I happend to have an old soldering station I got gifted by a company that replaced them with newer ones. I never really put it to use, other then soldering power to LED strips. I also had all the other tools needed to get going, even though everything was old and used I was all set up. I thought...
The list of parts I ended up having in my Game Boy Zero:
- Broken Game Boy from ebay
- Cheapest game on ebay for the cartridge
- Helders Button PCB
- Teensy LC
- Adafruit PowerBoost 1000C
- Adafruit LiPo 2000mAh
- Adafruit micro USB breakout
- Speaker
- Raspberry Pi Zero
- 640x480 screen that cannakin found
- Octopus USB hub
- 1k Ohm stereo potentiometer
- CSL USB soundcard
- SNES Gamepad (for the buttons)
- Tactile switches
- Cartridge sticker from dominator
- Screen glas with sticker from dominator
I've read everything on here, the wiki and the tutorials wermy made, but just realized I have to use a triwing screw driver before the broken Game Boy arrived. When both were there I was so thrilled to take everything apart that I did it without thinking about or taking a before pic, so you have to look at the disassembled Game Boy.
[spoiler="Disassembled"] [/spoiler]
The screen glass fell out as if there has never been glue.
[spoiler="without glass"] [/spoiler]
So I grabbed my trusty soldering iron and startet to learn how to solder on PCBs. I was pleased that you could see a progress in the first few connections.
[spoiler="soldered PCB"] [/spoiler]
"Look, the teensy is already working, I'm nearly done!"
[spoiler="Programming the Teensy"] [/spoiler]
I was confident, the project went along, the parts kept coming and everything worked fine. Then the screen came in the mail... it has a huge board (yes, RazorX I know I can dremel it), but worse then that, it looks horrible.
[spoiler="wrong screen"] [/spoiler]
So I ordered myself the VGA screen. It's expensive but I couldn't live with how bad the other screen looked like and didn't want to gamble with another 18€ to hopefully get one that looks good.
I visited my parents to use my fathers stood drill to make perfect holes. I also used the Dremel to make room for a bigger screen.
[spoiler="DMG case modding"] [/spoiler]
Got my cartridge and made the SD mod right away. I carefully took everything apart, soldered it, carved it so you can access the micro SD... measured everything twice, connected the cartridge reader. Then covered everything in hotglue and as I was lying in bed that evening it hit me... I forgot the capacitor. All this hotglue has to be removed...
[spoiler="Cartridge modding"] [/spoiler]
...seems like I hit the maximum amount of attachments. To be continued