Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Show off your completed Game Boy Zero, or post your build logs here!
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Kilren
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Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Kilren » Thu Jul 07, 2016 11:52 pm

Thanks to med school and work, this took over two months for me to finish. Finally had some time over the 4th of July week to be in the shop and just go crazy, and got it finished. Very picture heavy.

May 16th:
A week after seeing wermy's youtube video by accident (didn't press stop on autoplay, ha!), I made quite a few purchases to start collecting parts and my screen came in the mail. I immediately hooked it up to the wii to see if it turned on. The same day, I tried to solder into a pad that said 5v. Didn't work, had to use the 12v pad and a 3x3v pad to get sufficient power. Screen looks a lot better than the picture shows, the refresh are just too close to take a good picture.

[spoiler="Screen"]Image
Image
Image[/spoiler]

May 20th:
The shell finally showed up from a company on Amazon named "NBGames". Fairly nice shell, different colors available, and comes with the screws, buttons, and gummy pads. I immediately got the screen glued into place and tested it on my pi0 that I bought from pimoroni sometime in between. The last picture does more justice for the screen (still having refresh issues, and will continue to do so since all pictures are taken with my phone). Somewhere in this time, I also got the Teensy LC and @Helder PCB board. That guy is really awesome!
[spoiler="Shell"]Image
Image
Image[/spoiler]

May 27th:
Made no progress on the GBZ. My wife is pregnant with our first child, and I was able to see the baby for the first time. Life went from crazy, to overload getting ready (we knew my wife was pregnant, but seeing an ultrasound made it hit home for both of us). I was also incredibly busy with finals. I did use a little time to prepare stuff. Staying organized is your best friend, especially with wires. I favor good ethernet cables.

[spoiler="Wire prep"]Image[/spoiler]

June 7th-10th:
School was finally out for the year, and I just had rotations left to do at the hospital. Got to have a little extra time to finally figure out some things. The audio was a trickier piece since I had no recycled pieces from a broken DMG. After some serious research, and help from some awesome forum members, I was able to figure out a system that would work. I have a post in it under hardware>guide if you need more information. This was probably the biggest headache of the project.

[spoiler="Audio"]Image
Image

The parts started to finally start come together.
Image[/spoiler]

June 16th:
Got some stickers from @dominator. They look freaking awesome by the way.

[spoiler="Oooo, pretty"]Image
Image[/spoiler]

June 17th:
Getting ahold of a USB hub that is small enough seems to be a trouble for some reason. I finally found a great 4 USB hub, ended up being 3. Wife was already mad at the money I've dumped in this, so I had to settle with one less port. Oh well. This one is incredibly small and reliable. I don't have anything against it besides it being only 3 ports. It's fine though, I don't have dedicated wifi, but I have an external port that I can put a dongle in when needed. My three ports are teensy, audio, external port. Also had a major setback that took a few hours to repair. I pulled out a soldered wire by accident that was under two layers of boards and hot glue. A real pain, and I walked away from it for the night.

[spoiler="USB Hub and wire repair"]Image
Image
You can see the wire pulled out of the USB audio-dac. Very disappointing. However, when I walked back to it the next day, I had patience and a moment of good luck. You can see it was under only a single layer of hot glue, and it was really tight, but I was able to fix it pretty quickly.Image[/spoiler]

June 29th:
I had a couple of days off of work, and really planned on finishing the GBZ. However, working on another project, I got cut pretty bad from a power drill accident (a drill press to be specific) and couldn't work on anything for a couple of days. Don't look at the picture if you're squeamish.

[spoiler="Your second warning, there is blood"]Okay, so it isn't actually that bad. It was a HUGE pain though to get blood control though because of the spot I cut. *Medical coming out here* I sheared 3mm of superficial skin to the subcutaneous, rupturing the capillary bed. Because of positioning, it was hard to get direct pressure and it oozed for a day and a half before I got blood control. Wife asked why I didn't go to the hospital, and I said, "because I am a doctor, woman!" She yelled at me mockingly, before we both busted up laughing.

