V3 Electric Screamy Death

[Kiba]

I've had a V3 Tama for a few years, and it's been by far my favorite one. I picked it up again recently to see if I could complete some of the things I hadn't yet. Things were going just fine until about a week ago.

I kept the Tama in my jacket pocket. When taking my jacket off one night, I heard a crackle of static electricity and a sharp beep. The Tama's screen had gone blank. I wish I'd hit reset right then, but I pressed the B button instead to see if it would respond. It did, by screaming.

I spent the next few minutes looking for something to unscrew the back with while the Tama just made a constant high-pitched beep. I got the battery out and reset the thing. Surprisingly, it actually seemed to sort of work. I was able to download and get my character back, but the screen is totally borked. The pixels are pale and there's a really bad streaking effect. Most of the upper icons don't really light up anymore. It looked like the animation sped up really fast for a bit at least once, as well.

I looked it up and couldn't find any other stories of this sort of thing happening. So, what I'm wondering is, is there any way to fix this? I got a V6, which is keeping me entertained, but the unresponsive buttons are a pain in the bum and I really miss my V3, but it's hard to play it with the screen like that. Would Bandai possibly replace it, since this happened in such a way that I could not have helped (never was warned that static electricity might be a problem)? There's nowhere to get a V3 around here, and the ones I've found online are mostly overpriced or extremely old and dingy/unreliable-looking.

Thanks for any thoughts or advice!

 

[DragonSparke]

I've never heard of static electricity do that bad damage to a tama before ): I'm really not sure how to fix it, because it sounds like the electronics were damaged. I doubt Bandai would replace it now, considering how old a model it is at this point.

Your title did give me a bit of a chuckle though.

 

[Meme364]

This happened to me once, I woke up when I heard a loud noise once so I took out the battery and replaced it with a new one and it worked again. For me it was just old batteries, try replacing them.

Oh, also, was it a really long beep? That's what it was for me...

 

[MintyDreams7]

Sounds like the zap just shorted out some of the electronics. Not enough to completely brick the toy, but enough to mess up the functionality.

That's too bad, it wouldn't be fixable in that case.

 

[jordboss]

Hi, this happened on my v3! Take the battery out and clean the inside of the case removing the 4 screws and cleaning them as well! but it together and then download! Sorted mine out!

Hope I helped

 

[lolokotchi:)]

Sounds real creepy! How long has it been like this? If it hasn't been too long you could try taking out the battery and opening it up, and just letting it "rest for about a day. If you are lucky, the damage isn't permanent.