Max's Gameboy Color Zero

[Max]

Here we are. My Gameboy Color Zero is almost finished !!!

I haven't put any photo of the case after I cut it, so voilà :


And here with all the components connected with each other.



For now I have a few things to fix, to go with a completely working Gameboy, like cut a bit more the case (1mm) to fit the battery, some system improvement to center the screen. Then I would like to desolder the LEDs from the powerboost to put them in the hole near the screen, and get a feed back about the battery.

[daboosa]

This is a fantastic build, thanks for sharing with us

[Max]

Hello guys,

I haven't posted for while, even if my Gameboy Color Zero is working since 2 months.

Here the final result :


The battery life is around 2 hours. I successfully deported the low battery led from the powerboost (and it is soooooooooooooo tiny to solder) to the hole next to the screen, so I know when I have to gracefully shutdown my system manually . The LED is on around 15 minutes before the battery is empty. I tried to do the same with the charging led, but I haven't succeeded.

I cut a cartridge to put it in the cartridge room without taking so much place. So now my GBCZ looks like an original GBC, except the USB port on the side

That's it. If you have any question about my build, or if you want more detail, just ask.

[Johnny2Dicks]

The alignment of the resistors on that tft pcb, tho. Jesus. That has to be by design, right? Or did it really just come with every single resistor cockeyed?

Anyhoo, I began work on a glow-in-the-dark Gameboy color zero mod today myself. I am going to attempt to cram a 3.5 inch screen in there. I will provide updates if anyone is interested.

Seriously, that board though. I would hope for the premium adafruit charges, that there is a reason it looks like half the sm resistors are directly soldered to eachother end to end.

[Beelzebummer]

I am going to attempt to cram a 3.5 inch screen in there. I will provide updates if anyone is interested.

I was just trying to work this out on my own, needless to say I'm interested in updates.

[abrugsch]

The alignment of the resistors on that tft pcb, tho. Jesus. That has to be by design, right? Or did it really just come with every single resistor cockeyed?

I was looking at that myself and I thought it was badly hand soldered at first but it seems it's intentional(edit: actually no it doesn't... see below.) lots of resistors and caps are sharing a common point (probably ground)and using essentially one large pad instead of 2 small ones.

ignore this Im wrong see belowShow

quite a cunning trick. not sure what purpose it serves as it doesn't seem to be saving any space!

So what I now think has happened is they've used too much solder paste and when it's been sent to the reflow oven, the surface tension of the molten solder has pulled the ends of components together which are so close together there's no solder mask between them. not a problem per se as they are close together because they are in common with each other i.e. at ground

[Mikethesith200]

Hey Max, all the photos are gone. Anyway you can link them? I'd love to see what you have done as I'm working on my own GBCZ

[cobramike]

Verry nice build. Verry nice

[Holydohnut]

This is great to see. I have a lot of fond memories of the GBC myself. Do you think there'd be enough room to at least add an X and Y? Or is it just not possible given the layout?

[C.Egret]

No video showing the finish work?