Well, after searching the internet for quite a bit I not been able to find out anything about an AV cable. I know they have something commercially available (like official Nintendo but unbelievably expensive) I would like a simple RCA jack type video output for a DS (I have a lite but not an original) I had a picture of the PCB for an original DS somewhere on my computer (Ill find it later) and someone had labeled the various connections for video to the LCD panels, My main reason for researching a mod like this is because I have a friend who is very photosensitive and cannot look at the DS or PSP screen for more than a few minutes without having ill effects. If someone could point me in the right direction on the internet that would be great. edit: link to the PCB image http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2254.0
The console outputs only digital RGB for a proprietary LCD screen, so you can't just pull composite off the PCB. To view on a TV, you'll have to A) capture rendered pixels into a buffer B) pull pixels from the buffer reformatted to fit TV's aspect and scan rates C) encode the signal to NTSC/PAL and finally D) convert it to analog. This will require a FPGA with high speed SRAM and 10-bit DAC for full clarity and of course a very very strong digital engineering background. Don't forget that since there's two screens, you'll either need two monitors, or you'll need to drop the frame rate to 30hz, so that you can achieve full resolution through interlace. If you use a VGA monitor instead of a TV however, you can use only one monitor at full frame rate, and you don't need the composite encoder, but now you'll need 3x6-bit DACs.
That makes me smile since I'm not terribly :icon_bigg I only have a very poor computer engineering education and haven't gotten anywhere career-wise, picked up everything else online over the last 5 years... It's been invaluable though since it's honestly the ONLY way to really understand videogames and apply common-sense to other technology. I highly recommend to anyone reading to start learning at least basic analog, digital and computing right now, you will benefit in countless ways in your own life even if it's largely unappreciated by everyone else in real life. alphagamer: it doesn't have to take $600 to build if you don't use giant touchscreens, you can get by with only around $100 for a FPGA dev board with fast memory and a VGA interface.
Start with the basics like ohms law, series/parallel circuits, the logic gates/boolean algebra, binary arithmetic/number systems, how to read schematics and waveforms, the parts of a CPU and their basic theory. If you can get acquainted with the common digital building blocks you can build anything, it's just a matter of learning how to put them together to do what you want. When I was starting out I found this site very helpful: http://www.play-hookey.com/ but nothing was as helpful as trying to understand videogames (NES in my case) since it tied computer architecture to digital, and introduced me to signal processing which is necessary to interface with the real world.
