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Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

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Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#72
post #53

I never liked the SP form factor. It’s too cramped. The original GBA is absolutely perfect. It’s like a DS without the weight of the top screen. It’s too bad it couldn’t have had the SP 101 model backlit screen. One of these days I’ll do that mod.

I did this mod! It is fairly painless as far as mods go, and the result is amazing. It even appears to run longer than with the original screen.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#73

I absolutely adore the Game Boy modding scene that’s exploded in the last few years. Case overhauls like this or the Boxypixel slab pictured in the article, numerous backlit high-res IPS screen replacements, mods to improve sound, Li-ion battery packs with USB charging. And that’s to say nothing of Analogue or the MiSTer project, creating full FPGA reimplementations of the hardware. It’s a really cool example of what…

Sadly the original hardware is slowly degrading over time. Nintendo DS lite screens for example are all yellowing at this age. Buttons suffer too, my gameboy color is just a paperweight now because the buttons hardly register a press. Maybe these issues can be repaired but I’m not skilled with a soldering iron which is a big requirement it seems.

For what it’s worth, I’ve managed to successfully mod a Game Boy Advance as a total soldering noob, with a cheap poor quality iron from Amazon. Some mods (particularly for home consoles) are difficult as all hell if you’re inexperienced, but the Game Boy tends to be fairly easy-going. There’s also an increasing number of mods (particularly screens) that are slightly more expensive, but are solder-less (or solder optional). Macho Nacho on YouTube covers quite a few of them.

As for your buttons, you can buy new rubber membranes that make contact with the board to register the press. Give the board a good clean with isopropyl and pop some new membranes in and your buttons will no doubt be good as new—no soldering needed!

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#74
post #38

This is awesome. I miss hinges. The Switch is great, but I loved being able to throw my sp or ds into a bag or pocket without worrying about scratching it.

You can't even put the switch in its own dock without worrying about scratches. Considering that Nintendo has always been a company that makes good hardware the switch has been a huge disappointment. All the scratched screens, dead pixels, and joycon problems shouldn't have made it past the first batches sold.

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#75
post #37

I'm always amazed and impressed by the amount of effort and energy needed for those ultimately "useless" (said not in a sarcastic way) personnal projects... I personnaly absolutely can't muster so much efforts for almost anything. And sooo would love to be able to... Documenting being a major drag.

As someone who can’t even solder, it’s fun! Messing with my gameboy color, N64, and Dreamcast, and made me more comfortable screwing around with electronics. Been learning slowly but surely!

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#78
post #53

I never liked the SP form factor. It’s too cramped. The original GBA is absolutely perfect. It’s like a DS without the weight of the top screen. It’s too bad it couldn’t have had the SP 101 model backlit screen. One of these days I’ll do that mod.

Agree, the gba is the perfect handheld system. I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to play one recently but they were selling for ~$150 so I went with an ANBERNIC RG351P instead. Same form factor

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my whole point, I don't have a degree and it's been a long time since that came up. In my most recent position I got an offer before the recruiter found out I didn't have a degree: We were making small talk waiting for someone to join the call and they offhandedly asked where I went to school... I didn't. - So with that in mind, how are they justifying their value over those cheaper (or free) options? With an…

If people want to pay for prestige let them. For the most part you either should logically come from money or get a scholarship. At 18 your free to ruin your life in a variety of ways ,college isn't the worst.

The problem is they (usually) can't pay for it.

They take out loans for it, and as the now-in-jeopardy relief program shows they often can't pay those loans back.

A lot of schools don't even have the prestige but have this pricing problem: if we keep letting colleges access "free money" on the backs of 18 year olds, they will keep taking that money and spending it regardless of if it benefits the students.

-

If you walk into a bank as an assetless 18 year old and ask for a $100,000 for "a big bet that will probably pay off just trust me", you'll be politely but firmly asked to leave.

Why are we letting that happen just because some school offering 0 collateral happens to be the co-signer?

Re: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended

#80

I lived down the block from that NYU makerspace and walked my dog past it every day. I'm also a self-taught dev who's wanted to go back to college and get a degree for posterity. So naturally applying to NYU made sense, get started on the education stuff I was putting off, get access to a really cool makerspace, etc. I talked to someone from admissions at the school, learned more about the process, but then we got to…

If I may ask... what specialization are you in? and is it the same thing you started off in? I've been thinking of pivoting and have narrowed it down to 1-3 niches, but also don't have a degree but currently working in a FAANG company.

My first paid programming gigs were on video games as a freelance Unity developer, but my "real career" was founded on embedded Android

Embedded systems were a good match for my background tinkering with assembly for calculators and messing with MCUs, but it's a very "traditional" part of tech.

Android in embedded is much closer to mobile in terms of culture, so my lack of a degree wasn't a problem getting started, and demand has only grown over the years. I currently work in HMI for self-driving vehicles these days but I've worked on everything from in-store interactive displays to prototype fitness equipment

Bonus: You can also pivot to traditional mobile dev, which I've done for some stints over the course of my career

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