This is the RGB Boy Lite that I did on commission. It has less features than the full-featured one but it still has the essential stuff from its big brother, such as an internal Arduinoboy and fully controllable lights.

Solo:


Singing a duet with big brother:

Here I’m experimenting with inverting only a portion of the screen by controlling an XOR chip in real time with an Arduino. The screen is a biverted pocket screen for maximum contrast.

More on both these mods later, so stay tuned.

this is my RGB gameboy, it was inspired by the RGB backlight that Nonfinite sent me to test. I really recommend these backlights there is a lot that can be done with them, i don’t know if they are on sale just yet but the shop is at: www.nonelectronics.com

again huge thanks to nonfinite team for this one, the project would have never happened without you guys!

this gameboy comes complete with everything ever! here is a mod list:

3.5mm pro sound factory style
1/4″ pro sound
RCA pro sound
maintained 3.5mm headphone jack
gameboy pocket retro fitted screen
XOR style bivert chip
Super gameboy CPU for quick silent boot
clear buttons
normal and underclocked switch
pitch bend
full midi support
built in LSDJ keyboard socket
25way data port socket
removed text
RGB case lights
RGB backlight
self strobing LEDs
secondery arduino for RGB control
tactile switches and stereo pot for input control
maintains original features including speaker
modified power regulator for extra low interferance

so yea this gameboy was built to replace my other gameboys so i wanted to make sure that every feature on my other gameboys was included in this one. the only thing it is lacking from the other gameboys is an overclock switch, there was space for the crystal but i didn’t have any kind of switch that would have worked.

HERE IT IS IN ACTION!! YOUTUBE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAzT11PbrIQ

first job was prepairing the XOR chip, this chip was used so that the contrast could be inverted by the Arduino to show mode changes in the midi arduino.

this shows the new board with the super gameboy CPU fitted and the massive modification to make room for the extra stuff. you can see it next to a normal board to see how much has been removed.

the XOR chip is held in place by metal legs from old components, it turns out i had to move it later because it fouled the D25

i tried to lower it as much as possible but it was still a problem

here you can see the pitch bend chip fitted, the 5v and ground pins on the gameboy are exactly the same spacing on the pitch chip making it very easy to mount

the pocket screen prepaired with nonfinites RGB backlight. the pocket screen is clear, unlike the normal DMG screen which has a yellow tint, this means the colours from the RGB backlight come through much better.

prepairing the case, a lot of plastic has already been cut out but much more to go. the original headphone jack and the factory pro sound have the tactile mode switches mounted on top of them.

wiring the pocket gameboy screen to the DMG daughter board. even using 30 gauge wire the screen failed 2 times because of stray solder.

the pocket screen fully wired in and working. i had to wire the screen directly to the board because there was no space for the socket.

RCAs and 1/4″ jacks added as well as the PS/2 socket

another view of the RCAs the power switch had to be modified to make room for the RCAs but very worth it because its a great out of the way location

the 1/4″ jack socket is from a 1/4″ to 3.5mm adapter, it is much smaller than a panel mount jack making it easier to fit. more importantly it is flush fitting, as i wanted to make sure i could still fit my delay box to the bottom of the gameboy.

the pitch pot in place, this was later changed to a much smaller duel 50k pot

holes drilled in the upper half of the shell so that it all fits together notice also the text has been removed from the shell.

the shell was rubbed all over with a mild abrasive to frost the clear shell, this was because i wanted the colour of the case to be chosen by the LEDs and not by the colour of the circuit boards.

Arduino number two in place on top of the gameboy CPU, huge amounts of room here. i later changed the SMD resistors to normal sized resistors and there was still room.

RGB front LEDs fitted and screen glued in place. i later had to move the screen 2 times to make it line up.

screen board fitted with arduino 1 in place and the clear buttons. i had to take it apart many times again because of things like dust getting on the screen and the program on the arduino not being right.

started wiring the back half, you can see the underclock crystal on top of the battery compartment. a lot of this wiring was changed later due to power issues with the arduinos causing the gameboy to reset. also note the RGB chip LED behind the D pad.

another view of the crystal. some of the case had to be modified for this to fit.

all the parts coming together slowly, making sure i labled everything so i knew which LEDs were which.

wiring the two halfs together, i had to make sure that all the wires went down the left side of the gameboy so i could open it and close it easier. this really made a difference with the number of problems i kept running into. the underclock crystal was a last minute idea when i found i had enough space.

here i was changing the code on arduino 2, the code took two weeks to write, but i had no way of testing it. when i had everything in a position that i could test it i found loads of problems. also note that the midi parts are now in place

a view of the heavily modified power board next to a stock one. the larger caps made a big difference.

