(Wanted) Original DMG-01 LCD Screen or a good option. Post by jonlimitless » Sat Oct 08, 2016 1:44 am Hello community, As I was wondering through the internet looking for goodies I realized that there isn't really a lot of options to replace a broken screens for the original Game Boy besides 'magically' finding a whole other working board. The original internal code name for the Game Boy was 'Dot Matrix Game', and the initials DMG came to be featured on the final product's model number: 'DMG-01'. Internal reception of the console at Nintendo was initially very poor; the DMG even received the derogatory nickname ' Dame Game' from Nintendo employees, with dame (だめ) being Japanese for 'hopeless' or 'lame' in that context.
I was inspired by the many Game Boy Zero builds on You Tube, but one in particular where the user used an original Game boy cart to house the micro SD card. I give the user props for a good functioning build, but with my ability to design PCBs and some more knowledge about getting hardware working I set out to build my own. My project is all working in prototype form except for the audio at this point because i didn't buy an audio amp board for prototyping.What I did is design a set of custom PCBs to replace the original GB PCBs and clean up the project significantly. Even though i was capable of designing the battery charger and audio amp circuits myself, I took the lazy route and leveraged some readily available designs from Adafruit and copied the Layout and schematics into my project.
Specs,
Original Game Boy DMG-01 Case.
Custom Main PCB
Custom Cart PCB
Custom Button PCB with extra X - Y buttons.
Adafruit 3.2' SPI TFT screen
Dmg 01 Screen
Mono 2.5W amplifier Circuit2000mA hour LiPo Battery
Battery Charger circuit
Main PCB
Holds the Pi Zero in a cut out in the middle of the board. Bridges the Connections over to the Cart header for the Mircro SD card. Also bridges the required pins from the GPIO to the screen header. Has Micro USB port for charging. Has USB-A port for external devices. Holds the battery charger circuit and audio amp circuit. I will be using the basic PWM out gpio pin for audio. the audio on these games are pretty crude anyways. The battery connector sticks through one of the openings in the battery compartment with some modification to the opening. I decided not to try to bring out the HDMI port as it would have been very complicated and using a SPI screen the output of the HDMI is the same very low resolution of the built in screen. I am also using the extra GPIO pins for the buttons instead of using a USB device like the teensy. this eliminates the need for a USB hub if you want a USB port on the outside.
Cart PCB
replaces the cart board with a custom board that holds the Micro SD card. Replaces the card edge connector with a female 0.1 pin header. I will post pictures of the board layout software, but the actual implementation will become more clear once I have the boards on monday.
Button PCB
Dmg-017
There were existing options for the DMG-01, but they only had A and B buttons, I used the super game girl board at first for prototyping, but it wasnt really designed for the DMG GB even though it was based on the original 2 button PCB--ABXY button pads didn't line up. I decided to make my own board specifically for the DMG GB with the extra X and Y buttons. I am selling the extra boards on Ebay. I received them today and have pictures.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231974209588?ss ... 1555.l2649
Pictures and video.
Video of GPIO mapped buttons and Adafruit screen working in Prototype form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM_RlXi ... e=youtu.be
Main board and Cart board Panelized (Layout Software screen shot)
Button Board PCB