[color=66ff00]Been keeping myself busy with 'hands on' stuff since I'm not in a reading mood (which is a pity because I have a copy of 'Feersum Endjinn' and 'In search of Schrodinger's cat').
So I've fixed a computer, a laptop, a mobile phone, a lawnmower (my dad was a bit overzealous and managed to mangle the blade) and finally, I decided to have a go at upgrading one of my favourite toys; my GBA.
Your run of the mill GBA has one glaring problem that is so well documented and complained about, it made one guy think up a solution and made nintendo release a second version of the handheld.
This probem is of course illustrated in the picture below.
You can't see the blimmin screen in the dark, in the light, or pretty much any time.
So a little wiring later:
And I am now the proud owner of a GBA that I can actually play whenever I feel like it:
I couldn't take any photo's of the afterburner screen light installation as the whole thing has to be done very quickly and quite carefully. You pretty much have to keep the whole thing dust free which is anything but easy, you also can't touch any surface on the afterburner otherwise you leave glaring marks on the screen.
The photo of the mainboard shows the wiring that I had to do and a dimmer switch, so the whole thing's internal and there are no asthetic killing knobs or switches sticking out of the case. You hold down select and press B to dim the light and A to increase the light. It was challenging but fun and took a good part of two hours I'd guess.
The only thing I'd say is that the people selling these things often make the installation sound terribly easy which is not the case. The colours do get a little washed out but it's a small price to pay for being able to play the thing whenever I feel like it, unfortunately the photo doesn't really do it justice due to reflection and a little glare (I turned the light down, it's normally quite a bit brighter).
Anyhow, thought I'd share.
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