HDMI Game Boy Mods That You've Never Before Seen!

ah the gameboy advance is my most favorite handheld of all time released in the United States during the summer of 2001 I was just the right age to appreciate having the graphical prowess of the Super Nintendo in a device had fit comfortably into my right side pocket 18 years later and I can still remember taking my coveted Gameboy to school and battling my friends in a multiplayer Mario Kart game in the cafeteria or being on a field trip and solving puzzles in the back of the bus as we played four swords now today I'm going to show you what I consider to be the greatest mod of all time for the Game Boy Advance the GBA console Iser created by fellow champion and PhD student woozle the GBA console Iser allows you to connect a gameboy advance to a television directly supporting lagless 720p resolution at the time of the release of this video the GBA console Iser is unreleased to the public but is available for pre-order and purchase on game tech us's website now if you want to learn how to install one of these bad boys into your GBA strap on it's going to get dangerous so here we have the GBA console Iser hardware a full replacement case and of course a Game Boy Advance now take a close look at the Game Boy bands that we're using notice that it's in horrible cosmetic condition and even the back has been melted but despite that as you can see it's in relatively perfect operational order now if you're going to console eyes a Game Boy I highly encourage you to only use GBA hardware that's in terrible condition a good candidate would be Oh a unit that has a cracked or broken screen that would be ideal now as I said game Tech's sent a full case there are two different versions of the GBA console Iser one version with a standalone case which is exactly what we're looking at it's 3d printed it's pretty nice but the other version is simply a screen deletion 3d printed part that has an SNES port poking out the side of it we won't be installing that one will be doing the one with all the bells and whistles here so let's begin by prepping our Gameboy hardware let's disassemble it and let's do all the prep work let's get ready now in order to disassemble this you're going to need to remove seven tri wing screws and right here in the battery compartment there's one Phillips screw let's take it apart okay we now have access to the mainboard let's take a closer look now in order to remove this Gameboy from the housing there are just two screws one on each side that we need to remove and then we'll be able to decouple the LCD screen from the mainboard appears let's just go ahead and let's as if these screws out now we just need to undo the ribbon cable here that holds the screen into the mainboard so I'm just going to lift these two tabs up on each side just bring them forward like that pick up the mainboard like so and it just falls right down okay the mainboard is free let's zoom out and let's start some prepping now we've totally liberated our GBA PCB main board and there are just a few little prep things that we need to do to ensure that we have much success the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to remove the speaker just simply by removing these two conductors here and I'm also going to be bypassing or cancelling out I should say the volume trim pot too to mitigate any noise crackling or audio distortions that's very simply done once we handle that the third little bit here is we'll just go ahead and remove the battery terminals these aren't needed anymore because this is going to go into a full case and after we do that we need to bypass the power switch so that it is effectively always in an on position I'm gonna do that a little differently I'm actually just going to remove the switch all together and we're going to short two little pins here don't worry when you zoomed in nice and tight and you're going to be able to see everything let's start with the audio let's go okay now here are the two conductors that drive this speaker this is very simple we're just going to turn this around and hold it like that so you can see it now I want to use my K series knife-edge tip with my Kester soldering station I'm just going to come right in here keep both evenly and just simply very gently pull these conductors right out I'll clean that up in a second now we're going to be bridging these three pads here these three pins of the trim pod and so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take my small J tip I'm just gonna come right in here with some solder we're just gonna flood it in just like that keep flooding don't be shy just like that that's all it takes now to remove the battery terminals I'm just going to use my big and thick and beefy k-series tip here I want to prop the main board up on something so it's off of the ground and I'm going to just float my tip right into this big thick solder mass I want to give that just a few seconds to go molten and rather than using pliers like a real man I'm just going to use my hands and it's going to drop right out of there now as you can see our switch is quite pitted and corroded now I'm going to combat this is I'm just going to remove the entire switch with my hot air rework station and we'll short these two pins right here to force it in in an on position let's do it excellent the switch is removed now let's just bridge our two pins now we flipped our main board over because we have to remove this oscillator I'm going to use our hot-air rework station I want to work this off the board let's do it now we need to position the breakout board and according to the instructions on game tech USS website if you're going to install this in a full case breakout board installs directly on top of the CPU just like that so that's where we're going to mount this thing and then we're going to begin all of our wiring let's go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ah nice and tidy okay guys we're halfway there we've got the left side of the breakout boards soldered up and ready to go we also have our power delivery right here just be sure that these match up bt + 2 bt + + + odin anode cathode to cathode it's all nicely labeled once again on the breakout board so we're in good shape let's tin up the let the right side here and let's get to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] and with a few more joints we're all finished with the breakout board now this is the bulk of the soldiering with this kit I think there's just a couple of other small things that we need to do for installing this in a full-size case but you know that's the breakout board um it's tedious it's not difficult there's some fine small precision work but it's really not that bad it's just a little time-consuming and it is kind of tedious so maybe in the future we can get woozle to create a nice flex cable or a QSB to sort of make this go a little faster and a streamline this but otherwise not a big deal so let's go on and let's get this thing going now there's just a step or two that we need to