i was running out of room for the caps for the headphone jack, i decided i would make some space by drilling out the gap between the battery compartment and the bottom of the gameboy. i thought i would regret it as the plastic was bending a lot, i thought it would snap but it was fine

another view of the caps

almost done. just need to wire the D25

D25 wired and all nicely tested

first few test runs

back

top

side

bottom

side

front

everything plugged in!

this gameboy is actually FOR SALE! i will be putting it on ebay tomorrow, but if someone wants to make an offer for it before then, then they can email me Ralph (dot) nex (at) gmail (dot) com

this is a special edition one, in the way that if someone had asked me to make it i would have turned them down because of the amount of work, i wont be making another gameboy to this level for sale because of the work, the only reason i am making this and selling it is because i am going on holiday in 2 weeks and need the cash badly so i will be selling this at a lower price than i would normally. get a bargin!

basically it has just about everything:

clear case with text removed
clear buttons
case lights/button lights
“strobe lights” on the back that flash with the music
PS/2 keyboard socket to make any old computer keyboard into an LSDJ keyboad
white backlight with bi invert for high contrast
brand new screen surround
full midi support
pitch bent with a “low crash rate” switch between normal and pitch bent
3.5mm pro sound
normal headphone jack intact and internal speaker
1/4″ pro sound
modified arduino with purple BPM light

so yea you wanna see pics ok:

this is the LED that lights up the D pad

pitch bent pot, very tight fit

PS/2 socket

midi sockets fitted, mode button and 1/4″ socket

strobe lights down the sides

pitch bent switch

modification to the shield to make room for the bivert chip

pitch bent chip fitted and bivert

first test

midi start with many resistors

pro sound wired

arduino in place, clear buttons and biverted backlight screen

wiring nightmare!

more wiring

case lights/strobes

keyboard test

lights1

lights2

lights3

lights4

Basically i added a switch to my USB cart so that it would disconnect the CE pins from the MBC5 and the flash chip, then using an adapter it can be used to program carts and read/write saves etc, then flicking the switch turns it back into a cartridge.

I wanted the switch to be strong so i used the programming holes in the USB board, but I had to cut the traces first.


I really wanted to use black wire but I had none left, so I used purple to match the LEDs.

The case all together, another crappy hole cut by me.

This is the adapter, its just a back to back cartridge socket.

Here it is reading the save from my Gameboy Camera.

It has a new type of pro sound that uses SMD resistors, it is as clear as a DMG in my opinion and i am VERY happy with it!

It also has a GBA accelerator from division 6, this allows it to be over or underclocked during play without it crashing.

It has been upgraded with the AGS101 internals for a backlit, super bright screen.

It has a stealth dimmer also from division 6 which can brighten or darken the backlight at a push of a button.

And most importantly it has full MIDI, with a custom Arduinoboy built in!

Here is the YOUTUBE video. Sorry its so long but i had the MIDI sockets mixed up!!!

I had to cut out the battery compartment to make room for the Arduino

A new smaller pre pot pro sound means that it doesn’t need the internal switch to mute the audio, which means i can use the old audio/charge socket at the back for my midi connectors.


Relocation of the audio cap to make room for the pro sound.

The new pro sound, i added 3 new resistors, see if you can spot them.

The SMD resistors.

Stealth dimmer and accelerator fitted.

Accelerator on the underside.

The original Arduino 5V Pro Mini was far too big, there was nowhere it would fit at all, so I made a super cut down Arduino for the job

Fitted a mode switch by recycling the reset switch from an Arduino.

The biggest part of the project, the optocoupler, using full sized components, but there is loads of room for this.

Arduinoboy fitted, it is running my version of the Arduinoboy software with beeps to indicate mode instead of lights.

Other side…

MIDI out 220 ohm resistor fitted and the pro sound wired.

On the other side you can see the pro sound wires on the right.

Pro sound wired.

All closed. The Arduino was going to sit on the top of the CPU but there wasn’t space, luckily the buffer chip is thinner.

This beast worked first time so i am very pleased with it, be sure to check the Youtube video to see how it all works.

What does it do? Well it takes clock pulses from the Gameboy and uses them to interrupt the audio or change the pitch of the Gameboy in time with the music. The dials at the bottom control the pitch, duty cycle and multiplier.

Here are the YOUTUBE videos of it working:

Self pitch sync:


Self audio sync:

Self pitch sync 2:

Two gameboy sync:

Here it is with the first two dials fitted

Tight fit!!!

