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[Project] Gameboy Zero (Part 1 - Gathering Resources)

If you head over to the sudomod wiki page you can find a list of items needed for you to build a Gameboy Zero from scratch. However, a lot of these items are expensive to me, such as the Adafruit PowerBoost and any other things that have to be shipped either from US or UK.

So I started sourcing for my own parts from other places (mainly China) to try to obtain a list of items that are as cheap as possible, but functionally similar to the original parts. Thankfully, the sudomod wiki has an list of alternatives for every item that is needed, and comments if the item has been used in any other GBZ projects with or without success.

So after Googling around as well, I have come up with a list of items that I will use instead of those on the GBZ with custom parts wiki. Here is a list of the more important components:-

  • Screen: 3.5'' GearBest Composite screen
  • Charging circuit: Got from eBay, Looks similar to the Banggood PowerBoost
  • Battery: 4 x Lithium-ion cells (14500)
  • Button PCB: Tinkerboy's GBZ PCB v2.1
  • Brain: Banana Pi M2 Zero

You might wonder why I am not using the RPi Zero. Well, I personally cannot see myself able to stand the long boot times. The Banana Pi has a Quad-Core CPU and a Mali 400 GPU, which should provide it a significant edge over the RPi 0. However the thermals have been reported to be a small problem.

Also another question is why the Tinkerboy? My answer is that my patience runs thin very quickly. So I'll gladly take any shortcuts that comes my way. Tinkerboy's button PCBs have a lot of components included on the PCB itself such as a Teensy, audio out, and also holes for you to connect a PSP joystick. All I need to do is to connect the hardware I need to the board.

There are also some extras that I plan to throw in as well. These are:-

  • PSP Joystick
  • Six button layout (A, B, C, X, Y, Z)
  • Thermal management (passive)

The rest of the components (speaker, switches, etc do not matter much so I am not including them in this post.

However, do follow along as I will definitely try to bring this project to life over the next few months. I will constantly update this post as I source for more items. The price list is below, and every item is linked to their respective pages that I bought from.

Price List (in SGD):

  • 3.5'' GearBest screen - $19.50
  • Banggood Charging circuit - $2.10
  • Banana Pi M2 Zero - $22.70
  • Screen cover + 2 sets of silicon buttons + button shells - $9.90
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