do in terms of prep work on the GBA console icers main board and because we'll be installing this in a full-sized case we need to remove the power switch and replace it with a single pole single throw three lug and install this three conductor ribbon cable so let's remove this switch right now okay switch is removed let's just strip our three conductor ribbon cable and solder it right on p1 p2 and p3 [Music] great now we have our power switch wired in appropriately we have these big open vias up here and this is for an SNES oops controller connector now ideally I think that game tech should solder these before they ever leave I don't know why the customer has to be burdened with sole during this in it's just going to give the customer an opportunity to try to solder this and it be all wonky and warped I think that they should do that and I hope that they do I don't think that you should have to solder this anyways to keep this to keep this connector level and flush and plumb with the main board with game tech suggests says just plugging an SNES controller in there I'm going to flip this upside down like so just like that [Music] ok I think that's fairly straight and I've made some nice tall fill it's here just because there's gonna be a lot of mechanical force on this cycling controllers in so I just want to make that as rigid as I can and now I guess we'll take some snips here and we'll just try to cut these somewhat flush all set now we've got the SNES port installed and we've also taken care of the power switch I think that pretty much covers it for all the soldiering now the only thing left to do now is assembly so I want to start just by with the main board I want to let these two locking tabs for the FFC cables very carefully and I'm just going to go ahead and insert these now they're tab up so the blue tab will always be facing towards you want to very carefully seat that in there just like that lock the black tab down we'll just do the same over here very carefully don't force it it'll go in when it's ready that's what she said or he said fantastic let's move on now this can be a little confusing at least it was for me assembling the full case here so what I like to start out with this I'll just take our kit which we have right here and I'll take our lower piece and you know it's the lower piece because it has the power switch designation here and you have these two notches here which are for power which is micro USB and mini HDMI so to start off what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take the power switch of our kid I just want to insert it into the hole just like that I'm just going to take our lock washer and our nut and I'm going to lock this down and finger-tight is more than sufficient and that's what she said okay so we've got that taken care of now I want to flip this back over so the ports are facing down and they're also facing me now what I like to do is I like to just pick up the kit just like this it's very simple you'll notice that the ports interface incorrectly if you put the kid in with the ports facing up it gets tricky so what you'll want to do if you want to turn this upside down like so and make sure your ribbon cables are going through the kit and you don't have a ribbon cable that's poking out make sure the ribbon cables are feeding through the kit just like so we're going to come right in here and you'll notice just like that and the ports match up to the designations in the case now we need to lock this down so to do that we have one boss - boss three screw bosses I believe this one is floating here because it's intended for if you're going to install this kit into an actual game boy advance shell so what we need to do is we need to run some m2 screws through one two and three bosses now we've got a kit mounted beautifully into the case as well as the power switch there's only one thing left remaining that we need to do before moving forward now keep in mind I have secured all three nuts onto the board just so that it holds everything together so that I can work but when it comes time to putting the top side of the case on these two nuts right here must be removed the only nut that will continue to stay in position is the nut that's closest to the SNES port these two nuts down here will help clamp the top side of the case down to the bottom side let's keep going I just want to show you guys this my gameboy advance uses a 32 pin ribbon cable to interface the gameboy advance to an LCD screen well the problem with this is that Wuzzles kid by default is only set up to work with 40 pin Game Boy advances so in other words there's no way that this big wide cable would ever fit into this connector how do we deal with this well fortunately woozle has created an adapter and this is a prototype this may change a little bit in the production run but he's created a little conversion apparatus that will allow us to adapt a 40 pin interface to a 32 pin Gameboy advanced interface very very nice so I'm just going to go ahead and whip this in really fast just like that lock the tab down and then I have a 32 pin cable which will do the same remember the blue tabs face up all set and what I think I'll do is I'll just sort of gently tuck this down like this and you'll never know it's there now at this point this is where we start connecting the Gameboy band's console Iser to the Game Boy Advance main board and there's something like two connections we need to make the connection that interfaces the LCD port of the game boy advance to the kit and our little slim ribbon cable over here which maps power as well as all of our button combinations I think including the clock to to the Game Boy Advance hardware so we're going to start with this little slim cable right here and so I'm just going to take our Game Boy Advance mainboard here I just want to flip this upside down and you can clearly see we have a tab here once again so I'm just going to come right in here we're going to insert that slim little cable right into its hole I want it very carefully lock the black locking FFC tab down that's all set and ready to go now we have our ribbon cable here to our breakout board installed so let's just flip this over and let's take a look at what we have now I've taken the adaptor board and I've just sort of folded these cables down so we take the take the width out of this out so what I need to do is I need to connect this 32 pin of FC cable and interface it to our Game Boy Advance main board now here's something important to keep in mind when you do this this is the only connection that you're going to make with an FF C cable where the contacts are facing towards you you will not see the blue tab facing up that's not how this cable is installed so let's just go ahead and let's just seek that in there we have two locking tabs on each side that we just need to push in very carefully too much pressure because I've seen these break time and time again fantastic so we're almost out of the woods here now what we need to do is we need to bring our cavity in which is