[HN Gopher] Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended ___________________________________________________________________ Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended Author : spansoa Score : 336 points Date : 2022-11-15 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (posts.decontextualize.com) (TXT) w3m dump (posts.decontextualize.com) | smrtinsert wrote: | Gorgeous, but I'm throwing money at my monitor and nothing is | happening. | [deleted] | 1letterunixname wrote: | An intended one: Super Game Boy is an adapter cart for the SNES | that has a GB CPU (Sharp LR35902 - 8080-like) inside. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Game_Boy | Felger wrote: | 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. | eisbaw wrote: | Samsung Gameboy. | | Hopefully this doesn't have builtin ads ;) | jansan wrote: | Just to confirm that I understand this correctly, that clear case | is really 3D printed? I don't follow 3D printing too closely, but | I did not think that something like this would be possible. | [deleted] | 1MachineElf wrote: | I did not think so either, although, SLA is the one method I'd | guess, if I had to, just going by the main picture. SLA is | indeed the process they used, but what really surprised me was | that it's offered as a 3D printing service from JLPCB and | PCBWay. | echeese wrote: | I don't get how they got it so clear and without support | marks. | kube-system wrote: | Did some searching because I was impressed with the quality | as well, and I think they may technically be using polyjet | instead of SLA. | javawizard wrote: | Yeah this is definitely an SLA print. SLA is capable of | amazing quality with respect to both dimensional tolerances | and overall appearance of finished product. | | I've been on the fence about getting one. This post might be | the thing that pushes me over the edge. | | HN readers: what SLA printers do you recommend? | skykooler wrote: | I have an Epax 3D and I've been pretty satisfied with it, | although it does have a pretty small build area. | [deleted] | johnwalkr wrote: | We had a form labs printer at work and while the resolution | was great, it was very messy to deal with, parts were | brittle, curing took a long time, support structure was | annoying to remove (and very time consuming to remove | traces of), and over weeks or months most parts with any | significant feature longer in one dimension warped. I don't | think anyone used it once as soon as we got an FDM printer. | javawizard wrote: | > and over weeks or months most parts with any | significant feature longer in one dimension warped | | That's alarming. How bad are we talking about, like | millimeters or fractions thereof? | | I really, really like the appearance of the case from TFA | and would love to build similar enclosures for my | projects, but if that comes at the expense of noticeable | long term dimensional instability, no thanks. | BoorishBears wrote: | I have an SLA printer (Prusa SL1) and rarely use it | | Unless you get an industrial printer, dimensional accuracy | gets messy with SLA. Slicers can try and compensate, but | you end up having to work around warping | | For organic shapes like figures I'm sure it's great, but as | someone who prints functional items 99% of the time I'd | rather tune an FDM printer than fight with my messy SLA | machine | javawizard wrote: | Good to know. How bad exactly would you say accuracy is? | Are we talking about a few hundreds of micrometers or a | millimeter or more? | BoorishBears wrote: | Tenths of a millimeter not much worse than FDM in | vacuum... the problem is those tenths vary based on shape | (even more than with FDM), and can be non-uniform across | a surface (flat surfaces tend to end up warped pretty | easily) | [deleted] | drewzero1 wrote: | I've just been getting started with FDM printing since this | summer, and after getting to know the limitations of my printer | I'm even more amazed at the smoothness and resolution that some | resin printers are getting. (I've even heard of people starting | to print optical lenses[0], which I can hardly imagine.) You | can really see the difference in resolution in the image with | the different bottom shell! | | 0: https://www.cuddleburrito.com/blog/2015/10/13/3d-printing- | vi... | vintagedave wrote: | > heard of people starting to print | | That article is dated 2015! If they could do that seven years | ago, what is state of the art now? | sdenton4 wrote: | Note that the lenses do require extra work after the initial | printing: "Finally, endless sanding and polishing created a | clear-enough lens." | adamweld wrote: | It's SLA resin printed by PCBWay. | | https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/3d-printing/plastic... | deergomoo wrote: | 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 some very creative and | passionate people can do with commodity technology. The only | downside is it's actually becoming quite pricey to get original | hardware. | lapetitejort wrote: | Retro Future on YouTube has made some similarly cursed builds, | such as the original GBA but with a hinged screen for some | reason, and double screen GBA SP (it shows the same image on | two screens). | doublepg23 wrote: | Completely agree. It's a really cool scene and inspired me to | collect some old Gameboys. | derefr wrote: | I love it too, though I wish that along with it there was | renewed interest in Gameboy game development. There are GB | game-jams, but more-often-than-not the results of those just | languish in obscurity rather than seeing any community | attention; and so there's no incentive to put any polish into | these titles. (There's nobody trying to make anything like | David Murray's Planet X3 for the GB scene.) | | I feel like something that would really kick such an ecosystem | off, would be some sort of wi-fi-enabled GB/GBC flash-cart, | which boots to Mario-Maker-like UX for downloading, playing, | and reviewing (liking/disliking, making playlists of, etc) | bite-sized GB/GBC experiences from a community-maintained cloud | service; where the supply side of that cloud service would be | easy upload integration with tools like GB Studio. | hnlmorg wrote: | There's loads of homebrew Gameboy games released each year. | One of my friends reviews games and receives lots of new GB | and GBA titles. | | You can also get GB carts that support SD card. I appreciate | you're describing a more complete, end to end, UX but we can | already do everything right up to inserting the SD card into | the Gameboy cart. With Gameboy emulation as good as it is, | you could do away with original hardware for 99% of players | too (though for me, the joy of retro gaming is using the | original hardware. But I'd never look down on anyone who | preferred emulation). | kjkjadksj wrote: | 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. | 