WIP Consolized GameBoy Advance

Yes, I'm aware I can buy a gameboy player for the gamecube. I'm building this for a few reasons:

1: I love modding and I enjoy it as a hobby

2: A pure hardware design doesn't need a stupid cd to be able to run

3: This hardware is still probably cheaper than buying a gamecube and alll the stuff to get that going.

Here's what I have so far:

After seeing some cool consolized gamegear projects I decided to tackle a consolized gameboy advance. I used the gba tv converter for this project:



This converter is the most common tv adapter for the gba (it's also very cheap). And the best news is bacteria was nice enough to post the soldering pinout to bypass the ribbon cable which tends to lose connectivity very easily:



This device uses a sony cxa2075 video encoder, nice. The device plugs itself into the gba power connections so you can power both the gba and tv converter from a single power supply which is also nice.

When I got my tv converter running I was presented with a s-video picture completely full of jailbars. After much pain and suffering I discovered that disconnecting the capacitor on the chroma output didn't disable chroma in s-video. To disable chroma I had to disconnect the caps for both chroma and composite video, which made me consider that they wired composite video and s-video together in the av cable. I snipped off the built in av cable and wired up my own s-video jack and sure enough the jailbars suddenly were 90% removed. To fix the other 10% of the jailbars I just weakened the chroma line until they completely went away since these jailbars are only on chroma. I also adjusted the luma output resistor to a better value. The s-video circuit in this was wired up like the application circuit from the datasheet which certainly isn't ideal so a little circuit mucking fixed all distortion. There was a lot of jailbar distortion at first it's like night and day compared to before. Here's the first build of it that's working as it should:





I need to buy a parts gameboy to harvest a cartridge slot so I can remotely wire the slot.

Consolized gba + home built devcart + marioland colorized romhack ftw!

 

can RGB be pulled from the gba? or the tv converter?

 

Yes it's using a cxa2075 video encoder to convert rgb. It outputs nicely amped rgb. In fact the rgb + sync outputs connect to solder spots for a connector which is left unsoldered.

 

excellent news for us euro folk and would probably avoid the jailbar issue (maybe lol)

tempted to try this and maybe mod a controller port on too, there's a whole untapped GBA library out there for me as i was never into the GBA so could be worth it.

 

I really dont see why you use so much hot glue, it really really isnt required.

Other than that, cool enough mod - even if the TV adapter does most of the work. The video showing TV output isnt overly interested as you bought the device to do that anyway.

Would be interested to see a nice case + controller (like that consolized game gear the jap dude made), a pile of hot glued PCBs on a table isnt "consolized".

Edit:
Just noticed it says WIP, so I imagine what I said above is to come anyway, so can ignore that!

 

Hot glue on Drakon's mods is like the green paint on a John Deer truck. It is part of the brand.

 

I am well aware he always uses it, its just really really unnecessary and just makes things harder to work with in the future (repairs, adjustments). There is no reason soldering requires hot gluing in place afterwards.

It also looks messy, which anyone who has seen my work will know I dont approve of.

 

I am not a big fan of hot glue either, I prefer to use just a dab here and there in strategical locations, I also fear to have to do repairs on a hot glued board.
I guess Drakon is confident enough in his work that he knows he will not need to rework it in the future

Anyway I say lets just appreciate the WIP and not derail this thread into hot glue discussion. Whatever we say about it, Drakon will use it anyway

 

Haha yes case building is in the works. Hot glue doesn't make repairs any more difficult. Just today I decided to extend the wires between the gba and the tv adapter, all the wires were heavily glued in place. I used my heatgun on low setting to warm up the hot glue and removed it all with a small screwdriver in about 2-3 minutes.

Nothing to do with confidence I just realize removing hot glue isn't as difficult as people seem to think it is.

 

Since you're basically building a homemade IS-AGB-Capture unit, it might be helpful to look up docs on that unit. After all, it is an official consolized GBA.

 

Pretty good I want to see the modified case to be fully consolize.

 

Any new updates on this?

 

I finished it a while ago actually.








I still managed to get some video interference from this thing on my capture card (not my tv) and the stretched mode doesn't look good pixels constantly resize. I'm currently working on pimping out a gamecube and gameboy player.

This system uses the original genesis power button and the LED lights up on the case where the genesis LED normally would go.

 

Lol that looks bloody fantastic! Good stuff.

 

I like how the GBA sticks out the console from that serrated opening. It totally looks like that poor Sega has some mind controlling parasite attached to it.

 

I like this. It's really funny how the GBA sticks out of the Genesis. Like a sick mind controlling parasite as MaxWar said.

 

i'd just like to take a moment in respect and memory of the SEGA Genesis, that Bravely Sacrificed it's life in order of this GBA to be Consolized. *Moments Silence* *21 gun Salute*

 

That looks awesome. Reminds me of those buildings that would have half a car sticking out of it.

 

MOMENT OF SILENCE!
*
*
*
*
*
21 GUN SALUTE!

 

Pleased my pinout helped, it was a pain to do as every time I tried to make the GBA Converter make contact with a GBA board some contacts kept not working, had to wedge and lever them together originally so could work out the pinout; when of course you hardwire the connections you are guaranteed it works properly every time.

Things I don't like about the GBA Converter are that it isn't fullscreen and also you either have a small image showing or a larger one that as you mention, seems to be like it is resizing constantly as it fluctuates what looks like one pixel more and less all the time, which is annoying. I found this on S-video and composite and RGB output. Any fix?

Not sure I saw jailbars on my old CRT television or LCD ones either though.

Perhaps pics of the capacitors you removed and also other wiring you did would be useful to the thread?