[Sushi K]

How to replace the touch screen on your DS Lite

A few months ago the calibration on my DS Lite went off, WAYYYY off. I tried everything to fix it: calibration, the toothbrush, the needle, nothing had any effect. So I bought a triwing screwdriver and opened her up to see if I could clean anything. I couldn’t. I found replacements on ebay and opened it up to see how hard it would be to replace. In the process I broke the touch screen completely. That decided it for me, so I bought a generic replacement.



Tools

You need a few tools.
A triwing screwdriver. You can find one in a security bit set, but the screws are too deep, so you need a proper one. This one came with the screen I bought.
A small Philips screwdriver. Free from a trade show.
A broken DS Lite, Hello Kitty stickers optional
The replacement touch screen, about $10
Tweezers or small electrical pliers, not pictured
Large balls to open up you nice DS Lite and potentially break it worse.

Opening it up

Look, nice and normal.

Remove the sticky pads at the top two corners and the battery cover. I used the flat head screwdriver.

Remove these screws.
Red=triwing
Blue=Philips

Nice!
Now pry off the back starting at the top. Be careful of the shoulder buttons they may shoot out and you will lose the small springs. You may need to use your finger nail to pry the front from the back. The bottom can be tricky.

Look at that.

Remove the two shoulder buttons. The small metal cylinder holds the spring in place and is where the button pivots.


Pull out the white microphone and black antenna BNC connectors. Then pull off the WiFi module. (Circled in black.) the left is the connector ant the right is double sided sticky tape, so you may need to pull it fairly hard. Remove the two Philips screws circled in blue that hold down the motherboard. Lift she small black tab holding the touch screen connector down right over the WiFi module. It pivots towards the top of the DS. Pull the small ribbon cable out towards the top. It is only in a small way, but it’s hard to get back in. That’s what the tweezers will be for.

Lift the black tab holding down the large ribbon cable for the screen.

When you reinsert it make sure you get is all the way so the small tabs sticking out the sides are snugly in and you put the black holding tab back down.

There she is. Now start peeling off the touch screen part. There’s more to it then I thought at first.

That bit of thick glass does come off. Be careful of the screen itself. Save the white border piece for later.

Get the new screen out. Peel off the protective layers. The new one isn’t sticky. So put it in. push it all the way in. Mine was slightly to big so it was a hard fit. I pushed to hard and cracked the corner. D’oh!

Now put it all back together. Just go through the steps backwards. Start with the touch screen ribbon cable. It’s hard but it only goes in a little ways. Be certain to push in all the connectors all the way and return the black cable hold downs to the locked position.

It worked! That was surprising. Put the white border on from the front, it’s the perfect fit. Note small crack in the bottom left corner, but hey, it works.

I hope this guide is helpful. Really it’s so easy that you don’t need this guide, but I made it to show that buying a generic touch screen replacement off ebay works. I hop that this gives you the courage to do it yourself if you are having problems or a scratched screen.

Good Luck!

After playing it for a while I have some thoughts on the new screen. They used a glass back instead of the plastic one Nintendo used, so the durability is down and pressing even remotely hard will cause that blur effect on the LCD, but it does seem much more sensitive and the accuracy is perfect. Also it is a bit harder to drag the stylus as the screen seems a bit 'sticky' to the stylus.
_________________

[Koji]

I haven't had to do that, but I did once open my old style DS to remove some debris or dust that was making the left (if I remember correctly) direction in the control pad sticky. It went smoothly, and I never had to do such an operation again.
_________________
The Ants Parade.

[Toups]

the calibration on my touch screen is off a bit and I find this very tempting...

but it looks hard!
_________________

[Sushi K]

It isn't really hard, I just wrote the guide as complete as possible. If you can take something apart then put it back together again it's a cinch.

My main point is that it is possible with what I expected to be ebay junk.
_________________

[shnozlak]

found this awhile back

a step by step video of a dissection with narration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRzTgfo2PsM
Doesn't show the re-assembly however....
_________________
Mixtapes galore ~ VG MUSIC
ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ http://phantom-photon.tumblr.com/

[Sushi K]

I got it from this guy.
http://stores.ebay.com/ACEKOGYO_Nintendo-DS_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ19029995QQftidZ2QQtZkm
_________________

[Mr Mustache]

Replacing the screen cover on the gameboy color is really easy.
_________________
The people are like wool to me

[RyogAkari]

I'm tempted to do this to my old style DS. I really like it's layout and how the buttons feel, I've just wanted the new screens to be in it. I wonder if it's battery/power capability could handle it.

[Sushi K]

I think the two versions have totally different configurations, so no ds -> dsl conversion.
_________________

[bruin]

Kotaku linked to this
_________________

[diamondblast]

[parkbench]

Warning, upload all your photos to flickr because mediafire hates you apparently.
_________________
metafilter vs. youtube comments