by zach @ . June 26, 2010 . 4:59AM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . June 20, 2010 . 2:53PM
As a dude who owns five of the first six Game Boy major revisions made until the introduction to the Nintendo DS – I was on ebay looking for a cheap one to complete the collection. I found one for $2 with a broken LCD. Buying it immediately, I then found how damned expensive the LCD replacements are ($30?!). I figure, hey, since I have to take this apart, I might as well turn it into an all-in-one games console.
I’ve been interested in the hacking movement to portabalize classic (and not-so-classic) games consoles that are reincarnated into huge handhelds. Since I am really interested in making an all-in-one system, and have been for a while, I’m going to recase this Game Boy Advance SP into something like a alarm clock case and also wire it for external control, internal amplified speakers, and fabricate a really neat controller to work the whole thing.
So, the plan goes something like this:
Step 1: Buy all the junk I need to make it. (sources and status noted)
- Game Boy Advance SP (ebay, purchased)
- Replacement LCD screen for GBASP (ebay, not purchased)
- Junky Computer Speaker (thrift store, not purchased)
- AC/DC power converter (thrift store, not purchased)
- Wires (ide/ribbon/rainbow cabling, maybe a DB25 cable)
- Interfaces – controller plug (thinking a DB25 connector), power, headphone (Radioshack, not purchased)
- Nylon wire braided sleeve (for controller) (Digikey, not yet)
- Heat shrink tubing (always need more than you think, amirite) (purchased)
- Tact switches (haven’t sourced them yet)
- Poly enclosure for controller (Polycase, not purchased)
- Solder (have)
- Bondo, Paint, Sandpaper, cut glass for casing. (Autozone/Hardware stores, not purchased)
Step 2: Create a wiring schematic for the project
- Need to keep power, video, audio and control wires in mind.
- Should have a good idea of the power needs by that point.
- Unit test wiring schematic against parts in hand (is every connection accounted for?)
Step 4: Wire the Game Boy and associated parts to work together
- Power for all devices
- Extend the ribbon cable for GBA screen to front of device (hardest part I can forsee)
- control wires for each GBA button
Step 4: Fabricate the enclosures for the project
- Make a list of ports
- Source all wire grommets/interfaces needed
- Roughs of the controller tested and working 100%
- Roughs of the GBA/audio/video case working 100%
- Bondo and sand and sand and sand and sand
- Paint and sand and sand and sand
So, that should cover the whole thing. This plan will probably change over time as I ask various online communities for input as I go.
If this goes really well, the next step would be to create something I’ve been dreaming about for days now: a portrait Game Boy Advance.
Outta be fun! I’m shooting for an August 1st ship date!
by zach @ . June 19, 2010 . 4:59AM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . June 18, 2010 . 12:30PM
I’ve been looking towards a glorious day where my academic responsibilities are finally subsided for a matter of WEEKS on end. As this day, June twentysomethingith, gets closer to becoming a reality, I’ve been thinking on what sort of projects can combine the various media I’d like to dabble in: creating music (chiptune), coding (in C for Game Boy, specifically), photography, and writing. But doing unrelated projects would mean I’d have 3-5 unfinished collections of newbish junk, and I have plenty of that (on here and elsewhere).
Then, while jaywalking across Richmond Street, I came up with it: create a story, fleshing out the world of a central character (the aforementioned Sergei Descartes), and take that feeling and world and exploit it using the mediums
The thematic conflicts, as such, I hope will be:
The plastic feeling of fanboyism and fetishistic collection vs. Making
Responsiblity as identity vs. self-determined persona
Anyways, the short-short story I made the other day will be the springboard of the world I’m imaginating. Look forward to it.
