GBA screen projects

FairlanePhantom

Mai's Apprentice
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Mar 31, 2007
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Has anyone done any? Thought a few projects in mind, but didn't want to take a Gameboy Advance apart before knowing what the connections were. What kind of signals can the screen accept?
 

dark penguin

Mai's Tabloid Photographer
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Nov 11, 2004
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What kind of projects were you looking at? I'm not too savvy with screen mods, but I'd be interested in seeing what you had in mind. I own like 5 GBAs :D
 

FairlanePhantom

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Well, I was building a mini cabinet, and did all the wiring with a PSOne LCD, and it looks great. I just never finished with the cabinet building because I only have a drill and a sanding block. So it's been on hold for awhile until I can get my hands on better tools for a day.
I originally had a GBA screen in mind so it could be about the size of those mini cabinets they brought back to stores, like the donkey kong cabinet you see the monsters playing in the movie Gremlins. They make a composite converter for the GBA, but it's kind of big, and I'd still need another converter to convert signals to composite in some cases. So I really need to know what kind of video it was made to accept, so I can figure how much more it can really be scaled down.
If you're not sure what I mean, here's a picture from the movie:
%5bMovie%5dGremlins%20(1984)_01.jpg
 

AppleiDog

Shamrock Chatster
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Nov 20, 2005
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Did you find that picture on the net? or put in the movie and screen capture it.

Btw congrats on the project sounds awesome, were you going to use the original screen or Sp?
 

FairlanePhantom

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Found it online surprisingly. I'd want to use the screen from the last generation SPs, they don't have the light glare from the original SP.
 

FairlanePhantom

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Searching around the internet, I found plenty of information on exporting the signal, but nothing on importing. Just other forums of members saying you need a converter, and nothing more.
I'll just use a portable TV LCD, but does anyone own one of those mini arcade units? I still need to know how much space I have for the screen.
 

FairlanePhantom

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Mar 31, 2007
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Eventually found LCDs that would fit. It's still in stage 2, a little more wiring left, and side decals and bezel.

When screen was first connected:
http://ghoulsnight0ut.250free.com/straight slug.bmp
Current progress:
stage2.JPG


- Component/composite/S-video out
- Working on board controls for player 1
- Controller ports to the right for player 1 and 2
- Internal speaker
- Test switch
- Headphone jack and volume control
 
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Kyuusaku

B. Jenet's Firstmate
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Mar 26, 2003
Posts
419
The GBA screen is a LCD so it's digital. It also obviously has a fixed resolution, so it's pretty useless for non-GBA applications. If you do want to interface with it, you just need to send it 15-bit LVTTL RGB signals, clock in a pixel with "pixel_clock", and assert vsync and hsync at the right moments.
 
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