This picture was taken the second morning after the injury happened, and you can finally see it clotting. Image[/spoiler]

4th of July Weekend:
I finally had time to finish everything, put all of it together, and make @Popcorn graceful shutdown. Took the least amount of pictures here, becuase frankly I just wanted to be finished. Two months is a long time! This was super fun, a steep learning curve, and I'm excited to start working on the next one. Already have some ideas to improve it. For this one, I am done!

[spoiler="Finished product"]The back before closing up. I did not get the cartridge-SD soldered and wired before this picture was taken. I do have it, but it is a little flaky and I'm looking at what I can do for improvement. The cartridge pin is a modified Nintendo DS piece. Image

Here is the front before everything was glued down into place. My goal was to have as little as possible on the back half, and I accomplished that by using JST connections. I used 2 pin micro JST, and 4 pin JST. Image

Closed and screwed together. I have quite a bit of room left for the battery, and since the PB1000C is in the bottom right corner, I have no problem plugging in a battery. Image


I used button spaces a little differently. Contrast is my main power micro-USB. Where power use to be, and people are generally putting the micro USB, I put the latching button for popcorn's graceful shutdown. It is out of the way, recessed, and it just looks better in my opinon. I have to use a pen to press it, so it won't be a problem with any accidental pushing. Image

The other side has external USB port, and micro HDMI port. Image

And finally, the finished GBZ in all it's glory. Oh, and I already smudged the glass screen with finger prints :lol: Image[/spoiler]

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Kilren
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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Kilren » Thu Jul 07, 2016 11:55 pm

A quick shoutout to some real awesome people. Thanks to those of the sudomod community for all the incredible help.

A few members stand out (in no apparent order):
@wermy
@popcorn
@helder
@fleder
@dirtybeagles
@chiz
@cannikin
@prerunnerseth
@dominator

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chiz
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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by chiz » Fri Jul 08, 2016 12:39 am

Great build, @kilren!

Your build log is full of emotions! Ouch on that power drill accident. :( Good to hear it's healed. Congrats on your two new babies -- your soon-to-be-born and your baby GBZ! :) I'm sure you'll have awesome time with both of them! :D

Looking forward to the next... Cheers, man!
Last edited by chiz on Fri Jul 08, 2016 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Robots86 » Fri Jul 08, 2016 12:42 am

Great build kilren and congrats for the big news :mrgreen:

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Kilren
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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Kilren » Fri Jul 08, 2016 12:48 am

Robots86 wrote:Great build kilren and congrats for the big news :mrgreen:
Thanks man! It's terrifying and fun at the same time !

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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by alien0matic » Fri Jul 08, 2016 2:48 am

Congrats on both :)
Seems like this was the last project for some time ;)

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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Rod2D2 » Fri Jul 08, 2016 5:18 am

Congrats on the baby and on finishing your project. I have two baby girls 7 months and 2 years and trust me it's hard to find time once you have kids. But don't let anyone scare you because they are a true blessing.

Question did you omit the headphone jack or any other parts/features?

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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by wermy » Fri Jul 08, 2016 7:44 am

Nice job @Kilren! Love seeing these finished builds pop up.

Makes me think I should add some kind of badge for folks who finish projects (so you'd get a GBZ badge for this one). :D
ImageImageImageImage

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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Ganreizu » Fri Jul 08, 2016 8:40 am

How was using the DS cartridge reader @kilren? Is it a superior choice?

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Re: Kilren's No-OEM parts build [Complete]

Post by Kilren » Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:44 am

@alien0matic no way! Projects are what keep me sane! They're my outlet from the hospital and life in general!

@rod2d2 As far as I know, nothing is omitted. I moved some things around to non traditional spots, but it should all be there.

@wermy not a bad idea, but I'm also saying that now that I have it built :P

@ganreizu I didn't deal with the original one, so I don't have a good comparison. It is low profile though, and it works.

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