Play classic games on a Raspberry Pi in a Game Boy case

Disassembly

You will need the tri-wing screwdriver that you see on our shopping list to disassemble the Game Boy housing. Once the housing is opened, pay attention to the flat tape cable that connects the upper and underside of the housing. You only need the housing, the battery compartment cover, and the control element. Perhaps you can use the leftover parts to put a defective unit back into working order.

After thoroughly cleaning the housing parts and the control elements, you can start work on the housing. Here, the best choice is a Dremel rotary tool or something similar. We started off by utilizing the cutting tool and two different-sized shaping attachments on the housing. The sanding attachments were especially useful for work on the front side of the housing. Those readers inexperienced in the use of a Dremel tool should probably practice a bit before using it on an actual project. It is easy to remove too much material, especially when working with plastics.

To remove as little material as possible, accurate measurements of the parts and a few hand-drawn sketches are helpful. However, especially on the underside, you will need to remove the entire battery box, including the ribbing. On the front side, you should drill a small hole for connecting the power supplies. On the topmost side, you should create space for a somewhat larger display and make a small notch for the speaker.

Next, drill four holes in the cover for the battery compartment. Each of the holes should have a diameter of 12.7mm (1/2  inch); then, remove a little material around each hole to make enough space for screwing in the buttons. Figure 8 shows the extent of the mess created by the process of cutting up and modifying the housing. The openings that remain in the housing and are not used can be closed with the help of small fitted pieces of plastic and some quick-drying glue.

Figure 8: The Game Boy housing after all of the unneeded parts have been removed.

The two modified halves of the Game Boy are securely held together with two small fishplates and special M3 washers glued onto the screws. We removed the original attachment points where the two halves of the housing had previously been held together due to constraints imposed by a reduction in the available space.

Soldering and Cabling

Taking the DMG board that was purchased from Kitsch Bent, you can now implement the cabling design for the control system. Here you should refer to the allocation matrix and wiring diagrams. You will need to start by soldering the pressure buttons. Then, you should connect the Kitsch Bent PCB.

A small pressure button on the unallocated pin 26 (GPIO 7) with grounding on pin 14 is used on the Super Pi Boy for an additional switch for an escape sequence that interrupts the emulation and provides for a return to the front panel. A small bit of hot glue is all that is needed to fasten the button perfectly into the opening that was previously used for the Game Boy power supply connection.