GameBoy as external HDD

Puh, glad you don't give up on this.

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I think you just learned that planning is really worth the effort at the start of a project, save your self alot of time.

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Have to give you that point. Found the planing stage boring and just wanted to start. Next time will be very different. It does not only cost time, it costs money. Guess I learned something.

And I'm doing some planing about the colours for the computer. But I have to read more about etching and try some things before I can be sure how it should be in the end.

Just a small update for now, because painting is still happening. But I have something to show about the display. Since the original one has been very dirty I decided to make a new one. Searched for 1mm plexi around but found nothing I searched for something else to use. Finally I found this little thing:

Did a quick cut to have it in the shape needed:

And sanded it to the exact shape of the display:

I fill make the last little adjustments when I fit it in the gameboy. But I'm quit happy with the result for now. And no you won't see the black markings in the final product :)

cool find on the new screen, what is it?

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Have to give you that point. Found the planing stage boring and just wanted to start. Next time will be very different. It does not only cost time, it costs money. Guess I learned something.

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haha true, im the same really.. for bigger projects i try to brake it downand then i find it easier to focus on the smaller parts of the project, but thats normally all the planning i do xD

but well done on the screen :UP:

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Originally Posted by si-skyline

cool find on the new screen, what is it?

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It's one part of the enclosure of a card game. Would have never thought about using it but it lay on my table and suddenly it made click in my mind :) .

haha very cool thinking, it looks like a good replacement too.

Hey guys, got the painting work done. Now I like the colour very much. Sadly the camera won't show it nicely. The flash reflects to much on the surface. Will try to get better shots this weekend.

I still have to add the display with the OHP film and bring everything together, but I hope to be finished next weekend.

Much better! i like it alot +rep :)

As I managed to loose the OHP film I have to redo it. But I got a little bit confused. Should I use

the coloured version:

the grayscale version:

or a engraving illuminated with blue leds:

Can't really decide this yet. Like the blue glowing version but I'm not sure how it will look when it's finished.

I like the engraving Idea, but to follow the GameBoy theme: use green leds

go with slytherock's suggestion. engraved w/ green LEDs would look amazing

I agree with the engraving and green led idea :)

Definitely agree with the engraving and green leds to illuminate. I'm enjoying seeing this mod progress. Way to keep at it, and know when to change something (like your paint scheme). Sucks you have to spend so much on paint though.

Anyway, love the mod can't wait to see it completed.

+REP

Hey glad you like it.

As you all voted for the engraving I tried it with a scrap piece of plexi and it works. Note, this is a scrap piece of plexi and I didn't copy the picture well onto the plexi. The final engraving will look much better. This is just to test the amount of detail I can put into it:

It should work with some patients and proper preparation.

Green Led's would fit very well to the gameboy but blue would fit the case. Have to think about the colour. Will use some blue ones for testing, because I just have blue. May order some green later.

Bad news. I won't be able to engrave the image into the actual plexi. Here is a test I did today:

It looks really bad. But I like the engraving idea more and more. Guess I will choose a more simple image to engrave with thicker lines.

Guess I found a solution for the problem. Remember the cardbox enclosure I used as a display cover? I tried to engrave the picture into it which made it easier because the picture could be a little bit bigger. It worked quit well.

But now the silver area of the top cover is over leaped by parts of the image.

Will have to see how it looks illuminated and then decide whether the silver part has to go or not and how to cover the plexi/display thing.

Oh and I will redo this in some plexi with proper alignment. This was just to test the size.

EDIT:

Okay it looks bad when enlightened. But I managed to make this:

It's only a part of the image. The top part is missing, so the rest could be made bigger. Now it fits into the original screen. I think I won't give it a cover on top of the plexi since it looks better without one. Have to think about the colour now. I like blue leds but you are right about the green ones being more original. Guess I will order some green ones to see what looks better. So no being finished this weekend. But slowly it comes together :)

that looks cute

Sorry no update for quit a long time, but I'm busy at the moment. But I ordered the LED's. Think next weekend should be some time to make progress with the display. Till then.

personaly, i would go with a less detailed image, like a big mushroom or mario's head, instead of fight with such fine lines

hm, may try that. Wills search for more images and try them. Have enough plexi here to try a few different ones.

Maybe try etching with a knife? It would give a finer line, take longwer but the result should be better.

Agree with Scotty here, try with an X-acto

have something like this lying around here. Will try to use it on the original pic at the weekend. Thanks for the hint guys.

Very cool idea, I was thinking of making a gameboy mp3 player myself. Keep it up, anxious to see how this turns out.

Hey guys,

made not the progress I wanted to make this weekend, but I have an excuse. A friend of mine goes to America for a year at the end of the week and we had a goodbye party for her, it got late, you know. But there is some little progress so far. Tested the knife idea and it worked pretty good. Here's a picture of the result. Please excuse the blue led's. Got the green ones this week and tested them and it looks really nice but my camera seems to not like green and won't make nice pics of it. So here's the whole thing with blue leds:

One shot with green ones just to get the colour:

Oh and the plexi isn't flipped around right know so the image is mirror-inverted.

Not bad, much sharper then before. :D

Got some time for modding today so here is what if done so far:

First of all I had some issues with the display plexi. There was some glue on it and I had to clean the plexi which was harder then I thought. Especially when it looked like this somewhere in the cleaning process:

But I got it clean and ready for mounting on the top part of the gameboy case.The next picture shows the mounted display with the led (going with just one led, it's bright enough) and some wires.

Wire-work completed and fan-connector added to connect the led to the HDD-board.

At the moment we stand here:

A black backplate for the plexi is added and everything is glued in place. Sorry no pics of the led/display while being active, but I tested it and it looks sweet.

Now I'm thinking about the buttons. Not sure if I should keep them in the original dark grey or paint them silver. Guess I will leave them original, because I like how they look when mounted.

This mod is finally finished. First of all I want to say that the paint looks really bad on the pics but it isn't that bad at all. And I excuse for the bad picture with the led on but I couldn't make a better one. Not very good with the camera :redface:

I decided to go with the original buttons and glued them in place with hot glue. Then I mounted everything together and ran into a little problem. I had to use a little dot of glue to mount the case properly. No big deal, just a little bit of glue so there is no open spot at the side:

Here are some final pics:

With led on at daylight:

And in the dark: (sorry for the bad pic)

Thanks for all you comments and help on this guys. This was my first real project and I think I learned quite a lot while doing this. I know it's not really a professional or very good mod but it was very much fun doing it and I won't stop here, because it made me want more :)

sweet stuff man, look pretty damn good.

if i ever happen upon an old gameboy, im gunna try to rig myself up one of these!