Web log of Mike "Bibin" M.

I’m a little embarassed to put this guide up as it’s incredibly quickly written and has no proper pictures. The idea is to replace the inefficient CFL-based backlight with LEDs. The original consumed around 500mA, and the LEDs consume around 50. What a drop in power consumption! Here’s a video of it working (not much to show in a video )

Anyway, without further ado…
How to vastly improve your Sega Nomad™’s battery life!

So you’ve played your nomad on battery before. You’ve cried deeply. These two things, they are closely associated, because the nomad only lasts an hour or so on battery. Let’s fix that!
Note: I am writing this guide from memory as I am not near my sega nomad right now, so there might be some slight inaccuracies.
Before we start, it’s best to understand why, and how, this happens. The Sega Nomad™ is otherwise great for a number of reasons, and one being that it has a fully backlit color LCD. This means you can see it in the dark. The downside is that the way in white sega backlit it (which is similar to the Game Gear, so this applies too) is very inefficient. They used a CFL tube, which is a glass tube full of mercury vapor, and they pump high voltage through it, which causes it to light up. On 6 AA batteries, this is unacceptable, and it draws lots of power.
Back then, this was excusable- cheap white-colored LED’s just weren’t so available. Now, though, you can get thousands for mere dollars. We are going to replace the aforementioned CFL tube with two bright white LEDs.
Now that we’ve talked about that, get your parts together. You need to choose which type of LED to get. As far as brightness goes, it doesn’t matter quite so much which one you get. I used an SMT LED, which are very small:
http://www.scionlife.com/tech/images/clock_led_mod_xb/IMG_0136.jpg
You may also use a traditional-type LED, but it might be a bit harder to fit in there. If you do, you’ll want 3mm or smaller ones;
http://www.soselectronic.com/a_info/img_data/d/dio/led_3mm_clear3.jpg
You’ll also need some wire. This is easy to get. If you play your cards right, you can actually avoid using new wire by reusing wires that were already inside your nomad, but that’s stupid. Just get some wire, you can even steal some IDE ribbons and split the wires off. They make a good supply.
http://www.cablesdirect.com/prodimages/IDEHD-2_LR.jpg
A phillips screwdriver will be needed. Size is not that important, but you should have a large “normal” size one as well as a smaller one (you can do without the small one but it’s better to have).
Lastly, you need a soldering iron. I am just going to assume you know how to solder.
http://www.chipworld.co.uk/store/images/15w_soldering_iron.jpg
Oh, and a sega nomad.
http://www.club-nintendo.ch/boutique-2007/images/sega_nomad.jpg
Now, let’s go!
First, turn your sega nomad over. It is not necessary to remove the cartridge at all, nor the battery pack, but you might want to. Take your larger phillips screwdriver and remove the four screws in the corners. You will notice there is a fifth screw hole with a “Security screw”. If you have the driver to remove this, great! Remove it. If you don’t, do what I did. Just pry open your nomad from the top until the screw post snaps. It doesn’t matter, doesn’t affect stability, nobody cared about that screw. Your nomad will be just fine after.
Now your nomad is in two halves. There is a white ribbon cable going from the back half (we’ll call this the GEN half) going to the front half (we’ll call this the LCD half). Gently tug on it towards the GEN side to unplug it. After that, remove the screws on the back of the LCD side. There are four that compose a square in the centre. Don’t remove those yet! Remove the three others around the side. Oh, unplug the speaker cable in the corner and the grey backlight cable in the other.
After that, lift the board up and out of the LCD side housing. Flip it over, you should see the LCD assembly. There is a metal border covering it. Pry up the tabs on the side of the metal and plastic housing, and remove the metal. The LCD itself can now just flip down, out of the white plastic housing. After doing this, flip the board over. Remove the four screws that go through the board to the white housing, and again flip it over. Pull out the white housing.
The white housing has a small little inverter board in it connected to the white tube. Using scissors or something, cut the wires on either side of the tube. Using a small screwdriver, remove the two black screws that fasten the piece of white plastic down. Gently pull up the piece of perspex that is the light, and slide out the old tube.
Now, take your two LEDs. Wire them up in series, meaning that the long pin from the LED goes to the short pin on another. Off the top of my head I forget which one is positive and negative, but you’ll know that you got it right if it works, and if not, you just rewire it, It’s easy.
Position the LEDs on both sides of the slot where the old CFL tube used to be, pointing inwards. Run a wire from the far one along the bottom, and then up towards the top where the inverter used to be. Now that you’ve done that, grab a 6V battery or something and just quickly test it out and make sure it looks good and even. After that, replace it onto the LCD-side board, screw it in, put back the screen, and the metal frame.
You’re not done yet, though. You need to pull 6V from the nomad. There is a small resistor (I forget which one off the top of my head) pretty close to the “HIGH VOLTAGE” warning. Use a multimeter to find which one it is, and hook that to the positive wire. The other can just be wired to any common ground, I used the wire towards the back that is hooked into the copper grounding slab.
Now screw it back in, put it back together!
I’ll upload pics when I get back home.