My first Nintendo console of my own was my purple Game Boy Color (that I annoyingly can’t locate). I started watching The Retro Future on Youtube and saw a bunch of his videos of refurbishing and modifying old Game Boys, and I became intrigued. Ive been I recently got really interested in Game Boy console modding. We couldnt have done any of this without the continued support and encouragement from the modding community. Old products have been overhauled and re-releases are in development including TV-out for Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance, new DMG LCD kits, Updated flash carts as well as a few colaborations with some big names in the community.Mono 2.5W amplifier Circuit 2000mA hour LiPo Battery Battery Charger circuit Gameboy Dmg Backlight Main PCB Holds the Pi Zero in a cut out in the middle of the board. Adafruit 3.2 SPI TFT screen. Custom Main PCB Custom Cart PCB Custom Button PCB with extra X - Y buttons. Step 3: Double click the DMG file and drag PokeMMO to your Applications folder.Original Game Boy DMG-01 Case.I figured instead of making a bunch of smaller modded consoles, I should just fix up one console without any modifications for display purposes, and then make one really nice console with all the bells and whistles that I’d like – the main features being an IPS screen and rechargeable batteries. It seemed like a fun project! So I bought two DMGs (that were supposedly “dead” but really weren’t). Also bridges the I decided that, since I never had a DMG, I should finally buy a crappy one and fix it up.I could just modify a GBA or a GBA SP with a nice screen and battery, but I really actually hate how the non-GBA games stick out of the console. I could cut the board in half, and just rewire the broken traces, but that’s pretty difficult and I didn’t really have much exposure to how these things were wired up when I started, and what was important and what could be rewired easily.Since finishing this project, I’ve found that some others have made pretty nice GBCs-in-DMGs, but that’s another post for another time.Anyway, the next generation up from the GBC was the Game Boy Advance. Most of the ports are basically on the opposite side of where they are on the DMG. In AliExpress.But… what if were to purchase a Game Boy Color and disguise it as an original Game Boy? Oh hoh hoh hoh, delightfully devilish, Nick!Well, after taking the GBC apart, and trying to shove it into a DMG shell, the answer to that was an emphatic “eh, no thanks.”On a Game Boy Color, there is just one large PCB inside, as compared to the DMG’s two separate boards that slot nicely into the plastic. And I didn’t want to have a modded DMG and a modded GBC, especially if the GBC could do everything the DMG could.Gameboy dmg case only, other accessories demo in the picture is not included Luminous full housing shell case for nintendo gameboy classic dmg. But the GBC’s form factor isn’t my favorite – mostly due to my large hands.
With some heavy modifications and additions, people have been able to get their SP inside the DMG case and have a fully functional GBA. The original GBA board was too weirdly shaped to fit inside the DMG case, but the SP was a comparably smaller square shape. Then, I stumbled across a few posts from people who put an SP inside a DMG case. But I just don’t like the look at all. I don’t think I’m good enough at modding cases to make them look nice. That was a non-starter for me. I saw many people mod the outside shell to accommodate the actual GBA functionality into the console – like adding L and R buttons. But, I can still use an SP motherboard to play Game Boy Color games. So yeah, GBA compatibility is out. You can make some really slick GBAs, and those consoles are comparably cheap and abundant anyway. I’ll make a separate modded GBA later for playing GBA games if I really want it. I wanted to keep the DMG asthetic as close as possible. I’m just not too artistic, or experienced with that kind of thing or at the very least, I’m way too bothered by minor imperfections when I make projects like this for myself. Dmg Gameboy How To Do AchieveAn original Game Boy that plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games Here are the specifications of my mod: There will be no GBA support.After paging through forum posts, some photo albums, Youtube videos, and lots of schematics, I finally have formulated a plan for how to do achieve this goal. Common Ground DMG Control Panel PCB – $2ish ($20ish for 10 boards total) IPS Screen and Ribbon Cable (separate items, to make sure the glass lens wasn’t preattached to the screen) – $65 Game Boy Advance SP Cartridge Connector – $8 No external case modifications to the original Game Boy shell (but lots of internal modifications)(Though… to be completely fair, I will have to clip back part of the power button slider, to allow Game Boy Color games to be placed in the cartridge connector – whether you want to count this as an “external” case mod or not is up to you)Here’s a bill of materials that I’ll detail throughout the article, and the prices I bought them for (your results may vary): Stereo headphone compatible, with an audio amplifier modification for the speakers A rechargeable Li-ion battery, with a capacity of 2000 mAh, that is recharged using the original AC adapter through the DC jack on the side of the Game Boy Discrete parts (resistors, transistor), thin wire (28 gauge or smaller), solder, Kapton tape – $?The total came out to about $210, not including some shipping and the cost of items I already had lying around. Momentary Normally-Open Pushbutton – $0.10 Speaker Amplifier Modification Board – $10 (NOTE: unused in final build) So I used this reconstructed PCB view of the DMG main motherboard to find the proper numbers. Throughout this post, I’ll be referencing things by their pin numbers, mostly from the DMG board. I don’t think I’ll be making another one of these.For reference, here’s a schematic for the SP, and here’s one for the DMG. But it’s cheaper than making a modded DMG as well as a modded GBC, and I think this’ll become my defacto Game Boy to play. Best word processor for mac 2012But, I started writing this, and I’m up to like…. There are also probably some better methods out there than the way I did. If you want to follow this guide yourself, you can, but be warned that it’s pretty tight, expensive, and easy to screw up. And like I said earlier, it doesn’t include GBA support, like many people probably would be interested in – but I think this is still a good resource to get you most of the way there, or at least provide some background information on the Game Boy line. Full references can be found on the bottom of the post.This is not really meant to be a tutorial, as it’s highly customized to the hardware I had available and the systems I was working with. Thank you mystery internet person! Also, I’ll be using some pictures/views from the Game Boy Hardware Database because I’m bad at taking pictures. I bought this SP used and it had some other issues (that I’ll detail in a bit) so I am suspecting it was always damaged from the start. I isolated the problem to the power supply IC on the SP motherboard – essentially, over the course of the time I played it, the power supply would get weaker and weaker to the point of not being able to boot up at all. I am not responsible for any damage done to you or your property!Full disclosure, this mod actually died a few weeks after I finished it up. I had expected to just be able to swap the SP battery out with a bigger one. I verified that it was working with a multimeter.The SP’s battery charger not working, now that was a bit more of a bummer. The important thing was that it wasn’t the volume potentiometer I wanted to use. The DMG speaker was easy enough, I had an extra one lying around and that seemed to fix the problem fine. I connected up the SP’s IPS screen as well, to make sure that all worked.(This picture was actually a bit later into the process but this is generally what I did anyway.)There were only two casualties – the DMG’s speaker and the SP’s charge port. Fixing this might be easy to do – the fuse might just be blown, and the circuitry could have survived. So it was definitely the charging circuit.
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