Atary Lynx II - LED Backlight Install

The old lightning tube on an Atari Lynx is pretty terrible. Replacing it with a back-light is cost-effective and increases the screen visibility. This is fairly simple to do, but does require some soldering.

If you want to increase battery life, you'll probably also need to remove the coil, etc (not covered here). And you'll likely also need to replace the capacitors (also not covered here).

I got the LED light from handheldlegend.com if anyone's interested.

Remove Battery Cover

Remove 4 Screws from Back

Remove Pads on back of Lynx II to expose screw holes.

Open up unit (careful not to unplug ribbon cables) and remove internal battery case.

Remove back plastic cover and prop up board to work on front of unit.

You'll find the 5v solder point here, toward the top of the board on the back. You'll need to fold back copper sheathing to expose the board.

Back on the front of the case, remove the four screws around the light-tube casing.

Remove center screw from screen assembly.

This would be a good time to test the LED unit. I soldered the positive to the 100 ohm resistor and touched the two wires to ground/solder-point while the unit was powered on.

The assembly is held together by twisted metal tabs. Reverse these to pull apart and try not to damage these, as they can help in reassembling. I had to cut one (used hot-glue to put the case back together later on).

Pull apart the lighting assembly.

On the tube-assembly, cut the wires and remove the two side boards. We need to keep the plastic mirror on the back so don't damage it.

Also cut the wires going to the tube.

Carefully remove the tube and you should have only the plastic mirror left.

The light diffuser (piece of white plastic) needs to be replaced with the LED backlight. They're almost the same size fortunately.

In my case, I needed to remove these little plastic tabs to be able to slide on the LED back-light.

Use glue to hold the back-light in place. Remember that the diffused, rough side goes forward (it may be covered by a plastic film - which must be removed).

Reassemble everything. Use an air can to remove dust between the glass and the back-light. I also had to glue on the front padding.

Now clean the front of the class and make sure there's no dust particles (like between the glass and back-light).

Now replace the middle screw holding the frame to the assembly. (Notice I used hot glue to hold together the tab I had to cut. I quickly cooled the glue with the air canister upside down for this.)

Now put the assembly back down on the case front. and add screws to hold assembly in place.

Connect the back-light ground wire to the speaker ground (this is common ground so it's fine).

Now cut and solder the 100 ohm resistor to the 5v ground solder point shown here.

Find something to shield the positive wire from the board and from the shielding (both of which are grounded). I chose shrink tubing - which I added to the positive wire before soldering to the resistor.

Now solder the positive wire to the resistor.

Apply electrical tape (or a lighter to the shrink tube) to shield the positive wire to prevent a short.

Now start reassembly. Put back in the internal battery case

Add the four outer case screws and reattach the rubber hand pads.

Reattach the battery cover.

Enjoy the modded Lynx. Games are still somewhat faded (even with replaced capacitors). But it's a lot better than the tube lighting. The light is constant but the contrast can fade in and out the LCD graphics.