22c wrote: | It's relatively easy to learn soldering basics, and even if | you're not good at soldering, it's pretty forgiving | (especially on older hardware where the components aren't so | finicky). | bennysonething wrote: | I bought a no solder IPS screen for gameboy color. Think I | bought the kit off eBay, it came with a new case and buttons | too. It's pretty great! (And if I can do it anyone can) | amiga-workbench wrote: | The GBC is quite easy to disassemble (If you have one of | Nintendo's silly triwing screwdrivers). Give the pads under | the buttons a rub with some isopropyl, and at an extreme buy | some new conductive silicone pads for about PS8 online. | | No soldering required to get you back up and running. | vlunkr wrote: | 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. | kibwen wrote: | Now that folding-screen smartphones are a thing that actually | exist on the market, it's not entirely impossible to imagine | that the next Switch could be foldable like the SP. :P | gambiting wrote: | At the pace Nintendo adopts new technologies, maybe in 20 | years ;-) | glonq wrote: | Divine intentions notwithstanding, I think the author intended to | say "Adding a hinge that God never intended to a Game Boy" | jollyllama wrote: | >Purely in terms of industrial design, I don't think a Nintendo | handheld has matched the elegance of the SP. | | 100%. | | Awesome post. | qbasic_forever wrote: | The SP was pretty painful to hold and use for long times in my | experience. The shoulder buttons were particularly hard to hit | comfortably. The original GBA horizontal design is my favorite | and most comfortable. Swap it to a nice backlit LCD or even | OLED and it would be perfect. | jollyllama wrote: | GBA wasn't bad but it was bulkier to carry on your person. | The portability of the SP was killer and the beautiful LCD | screen was protected in your bag or pocket. | | As far as ergonomics, it wasn't so bad. For more action | oriented games, it could be a bit tiring, but for Pokemon it | was the perfect machine. | [deleted] | uni_rule wrote: | I think the relative peak was the micro's black and silver | (either way) design, personally. | kjkjadksj wrote: | Ds Lite imo is even better. Its thinner so it fits easier in | the pocket even though its wider. You put in a flashcart with a | 32gb micro sd and now you can store every game worth playing | from the nds, gba, gbc, gb, snes, nes, sega genesis, various | ataris and other early game systems. It has the longest battery | life for a nintendo handheld I believe. Plus I find it pretty | comfortable in adult hands still, definitely moreso than the | nintendo switch. | purpleflame1257 wrote: | The one pain point on the DS Lite is that if you want to put | in an actual, physical GBA cartridge it sticks out. | Everything else is great. | jollyllama wrote: | Good point but I'd contend that the SP might have been more | durable. I'm not sure. Either way, I liked the weight of it | over the DS lite. Both great devices though. | padobson wrote: | I like that the title implies that Gunpei Yokoi[0] is God. | | [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi | BoorishBears wrote: | 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 | pricing and the fact I wouldn't qualify for assistance... well it | turned out it was practically unaffordable for me, a senior SWE | in NYC making a "FAANG-like" salary. | | I say "practically" because technically I could pay it, but to | what end? I'd be looking at over 150k over the next two years for | a simple bachelors with no appreciable change to my career | trajectory. | | - | | It really blew my mind. I was making what their graduates can | expect to make years out of school and the math wasn't working, | how is it supposed to work for someone coming out of high school? | | The cynic in me would look at that makerspace that easily had | *40k in Ultimakers that never actually seemed to be printing | anything peeking out the window and think "is this what they're | paying for?", but I guess on the flip side you get things like | this post? | | * Actually I went and looked at an old picture, I only counted 8 | or so in view of the window... | [deleted] | hancholo wrote: | 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. | rhacker wrote: | What are you complaining about? | jsight wrote: | Presumably the amazing high cost of education and how it | isn't always being used efficiently. | BoorishBears wrote: | The idea that schools get to use 18 year olds as unsecured | loans to build out extravagant facilities. | | Then those 18 year olds grow up, can't pay back the loan, so | the government uses bailing them out as a political | bargaining chip. | [deleted] | 999900000999 wrote: | What's the point of this, you can easily go to cheaper school | and pay about 10K a year. Software Engineering is a fields | where you don't even need a degree to be honest. I know at | least 2 colleagues who make much more than me without degrees. | | Just make side projects. | | Or spend a bit more , go to UC Berkeley and you can attend one | of the best CS schools in the world. Just live in California | for a year to get residency first | BoorishBears wrote: | 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 expensive | makerspace? Pedigree? (as you point out there are cheaper | schools of a similar calibre) | | To me it doesn't add up and something has to give at some | point. I've long felt that if we get student loan relief, it | _must_ come with tightening the purse strings on the tuition | side by downsizing how much the government is willing to | finance per student. | | The schools are using the money for everything from vanity | projects to real-estate plays, that needs to stop. | 999900000999 wrote: | 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. | nsxwolf wrote: | 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. | hazn wrote: | Personally, I find the gameboy advance sp one of the slickest | designs ever. You could say that the sp is one of the most | iterated on designs in later nintendo products | [deleted] | danesparza wrote: | Thank you for this detailed article. I don't have a Game boy (and | don't intend to start). But man o man. Articles like this remind | me of why I being a geek. Thanks. | sho_hn wrote: | > _Another thing I learned about myself: I kinda like being old. | I recently turned 41 and sure, my back hurts all the time and I'm | going grey, but I have enough experience and domain knowledge at | this point that picking up CAD and PCB design over the summer | isn't that big a deal. It feels nice to reap the rewards of all | of my experience._ | | Lovely quote. | [deleted] | [deleted] | hanniabu wrote: | Documenting all this seems more daunting than the actual | conversion ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-15 23:00 UTC)