Gut your old Gamboy and upgrade it with a Raspberry Pi. via instructables
Picture of Gameboy LCD+Raspi Upgrade
Hi all! After being a long-time browser of this site I decided it was time to publish my first Instructable. I’m very much into all things retro-gaming. I’ve built a full-size virtual pinball running Hyperspin which may well be my next Instructable. I’m also in the process of upgrading an early 90’s Final Lap driving cabinet to be a multi-game machine.
Here I will show how I gutted an old non-working Nintendo Gameboy original, and fitted these parts instead:
– 3.5″ 320×240 LCD with driver PCB
– Raspberry Pi (Model A)
– custom built button PCB
– 1x 18650 Li-Ion cell
– USB Li-Ion charger board
– 3.7V to 5V DC-DC converter board
– stereo audio amp board
– stereo speakers
I’ve seen other Instructables doing a similar thing, but I set myself a few challenges and desired features of my build which include:
– Fitting the Pi with little or (ideally) no modification
– Have the Pi’s USB port and HDMI port remain accessible
– Have the SD card hidden away but also easily accessible
– Retain analogue control of volume
– Retain normal functions of all front buttons, also make it easy to add buttons if the need arises
– Upgrade sound with internal stereo speakers
– Have major components unpluggable (ie. not have all things hard-wired to each other)
– Retain some kind of visible power LED and charge status LEDs
– Have the Gameboy case fit back together cleanly but very securely
– Achieve a good run-time per charge, around 2hrs+
In the end I think I achieved all these goals. Initially I wanted to fit 2x Li-Ion cells but there just wasn’t enough room for that 2nd cell.
I had enough experience with Raspian/Raspbmc to know how to get the Pi up and running with RetroPie. I was new to EmulationStation though. I also had not previously dealt with the GPIO pins on a Pi. But I soon discovered how useful these pins are and that it would be possible to control not only the games but also navigate EmulationStation menus as well. Each button grounds a certain GPIO pin, then software makes that action produce a keystroke, as defined in a config file.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!