Replacing the Nomad screen

[hailrazer]

Tired of that pathetic Nomad screen? Wish you had a nice new Lcd in there? Well now you can.

First things first. Get rid of the old Lcd.
Open up the Nomad. You will need a security bit for the bottom/middle screw. After you open the Nomad , pull the circuit board up and you will see the Lcd. Pull it of and then pull of the lcd cable attached to the main board.



Now you just ruined your Nomad. Just kidding

Here is the new Lcd we will be using :
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20415" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It is $50 shipped.

You can also find them on Ebay for around $35 shipped. Just be sure to get the same exact monitor. Other 3.5" on Ebay and from Dealextreme don't work with the Genesis and they are to thick to fit in the Nomad case.



When we take it apart it will look like this :


Now what you want to do is get out your hot glue gun and glue the new Lcd into place. Make sure you get it centered. be aware the Lcd hole on the Nomad is slightly slanted so the Lcd will be slightly slanted when mounted.



Now it's time to solder the wires necessary to power the screen and get video to it.
You will be soldering 4 wires. 2 grounds, power, and video. the 2 ground wires go to the same spot on the Lcd's board.



Here is where the wires will be soldered to the Nomad's board :



And some closeups :





After it is wired you will want to mount the Lcd's board on top of the Lcd. I put a small piece of paper between them to protect against shorts. You can then hot glue the 4 corners to hold it in place. :



Now put the Nomad back together. Make sure the wires are crimped anywhere, or in the way of the buttons.

Plug it in and see the new Lcd in all it's glory.

[hailrazer]

Just wanted to post a pic of what the screen normally looks like with the regular Nomad screen:
(not my pic)

[vskid]

Nice job. I didn't realize it was just a matter of soldering a couple of wires and mounting the new screen (I must've been thinking of the Gamegear). The new screen looks a ton better. The old one looks like it was soaked in urine.

[Pkmnjunky7]

The old one looks like it was soaked in urine.

QFT

[Triton]

IIRC the original nomad screen was analog RGB so using a screen that accepts RGB would work as well, but more than likely cost more! its possible that these DX screens can take RGB somewhere on its board

[hailrazer]

IIRC the original nomad screen was analog RGB so using a screen that accepts RGB would work as well, but more than likely cost more! its possible that these DX screens can take RGB somewhere on its board

Well you would have to tap into the rgb from the nomad, and I really wonder how much better it would look on a 3.5" screen. Cause this screen looks awesome with composite, doubt rgb would look much better.

[wallydawg]

thanks for this, looks like a perfect fit. I have one with a lot of dead pixels on the screen (looks like someone scribbled right in the middle of the screen with a pixelated orange crayon) so I needed to get around to something like this eventually.

Is the battery life better now? I'd make an educated guess that with the new screen's better power consumption (Im not sure if thats the right word for what I mean) maybe we can get at least an hour of play time instead of the usual 27 minutes lol.

[palmertech]

The DX screen and the ebay screen I have can both accept s-video if you move one of the caps and pull it to ground, and wire the signal straight to the ADC.

What is the part number for you ADC on that screen, Hailrazer? I suspect is uses the same one, it would be nice to know for sure.

[hailrazer]

The battery draw now for the Nomad and screen is around 250mA.
With the original screen it was around 360mA.

I am using a infolithium 7.4v 2000mA battery to run it. So I get around 8 hours .

[segasonicfan]

sorry to bump an old thread, but I just saw this for the first time & it is a very nice looking mod. anybody figure out what the main ADC chip is in the middle? if its one of the common IR3Y/IR29 ones, you can actually get RGB video through them (which the nomad provides)...

[omp]

The battery draw now for the Nomad and screen is around 250mA.
With the original screen it was around 360mA.

I am using a infolithium 7.4v 2000mA battery to run it. So I get around 8 hours .

While I got the same with my stock Nomad (360mA) with the LCD screen I used it now draws 460mA. I used a diferent monitor to the DX item but it had similar specs (power consumption =<3W). Did you do any further modding to bring that down?
Thank you Pete

[hailrazer]

The battery draw now for the Nomad and screen is around 250mA.
With the original screen it was around 360mA.

I am using a infolithium 7.4v 2000mA battery to run it. So I get around 8 hours .

While I got the same with my stock Nomad (360mA) with the LCD screen I used it now draws 460mA. I used a diferent monitor to the DX item but it had similar specs (power consumption =<3W). Did you do any further modding to bring that down?
Thank you Pete

Your screen is not very efficient. My screens use less than 80mA. Yours is using around 200mA.

[Helpplease]

Recently changed the screen in my Nomad for a new one and it's great! To bad it's so hard to take good photos of the screen with my phone.
Some classic Sonic is a must to test with.

Thunder Force is now playable! Maybe I can beat this game one day!

[omp]

With regards to getting the right screen, if you go on ebay, do NOT take the sellers word as gospel. I specifically asked the seller if it was a red guard branded monitor (they had a red guard box in the back ground...or they could have pinched the pics from elsewhere). When I got the screen here and hooked it up to the Nomad via the AV cable, the picture is in black and white and has thick jail bars. Works fine with a dvd player etc though. So I have done my cash on this monitor.

I have a few Nomads to do and I have gone through a few screens now. The first chewed the juice and the picture was just so-so. The second type I got was better than the first, better picture and not so hungry on the battery, but not as good as the red guard item. Then this 3rd screen (imitation Red Guard) for this application is absolute crap.

[wallydawg]

Yeah that's the "hardest" part of this mod is finding an acceptable screen. There are so many of these screens on ebay its almost impossible to know what you are going to end up with. I've done about 25 replacements or so and have built up quite a Boneyard of screens that just don't work with the nomad, for various reasons.

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