As for inspirations for this world, I’ve been thinking about:
- The history of monopoly
- Heavy Rain (the PS3 game)
- “Mission Earth” by L.Ron Hubbard
- Check Cashing Concerns
- “Free to Choose” by Thomas Friedman
- Cory Doctorow’s “Makers” (my review here)
- Robert Harris’ “Fatherland”
- Quitting smoking
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . June 17, 2010 . 5:55PM
Hello friends, wanted to let you all know that I managed to write me a three page short story trying out my new typewriter, and it seemed a waste to just type cuss words in it without any sort of agenda.
Anyways, I already forgot what it was about, but I did put the typewriter in it.
Wal*Mart Backpack [pdf]
Holla, then.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . June 16, 2010 . 10:53PM
I recently won an ebay auction for a Gameboy Advance SP – which is the only Gameboy I’m missing in the entire series. This SP has a broken LCD (twas only $2.25, though), which got me down the road of perhaps implementing a TV-out hack and reportablizing the device with a super-cheap handheld TV I saw online. Alas, the SP doesn’t support video out (not even the hack that the GBA has for TV out that is by all accounts horrible, anyways).
So, that leads me to two conclusions:
- I’m actually going to have to buy an LCD for this thing.
- Since it’s already broken, I can certainly break it more and nobody’d be the wiser.
Portablizing home consoles is so in fashion (ala anything Ben Heck) – why not unportablize a handheld instead?
So, I now have an epic one-page sketch of what technology it’ll require (the target budget soup-to-nuts is $50) and even thought out a never-before-seen regime of control scheme (a very physical-layer solution is promised here). A hint: it’ll involve no less than 10 normally-closed switches and a DB25 connector.
Maybe once I get my bona fides in the console hacker world, I can finally inspire someone to create my dream console: the PSP stuffed into a GBP shell:
Once I have a proper project plan, I will update the three of you.
by zach @ . June 11, 2010 . 11:59PM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . June 7, 2010 . 8:33PM
I am an internet man, so I’m usually on the web pretty hard.
Today, I learned about the super-cool-but-never-mass-produced-and-well-named B-58 Hustler, which was the first in the proud heritage of American jet-powered aircraft that could end the world or at least ruin your day. Early jet pilots were either insane or crazy, depending on your point of view. Chuck Horner and Tom Clancy’s oddly-awesome Every Man A Tiger, in which Horner relates his mucho appreciated military careet, including flying some aircraft that look definately non-gravity defying.
Then, I read about two years worth of Overcompansating (for perhaps the third time) – I’ll be god-damned if it doesn’t speak to this man’s soul.
My doubleTwist experiment is going badly, as the program doesn’t know how to kill with fire earlier copies of podcasts and nobody needs 9 episodes of the History of Rome in triplicate on their phone. Especially since the Evo’s battery wouldn’t last through 3 of them in the subway system, RF emitting frantically for a reply, slowly microwaving my left leg.
Still looking for an awesome manual typewriter in some thrift store in this city so I can fall in love with it, ignore it for six months and then sell it for a tidy profit on ebay come Chrismastime.
Good day, in all.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . June 5, 2010 . 12:04AM
I used to work for Sprint, and before that, Radioshack. I spent the most of my adulthood having some pretty heavily subsidized wireless service. I always felt bad for the “rubes” who didn’t even get a NVP (rad) discount through Sprint or had some sort of $30/week month prepaid habit, extolling the virtures of “not having a contract.” When I was then unceremoniously tossed back to “consumer” status, I began the arduous sketch of the American wireless/smartphone landscape, and I don’t like much what I saw. I started with what I thought was the value leader amongst the major carriers (why I’d only think about them when I leave Philadelphia ~3/year is another story)
First, we have T-Mobile – well, they have a confusing matrix of plans. There’s three classes of service they offer: prepaid, weird, somewhat analogous to contract-free monthly service, and the standard stuff. Once you cross that Rubicon, there is the standard choose your minutes, get a number cozy in your head. Then, the standard process asks you to choose a phone before they offer services. Which is rather handy, I guess – it’d be inappropriate to offer something like Blackberry Internet Service for an Android phone.
image via Engadget.
(more…)
by zach @ . June 4, 2010 . 11:59PM