Getting the Arduino in and all wired up, it failed to work SOOO many times

Finally got it to boot with the pitch sync

Finally put it all together

First I gotta thank nitro2k01 for sticking by me on this project, there were a few times when I was going to give up on this, but staying up late, bouncing ideas off each other made this project happen

So this is my USB enabled camera, it is a Gameboy Camera with its ROM chip replaced with a flashable chip, and a USB programmer wedged in there too.

What’s the point? Well now the camera works like a real digital camera, i can plug it straight into the computer and dump the saves without a gameboy or a programmer. If littleFM works i can put the camera software on there and other roms too like LSDJ. If I can work out how the camera part works then i could make some interesting home brew software which uses the camera.

Here is the YOUTUBE video of it working just as a flashable cart:

First i gutted a USB cart for parts and removed the ROM chip from the camera.

Then got round to wiring it all up.


This is the first time it was all wired up. It didn’t work, I redid this 3 times before it worked!!!

Attempt 2

Attempt 3, finally working, with a new camera board as the last one broke.

More wire porn!

After I got it working, I thought about the future of the project and decided that i wanted a replaceable battery. Lifting the chip broke off pin 44 of the flash chip so i had to cut away the chip to get enough metal to solder on. NOT FUN!

Removing the battery…

I scraped some of the green stuff off the board to make new solder pads for the new battery.

I also recycled the old battery terminal.

New battery holder in place, i am not looking forward to changing it though…

Sticky foam for the chip.

I wanted the USB port properly mounted so i managed to find some space on the board for it to fit then scraped off more green stuff to make solder points.

Then the ATMEGA chip, this was a horrible bit because i couldn’t test it until it was all finished and there were 44 wires to do. i also had to step up my game for this one, i had to find smaller wire and file down my soldering iron so it was small enough.

Checking with the SP showed that i had cocked up somewhere because the Nintendo logo was scrambled until i realized the new chip was causing errors because i hadn’t wired the ground pin yet. After that it was fine.

ATMEGA chip done, now for the serial chip.

Serial chip in place and time for a test.

Test failed because i wired the VCC wire to the wrong pin.

Now the project works. I stuck down the serial chip.

After all that tiny work, i cut a very poor hole in the side… Should have made the effort to make it neat after all that work!

Now all that’s left to do is hack the camera software and make some kind of cool video camera software!!

ralph (dot) nex (at) gmail (dot) com

I can make midi enabled DMG gameboys, midi enabled super gameboys, possibly even MIDI enabled Gameboy Pockets, backlighting, pro sound etc

If you have any ideas or have a request we can talk about what can be done

I also have some experience with circuit bending too, so if you have something you want messed with you can send it to me and i will do something with it.

As we all know, NEX is a complete genius. I asked him to make me a Midi Sync Device, but I wanted it to be in a strange casing, rather than your ordinary, run of the mill box. We discussed for about 2 weeks what sort of casing we could put it in, we went through sweet boxes, different varieties of Gaming hardware such as nes controllers and Gameboy Cameras, when I thought, why not put it in a cosmetics bottle, like a shampoo bottle or something like that. Nex thought this was a brilliant idea, minutes later, he emailed me saying he was going to put it in a handwash dispenser, and not only that, he was going to build it so that the dispenser button would control the mode of the Device. Here is what he made for me:

Photos and Video by NEX

Thanks NEX, I totally recomend this guy!

This video shows how much faster the Super Gameboy DMGs boot (they are the two on the left)

first get a kit from GetLoFi

then instead of wiring the output to the crystal on the gameboy, wire it to the pin on the picture. pretty much that simple.
original pics are here:
http://8bc.org/images/NeX/SGB+pitch+bend+guide+pics+2/
http://8bc.org/images/NeX/SGB+pitch+bend+guide+pics+1/

So i thought i would give it a go. everything was going fine, the link port, volume control, cartridge slot etc all line up perfectly, the screw holes and buttons too. BUT then i realised that as i flipped the Gameboy over to check how the buttons lined up, i was moving the board, and actually the buttons were about 4mm lower when everything else was in its place.

So the Gameboy needed to be cut in half, the 4mm taken out and then stitched back together. but the bottom was still too long so i chopped a bit of the bottom.

and the power socket and headphone socket were on the wrong side, so i had to re drill the holes and move them, then insulate them, rewire them and rebuild part of the power circuit.

the gameboy is running off nicad batteries to make up for the lack of AA batteries but i think it probably would have worked for a while on AAAs

HERE IS THE VIDEO:

and here is the build pics:

My two modular Gameboys together:

Here is the VIDEO!