gameboy modding
for the past few months i've been working on an idea, which is to make a gameboy pocket with a hinge (so it folds in the middle like a GBA SP or a DS). the plan: cut a pocket motherboard in half, rewire the parts together with a cable that can fit through a hinge, and make a custom 3d printed shell for the whole thing. today i made a proof-of-concept prototype combining in-progress versions of these components and... it works!
gameboy modding
here's a picture of the motherboard halves. i'm making a pair of flex pcbs that you'll just be able to solder in place over the relevant vias, and then connect the two with a thin flex cable (which will be much smaller and easier to solder than this nest of wires). the shell in the previous video is my custom design! i still have to model and print the rest of the shell, and i'm still figuring out the whole hinge situation. but i am excited about how it's coming together!
gameboy modding
this still needs a ton of tweaking and i accidentally printed the wrong version of one of the pieces BUT this is a more or less complete prototype of the shell, the first prototype i've made so far where i can actually put all the pieces together. compared to the gba sp, it's definitely on the thick side, and it's definitely less "pocketable" than an actual pocket 🤷🏻♀️ but it still feels nice to hold and handle imo (this is not the final idea for the surface finish btw!)
here's the completed build! I present... the Game Boy Pocket SP. it's a Game Boy Pocket motherboard in a custom shell I designed to resemble the GBA SP. to fit the motherboard into the shell, I cut it in half, and then designed a custom flex PCB to connect the two halves through the hinge. i'm using an aftermarket LCD from Cloud Game Store and Gil Tesa's USB-C charging mod for the internal battery. that neat Link's Awakening label is from https://nextstopplease.square.site/
@aparrish it looks so good!!
