I recently had the joy of replacing my son’s grey Nintendo DS casing with a replacement housing (red) I bought from www.dealextreme.com (I actually bought a second Blue one too, just in case). At $7 a pop and free shipping, I didn’t see why not.
The experience wasn’t entirely as easy as I thought it was going to be. (One special Nintendo-type screwdriver necessary for first disassembly)
One unfortunately has to make some rather ugly marks on the original casing to take it off, especially the top screen’s housing.
Other than that, the whole thing comes apart quite easily, and the insides fit together very nicely, and taking it apart required only disconnecting the top screen’s ribbon cable and speaker cable from the bottom one screen, and no other removal of ribbon cables at all.
I did run into some issues though:
After putting the whole thing back together, I forgot the one little screw that secures the cover that covers the ribbon cable inside the hinge. The reason I forgot the screw is that the cover is in a separate plastic packet inside the box. Don’t forget that screw! It’s a pain to add it afterwards.
Another thing I had an issue with was after putting it back together, switching on the DS resulted in the normal ‘click’ for switch on, power to the screen very briefly, and then the DS would immediately switch off. After some serious googling and forum reading, taking about 2 hours in total, I found this was a common problem. And the fix? Well, the DS switching off was due to the ribbon cable that comes from the top screen not being fully inserted into the slot in the circuit board. I took the resistance the slot gave me as a sign that the cable was in far enough, but pushing the cable a little bit harder made it slot straight into the right spot, and voila, all was well.
All in all not a totally painless experience (My thumb and forefinger are still sore from the strenuous screwdriving I had to do with a tiny-tiny screwdriver), but in the end, with less than 90 minutes of actual hard work, and the replacement casing is installed, and all is well again in the world.
The replacement housing box comes with everything you need to do the full replacement, including all screws and springs for the shoulder buttons. Well worth it.