My First GBZ Build (Noob Questions Galore)

[VeteranGamer]

This needs to be moved to the show off section...

Also you need to adjust the overscan settings to get it to fit in the window of the screen....

If you search overscan in the support section all the info will be there (this has been discussed)

I would also recommend you place the screen in the build and also have your screen surround in place and then start adjust (this will save you having to readjust again)


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[jhk1976]

Thanks for the tip. I'm sorry if this should have been in the show off section instead. It's my first build and I'm new to these forums, so I didn't think what I'd done was worthy of that yet. I'll take that as a compliment though.

[jhk1976]

Getting there...

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I've made a lot of progress on my GBZ, beset with the setbacks you expect for a first time build. The biggest surprise was learning that the 3rd party batteries I bought from Amazon had a reversed polarity than those from Adafruit. Whoops. Unfortunately, that meant damaging and then having to replace the Powerboost board. Not the end of the world, but kind of a pain in the neck.

Connecting the amp was simple enough -- I had used this amp before in a Video Christmas Ornament project. Wiring up the potentiometer took some trial and error -- and I could never quite wrap my head around the logic behind how everything tied together. Then there were the soldering mishaps where I ended up with a short somewhere on my first one, and then accidentally melted the plastic wheel with the soldering iron when I tried to get the backup running. Sooooooooo, I had to wait for more to show up in the mail. After a couple tries, I managed to get one working properly.

I had also planned on wiring up a blue power LED where the original 6V power jack went, but I couldn't get that to work. I tried connecting it up via the serial pinout and using a 12v LED, which supposedly works without having to connect a resistor. Nevertheless, I couldn't get any action out of it, so I scrapped the idea. Instead, I opted to go with a 5V barrel jack setup in that spot instead. Works very well. When I build a second GBZ, I'll find a more elegant solution than just a mountain of hot glue, but for now, it does the trick.

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The power switch and USB port were simple enough to set up, but I spent a LOT of time getting the overscan settings tweaked to my liking. I felt like I was going nowhere until I discovered that you had to uncomment the scaling setting in config.txt. After that, it was just trial and error.

At this stage, there's not much left to do. The last item I need to add is a micro SD breakout board, as I didn't opt for the cartridge reader option. I spent a fair amount of time researching it, and I couldn't figure out how all the pinouts on the board matched up to the SD card test pads on the Pi. Some are obvious, others are not. Adafruit and Sparkfun both produce these boards, but as they are meant for the Arduino, the solution doesn't seem obvious -- at least not to me. Did anyone else have any luck setting one of these up with their GBZ?

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I'm closing in on the end though, and that makes me very happy.

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