Chewys Game Boy Colour Zero project

[chewyinit]

Hi guys!

Ive been lurking these forums for a while now and have decided to do 2 builds! First a pi zero and a gbc case, then later a pi 3 in an origional gameboy case.

This will be the log of my GBCZ build!

First things first, i got retropie running externally and set everything up and all is well.

Now for my first big road block, THE SCREEN. the standard 3.5 inch that everyone uses is a little too big to fit in the case so i opted for a 2.5 inch screen instead, adafruit have a 2.5 but to get it here to austalia is like $75 so i desided to try and harvest one from something else.

At the local jaycar i found this for $20 and the guy there said it shouldnt be too hard to repurpose the screen for something else.

Boxed

20170226_144548.jpg (1.67 MiB) Viewed 4473 times

After cracking it open i realized just how knowledgeable im really not about electronics yet.
So thats where you guys come in! I can see where to get power and ground for it but i have no idea how i could get picture signal to the screen. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Screen

20170226_144603.jpg (2.17 MiB) Viewed 4473 times

Flipped screen

20170226_144615.jpg (2 MiB) Viewed 4473 times

Thanks in advance for the help people!

[jb32647]

That screen looks like it'll be difficult to salvage, maybe try finding what kind of chip is under that black resin blob. I could help you if I knew what the chip underneath is to find the pinout with a data sheet, if one exists.

[jb32647]

Oh, and also if you can't get the screen, your $20 is not wasted, as you could reuse those button PCBS and pads.

[moosepr]

Yeah that screen is going to be tricky. Will probably be using spi, but there are more pins than I would expect to see (24) on the screen. Looking at the photo, there seems to be quite a few pins tied together, and some not looking like they are connected.

First think I would try is see if you can find a similar screen on aliexpress and see if you can get a pinout for that. Even then, you will need some kind of carrier board so you can wire the screen to the pi

[moosepr]

After a quick but of searching I found this

http://s.aliexpress.com/yYRf2eUJ

Hopefully the URL will work ok, I found it with my phone. You firstly need to see if the driver chip will work with the fbtft driver on the pi