, and it works fine now.

Just to put it out there. I had the same issue, turns out the screen’s ribbon cable was dislodged slightly causing the charge light to come on only for a second, reseating it fixed the issue for me. :)

Mine does the same thing but for 10-15 minutes

Ok so basically my first gba sp was working fine until it run out of battery and i din't had a charger. So I crafted something different in the battery slot ( i putted a different battery type) and it was working fine. Sice the battery was 3.7 volts i was thinking there would no be some overvoltage or burn insode the gba so it was going fine until one day i tryed to turn it on and it just burned inside. I remond that the right bottom of the gba becamed very hot inside when he died and that all. Today i have a charger and when i try to plug it whit a real gba sp battery this time, the red light turn on and off even if i swap the battery whit another gba sp battery on my first faulty gba sp. ( i have a new one and this time i take good care of it) so yeah i try to see where is the problem on the faulty gba sp now but idk where . what i know is that it maybe resieve to much current flow and it burned somewhere on the power path on the pcb. Sorry if its hard to read, my native language is french.

Sorry I’m late but this could mean that it’s fully charged. If it wont turn on try spamming the on/off switch decently fast until the green light comes on.

Just had the same issue with a battery that charged previously. I swapped it out for another and my system was able to consistently charge immediately.

I had the same problem. It was because of the battery. Not the charger, not the cable, not the GBA itself.

I solved it by plugging an unplugging the cable several times. I slowly noticed a little increase the time the orange light was on (not reaching a second). Then it stayed on and charged.

My guess is that the battery was in a deep-dichrge state and that refreshed the chargin protection and kickstarted it.