Gameboy Hack Into Hackvison ATMEGA Portable Video Game System

by Andrew Hannay

5.5K524

Intro: Gameboy Hack Into Hackvison ATMEGA Portable Video Game System

For this project I took a faulty Gameboy and removed the original circuit boards and replaced them with a cheap 3.5" lcd display and a Hackvision monochrome TV video game circuit consisting of an ATMEGA328P and a few passive components.
Detials of the Hackvision can be found on the internet.
I used 2 rechargable 3.7v lithium batteries in series as the power source (7.4v) which was enough to power the LCD and used the Gamesboy's original 5v voltage regulator to convert the 7.4v down to 5v for running the ATMEGA circuit.

4 Comments

Andrew Hannay 10 years ago

Hi ironsmiter, thanks for the comments. I hurriedly threw the instructable together last night so no time, but, you know what it's like, you get so into these projects, you forget to take pictures as you rush to get it finished. Yes, 2s2p would work, but I only had 2 x 14500s on me at the time and you have to careful that they are recharged in parallel as they might have different voltages present when you reconnect. I will investigate 2s2p when I build my Raspberry Pi gameboy. The jtag style header is for reprogramming the ATMEGA so I didn't have to keep removing it all the time. It's a bit if a pain screwing it all back together, but I will take some more pics later this week. The hackvision circuit is available on the inter webs.

ironsmiter 10 years ago

So, I am guessing they are Lithium Iron Phosphate(in a AA format) based on the face that you used the original battery compartment?
Could easily rewire for a 2S2P battery setup, and double your runtime.

Jtag header poking out through the back?

Missing the picture showing the hookup wiring for the speaker, headphone jack, and controls...

Looks like you utilized a portion of the ground plane hacked up to bring the control wiring around to the other side of the hacked controller board. how is it wired from there? any additional circuitry to connect it to the ATMEGA?


When you gave us a TEASER, you had to expect questions.

oreilly19 10 years ago

Thanks for the words for the instruct part. (Dry sarcasm)

Andrew Hannay 10 years ago

:-)
I was hoping the pictures would paint my words.
No time to write descriptions, busy life.