our full body and we just need to make sure this is aligned correctly so we have a hole here and we have a hole here this hole in the corner should line up with the it should line up with the stereo headphone jack and the hole in the top should line up with our link port here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this at an angle I'm just going to feed the body of the gameboy advance through the shell through the bottom and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to make sure when I seat this in here hold this up at an angle and make sure that your link port or your extension or expansion port is the first thing that feeds through because if you feed this through like this you'll have no trouble getting this main board to fit into the cavity so let's do that paying mind to our cable here we've got a nice I've got a nice bend here in the cable so that it'll fit flush because this is where this FFC cable has to live so we're just going to go ahead right in here or just want to drop it down just like that now we've preformed our ribbon cable here so that it fits perfectly I'm going to now remove the Game Boy Advance mainboard and as you can see here I've actually backed off all three of the nuts well I've got a screw missing here but the nuts are off these m2 bolts so what I'm going to do now is we need to lock this case in I'm just going to take these nuts I'm gonna take these nuts just like that I'm just going to drive them down into the case so that these two halves are locked now we're almost finished here the only thing remaining is to feed for EM two bolts into a few places here to lock the Game Boy Advance mainboard actually into the cavity so let's do that now now we're all bolted down and what we need to do now is we need to take this little piece of 3d printed plastic when you to install this right here because this is going to act effectively as our card throat so this is not bolted in it's sort of just held in by tension so I'm going to move this in just like that just like so it should just lock in just like that we're all set now we're looking pretty good here there's only two steps left we need to put the top Plexiglas on and we also need to put the bottom shell on so I'm going to just flip this over so we're looking at the bottom here I'm just going to fit let's see I think it goes on like this right here bottom shell just like that I'm just gonna hold this in place and right here and we got our bottom on there and we're looking at the plexiglass and I'm just now beginning to take a look at this and I don't know if I was just sent a rough pre-production sample or what but the plexiglass it doesn't look very good see if I can get this to zoom in a little bit here see if that works yeah that's a little better see there's a lot of splitting here on the sides and also if you look at this I don't know if this is a scratch or yeah that's a that's a big deep scratch it's going all the way down so I don't know what's happening here but the plexiglass that I received it's just it's just not it's not very good again I think that this is just a maybe just a pre-production sample I would definitely follow up with game tech on this but yeah the quality here is not super great having said that hopefully this is just a pre-production sample let's go ahead and flip the film off oh wow I'm just looking here at all of the little splintering that is not good that is not too good but let's see maybe if we see if it kind of goes away a bit if we sort of seat this down whoops my little card throat to fill out there we go okay let's see if see what this looks like we sort of seat this in there okay what's a nice super nice and tight fit so that's good yeah not too bad I'm kind of cool to put some LEDs in here but at any rate the only thing remaining is to drive four bolts through here and to nut it down nut it down and put some feet on the bottom of this thing let's go for it and when you do this try to just do it barely hand tight because you don't want to put any more stress on this plexi and you have to final step guys let's cut out these four feet and let's apply them to the bottom and at last I can finally live childhood dream I can play my gameboy Gameboy Color and Game Boy Advance games on the big screen with a real system real hardware guys this is amazing this is absolutely my most favourite mod that I think I've ever done it's my favourite mod I think that's even available right now it's just amazing the sound is fantastic the video quality is amazing the Gameboy Advance is scaling beautifully gameboy color games and dmg games as well scale beautifully and the best part about all of this is that it's lagless I think woozle only has to buffer out maybe a few scan lines but we're talking you know a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a frame super super super impressive the colors are wonderful everything is fantastic it all works so great I just can't believe this is happening it's like I'm really truly impressed by this it's just wonderful and I'm not going to go into the whole gamut of features and options but there's a menu here and you can do so many things to manipulate the video for starters you can change the palette so that it more or less replicates different screen types the gamma which is great because you can offset the washed out colors that Nintendo and other developers had to compensate for because they were using a non backlit screen the scaling options we can zoom this in and out it's so awesome smoothing which no one cares about at least I don't know I want my pixels I want my pixels but it's fantastic and let's take a look at a gameboy color game this is wario land 3 the Japanese version and just look at the colors pop right off of the damn screen I mean it's phenomenal it looks so good I'm in heaven right now I've got to be perfectly honest with you guys this is just so incredible I love it and of course we can look at a dmg old-school black-and-white title and like a razor crisp this is and I love the grayscale palette now of course we can get into the menu here and we can change and manipulate these palettes for original dmg Game Boy games but I really like this look it is so authentic it's not pea soup green but it's just it looks amazing having said that I hope you guys enjoyed this video I hope this encourages you to maybe do this mod yourself I love it and I think the price is just right I think if I were to go back and do it again I think I would like to use the Game Boy Advance case and just repurpose that the shell is nice but I feel like it needs some time to mature a little bit here and I don't know I feel like that case is going to evolve but at any rate I hope you enjoyed this video keep inspiring each other keep being good to one another I'll catch you later you [Music]

Channel: Voultar

Views: 122,562

Rating: 4.8623986 out of 5

Keywords: Game boy Mods, GBA Video, GBA Consolizer, Voultar, Soldering Porn

Id: De9FZVoXgMQ

Length: 29min 43sec (1783 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2019