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How to Make your own Gameboy |
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Written by http://www.ladyada.net/
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Tuesday, 08 March 2005 |
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 Ok, when you think back to your favorite game console what was it? Well for many 20 somethings (like me) it has to be the original NES. Yeah I played the atari, yeah the Playstation, Playstation 2 and Xbox are a lot of fun, but nothing reminds me more of my childhood than the NES. Well one of my Favorite hackers ladyada has released a new hack, "Game Grrl portable Nintendo game"
Orginally Posted on http://www.ladyada.net/make/gamegrrl/make.html
Parts
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These are the required components:
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- Soldering iron. Nothin' fancy. Also, solder, solder sucker,
heatshrink, wire, etc.
- Hot glue gun & sticks
- Superglue
- Drill press/drill/dremel...something to cut the ABS plastic
case.
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These instructions are a little rag-tag...there might be minor
steps that are missing or incomplete descriptions. Hopefully they
are still useful to someone.
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Check out the case, put in the metal bits for
the batteries |
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Disassemble the 'HIP Screen Pad,' take out the
screen (unplug the connector) and verify that it fits right
above the battery compartment. The screw holes should line up.
You might have to notch the pcb a little to let the HV (white
& pink) wires around. |
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Disassemble the Megajoy. |
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Desolder the Famicom connector. Also desolder
the ribbon cable. In order, the pinout of the bottom cable
is (left to right as shown):
- Controller #2 something
- Controller #1 clock
- +5V to controllers
- C#1 data
- Controllers #1&2 latch
- Controller #2 something
- Controller #2 something
- Reset (pull low to reset)
- Ground
- Audio out
- Video out
- +5V in for nintendo
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Connect the MegaJoy to the LCD. The LCD connect
wiring is (according to my notes):
- N/C
- Adjust ground (grey)
- common with 2 (grey)
- common with 2 (grey)
- N/C
- N/C
- Brightness adjust (blue)
- Contrast adjust (yellow)
- Color adjust (white)
- Adjust power +5V (purple)
- Composite video in (yellow)
- Video ground (brown)
- N/C
- Power ground (black)
- Power (red)
For now, dont disconnect the adjusts (#1-10). Connect power
ground to video ground to the megajoy ground. connect lcd
power to megajoy power and provide 6V (4xAA). Solder video
in to the video out pin.
I also connected the original NES pad as shown. Note that
there are a few ground pins on the famicom connector so you
can use them as ground solderpoints. |
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The megajoy got taped to the case behind the
screen. Turn it on. Should work :)
Note heatshrink on wires extended from the LCD.
I made a small version of the LCD adjust board but if I recall
correctly, you just cut it off completely and the screen defaults
to a nice setting.
(In case you want to make your own adjust board: Contrast
is purple->2k->10K pot -> 2K -> grey. Brightness
is purple -> 2K -> 10K pot -> grey. Color is purple
-> 5.1K -> 10K pot -> 1K -> grey.
for example) |
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Cut up the nintendo controller for the valuable
buttons, elastomers and pads. scratch off some of the overlay
so that you can solder to it. |
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Arrange the buttons as desired |
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Cut out the holes for the controller |
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Cut out the hole for the LCD (drill and then
file? Whatever works for you) |
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(Not shown: Take the original controller for
the megajoy and solder the pads from the NES contrller to
the epoxy'd chip in the middle. My notes claim that the pinout
for the chip is as follows: (clockwise from 1 o'clock: select,
start, B, turbo, A, ground, +6V (triangular trace), white/clock,
yellow/data, orange/latch, left, up, gnd, right, down. I'd
double check this visually, as I might have a mistake about
the directional buttons. Basically a button press should short
that signal line to ground)
Use superglue to tack the elastomers in the right spot. Put
the buttons on top, hot glue the shards, place the case top
and kinda push around the buttons until they are in the right
place.Wait for the hotglue to dry |
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Almost done! Make sure that all the power wires
(LCD power, Megajoy power, controller power, all connect to
the positive battery terminal) All grounds should eventually
connect to the negative battery terminal. |
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Add batteries. If you feel like it, add a power
switch of some sort (disconnects the batteries from the circuitry). |
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Now would be a bad time to drop one of the buttons
under the table. (Found it eventually) |
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I eventually added a headphone jack. You can use
the audio amp chip in the megajoy and some sort of volume knob... | |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 08 March 2005 )
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